Yeah, it’s close to Angry Blue in CT, but it’s also pretty bright for a headlamp.
And I was all prepared to hate the UI, but it grew on me. When you figure that medium and well-done are likely gonna be the 2 most-used modes, you get ’em with 1 or 2 clicks from off. For all others, press’n’hold to step from medium to medium-rare, rare, then well, medium-well, back to medium, and repeat the cycle. And 1 click for off.
I already put up my review on Amazon, dunno if it’s “published” yet. Once it is, I’ll copy it here.
@gchart, are you sure about the 0.2mA current draw when the light is off? I did not measure that with my meter, I actually did not match any of the numbers you got. My meter is old and not calibrated, but I did see the current drop roughly at the same rate as you did. I measured 1.2a, 0.62A, 0.32A, 0.17A and 0.09A with my meter on the 10A scale. I measured 0.02mA on the mA scale, and 0.01 with my meter on the uA scale. I thought maybe those scales were not working, so I checked my d4 (which has an aux light board in it) and measured 0.7mA on both the mA and uA scales. This agrees with what I measured on a calibrated meter at my work.
Were you using a fully charged battery? That will make a big difference in this light since the driver is essentially a few current limiting resistors (in parallel) being PWM’ed by a couple small FETs. Following Ohms Law, if your voltage is lower than in my test, so would your current be.
If your battery was fully charged, then I scratch my head a bit. My amp readings seem to coincide with the lumen measurements pretty well.
I did not have a fully charged battery. I did charge it last night, and the higher intensity current values went up, but the bottom end was still 0.18A, 0.09A. But what I was mostly wondering was the off current. 0.2mA says the battery will be dead in a month and a half. I did not measure that much current, and I was able to measure 0.7mA on my D4, which I am sure is very close to accurate.
My measurements of the lower levels was 0.08A and 0.20A, which seems pretty close to your measurements of 0.09A and 0.18A… no?
Here’s my estimate for standby drain with included 2200mAh battery and my measurement of 0.2mA drain:
2200mAh ÷ 0.2mA = 11,000 hours
11,000 hours ÷ 24 hours/day = 458 days
458 days ÷ ~30 days/month = 15 months
It’s entirely possible that I wrote down the figure incorrectly, but 0.2mA doesn’t seem unreasonable for standby drain. I remember it acting a bit odd, though. I feel like standby was near immeasurable until I turned the light on and off again, at which point it went up to ~0.2mA. Its as if some of the MCU peripherals (like perhaps a timer/counter, WDT, RTC, or BOD) didn’t get turned on until the light was turned on for the first time after a battery swap; but once enabled, they didn’t get shut off again for standby. Just a guess, but plausible.
Thanks guys! Oh, and if anyone isn’t up for flashing the firmware but is interested in doing this with their D25, I might be able to send a pre-flashed attiny412 to drop in (once I get the temp calibration straightened up… we’ll see how that goes though, because this thing doesn’t have a very good thermal path to the driver).
Wow, nice mod! Great minds think alike because I bought the same dual headlamp from this Ali store for $14 shipped. All I did was replace the LED's to 4C's for now. I use mine almost every day for bench work - light weight, easy to adjudt, easy UI for me so far, but of course I'd like to get smooth ramping in there.
I had no idea it was sold under other names, least looks the same.
How did you get access to the driver? I can't budge the end cap with the 2 notches - dunno if CW or CCW to unscrew, but either way very, very tight on mine.
Maybe they glued the heck out of mine? Cheaper source of course...
Thanks Tom! And kudos on RampingIOS, I like this headlamp 10x now. I really would like some different emitters, but my only spare XM-L2’s are cool white. I’m kinda waiting to see if anyone gets the 4000K or 5000K SST-40’s in. Those are about the only other 3V 5050 LEDs I can think of unless (outside of those crazy 3V 50.2’s). But I really don’t want to dump a bunch of money in a cheap headlamp.
Unscrew the end cap with the 2 notches CCW. It’s probably just tight. Mine had no hint of glue anywhere. There is an o-ring though that might be contributing to the resistance.
Desolder the LED wires
Using a wooden stick or something, push on the PCBs from the battery tube area
BTW, I’ve seen tear-downs of the single emitter version too. Same/similar driver. But the LED was mounted on our typical 20mm star, makings emitter swaps simple… and optics and option (link). The simplicity of this driver kinda bugs me, though. It’s just a few current limiting resistors being PWM’ed.
Ok, thanx! Yea, scary the way some of these drivers are designed, now that I know more bout them.
I applied a lot of leverage with a decent pair of needlenose and it didn't budge - came close to wrecking the holes. I'll give it another go - maybe clamped in the vise using pine.
I started look'n at some of that review thread - interesting. What I really like bout this headlamp is super light weight even with an 18650, plenty of light, centered beam, centered weight on your head and 1-2 clicks for my mode, 1 click off.
The head strap though constantly loosens, PIA, but probably could use it with a better one.
I though it would have given off more of a wide beam but seems pretty circular - the 2 beams must converge. Does it look the same to you?
Up close (say within the first foot or so) the beam is a bit wider. But once you get further than that away from the light source, a position offset of 3/4” or so doesn’t really make a lick of difference.
Garry has a few disassembly pics at the end of his first post in this thread (as a side note, I see his switch also had a debouncing capacitor+resistor… they must have changed to software debouncing later on). There might be more pics later on, as well. Good luck with getting it apart. You’re trying with the USB cover tightened down towards the emitters, right?
I won’t say that porting code to run on a different family of microcontroller is necessarily “the easy way”, but it certainly looks like you did choose a hard (but effective) way!
Think so... I'm at work right now, maybe in an hour or 2 can take a look. Not sure I understand the importance of having the button/driver end tightened though - maybe I didn't? Oh boy - let me look again.
What kind of driver could it be replaced with? Mine’s elsewhere at the moment, so can’t really check.
Imagine any driver that takes an e-switch (eg, SP10?) might do it? “Standard” 17mm?
I don’t like resistor-type “regulation”… would be nice to have something more consistent.
Also, the “glue” that holds the mcpcb… hard like epoxy, or rubbery Fujik-like stuff? If the bezel could hold some TIRs in place, a pair of regular mcpcbs can be “floated” on the shelf with regular thermal goop (eg, AS5) once it’s cleaned.
It might not really matter, just worth a shot if nothing else is working.
I’m not sure if much will be very “drop in” worthy. I thought about designing a driver for it, but I’m not sure if it’s really worth it at the moment. The MCPCB adhesive seems to be the rubbery white stuff. I think a TIR works in the single emitter version, but not really this one. I dunno, maybe some small AAA light ones would work.
