Please put me in for one lantern!
We spend an inordinate amount of posts on everything, the font of the lettering on a BLF light is actually one of the more relevant subjects we spend posts on 
Lol, you got me there.
Regarding the Q8 font. I’m not sure which text you’re talking about, this one in the first image of post #2?
If so then I’d say with 90% certainty that:
‘BLF’ = Exo 2 Black
‘Q8’ = Magistral Cond Bold
Here’s some quick and dirty mock ups
Exo 2 Black
Magistral Cond Bold
Exo 2 + Magistral
As far as these mock ups go the Magistral is a bit weird with it’s T and 1 almost touching and so on.
Mixed fonts don’t work here because of the L’s.
And Exo 2 looks a bit… I don’t know. It’s funky.
I don’t really have much of a preference on this, don’t really care. But if you want some feedback…
It should be something simple and monospaced. And since there’s the line below the text the typeface should “sit flat” on it instead of being rounded on the bottom.
Seeing most of the fonts thus far have been more “in scale” with the lantern in the logo…
…how about the other features instead i.e. the rays of light and the line below?
That’s Roboto Mono. Still rather thick compared to the lines but overall I’d say it looks balanced. (You’d need to drop it from 350pt to ~250pt to match the line thickness)
Not sure what the size of the logo will be but scaling that image down to 5% on a 93 PPI monitor and leaning back to about a meter away I can still read it just fine.
I like that one
That gets my vote as well.
This is the winner for me:
Easy to read letters and numbers.
It is balanced on both sides.
Powerful and correct boldness.
Same weight on both sides.
Consistent font.
Readable from distance.
BLF Family look. (Q8 esque)
At this point, I am as confident that the logo is in good hands as is the rest of this project. Whatever you decide at this point I am good with. To me the attention to every detail on this is exactly why I am going to end up buying more than one if for no other reason than to support the cause. This lantern is something to be very proud of and will be more well thought out and better than anything else on the market. More heads are better than one comes to mind here. It will be worth every minute of the wait for a polished end result.
One of my pet peaves is when I buy an amazing product, but the logo looks cheesy because the factory just didnt care about the artwork.
Cheesy logos and artwork always make me question the attention to detail on the rest of the product.
Thanks again DBSAR and everyone else who has contributed so much to this effort!
Holy crap, I have a lantern. And it works!
Sorry for the potato-quality animation. GIF isn’t good at subtle color gradients.
It still needs some adjustments, and I’ve got a lot of catching up to do here in the thread, but I wanted to give people a preview of how the first manufactured prototype looks:
The charge port uses USB-C, with status indicators right next to the port:
It works on a tripod, too:
Dancing in the streets!!!
very nice!
About things for me to do to the firmware, this is what I have in mind:
- Adjust candle mode to look better. It seems a bit flat on the lantern, and probably needs the amplitude turned up.
- Unify the ramping code so all ramping functions are reversible with a hold-release-hold. Currently, everything except the main output modes requires a “click-release-hold” to ramp down, so a “hold-release-hold” would go up twice instead of reversing.
- Make the tint ramping also reversible in the same manner, if I can find a good way to do it. I keep wanting to release-and-hold to reverse it, but it currently requires “click, click, hold” instead.
- Adjust the tint-mixing code to bump up output a bit in the middle tints. At the moment, the output dips a little, and I can probably fix it to make it more flat with a little bit of math. It’s not really noticeable by eye, but it’s noticeable with a multimeter.
- Add an auto-tint mode if I can find a good way to do it. This would be warm at low levels and cold at high levels. The implementation is easy, but making the UI intuitive could be a little tricky.
- Add a blink at the ends of the tint ramp, because it’s not always obvious when it stopped.
- Decide if tint ramping is fast enough or not, and maybe speed it up.
So there are at least a few things to do. But the lantern is looking good so far. The only “issues” I’ve found so far are just little things which aren’t really broken but could still be improved.
Great to hear TK! all sounds good. :+1:
It looks great! I hope Den’s arrives soon! :partying_face:
This sounds great. Would it be an on/off toggle option somewhere in the config menu?
Could sunset mode make use of auto-tint if enabled?
Could sunset mode have an adjustable ‘starting’ output, and an adjustable runtime in 30-minute increments like candle mode’s timer?
Is tint adjustable within ‘special’ modes, or is tint set where it was before entering them?
wow, great questions!
Thanks for the pics! I just ripped my shirt off.
Form following function -
This thing looks like business! No fake marketing, chrome, bottle openers, compasses or cup holders to add more useless “features” to cover for inadequacy.
Love the tint ramping -
I will almost always use this on the warmest setting, but the fact that this will ramp is SO impressive.
I just got up and walked a circle around my chair for no reason at all!
The faint glow of the switch is a perfect touch.
I am in for the whole shebang, accessory kit and all.
I hope the optional accessory kit includes:
- EVA molded protective soft case (very inexpensive from China)
“
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2. 4 18650 cells
3. MOST importantly a mountable shield/reflector to allow light management for something less than a full 360 field. Our usual crew doesn’t normally want 360 illumination. On most trips, we block 90 - 180 degrees of the output glare so our night vision is not impaired by the direct light while we sit by the fire. The ambient light from fire and lantern is more than enough to see by and walk around in indirectly lighted areas. With a white reflective surface on the non blocked (inward reflective) side of the shield the efficiency in the lighted areas would actually be higher allowing the user to select a lower output setting enabling longer run times and higher output to the lighted areas.
I am eyeballing the amount of frosting on that diffusor while confident this will be thoroughly checked.
I’m thinking auto-tint would probably be enabled if you ramp to the end and keep pushing after it stops. Then to turn it off, ramp back into the regular CCT zone to go back to a steady tint.
Sunset mode isn’t configurable yet, but I’m hoping to fix that at some point. It really should be sharing timer code with candle mode.
Sunset mode and all other special modes use the configured color temperature automatically. As far as the UI code is concerned, the output is controlled in two dimensions — perceptually-linear brightness, and tint. Most modes only set brightness, so the tint stays the same in all modes.
Tint is adjustable in every mode except momentary and “off”. But I noticed just now that it’s super weird how it adjusts in muggle mode, so I should fix that. Adjusting it in lockout mode is a bit weird too.
The tint ramping thing works totally independent of the rest of the UI code, so it’s kind of a global mapping which applies everywhere. If a button event isn’t handled by the active mode, it’ll “fall through” to a lower layer… which in this case is the tint-ramping handler. And since the “click, click, hold” event isn’t mapped in most modes, it falls through and does tint ramping instead of a mode-specific action. This works because FSM is a stack-based state machine — multiple states can be stacked, and the event handler goes through them in top-first order until something returns an “event handled” response. In this case, I simply put the tint handler on the stack first at boot time, below everything else… and it stays there permanently. This lets it work in all modes without the need to modify any of those modes.
So, here is what we should do for options:
1. Lantern only.
2. Lantern + 4x18650.
3. Lantern + 4x18650 + carrying case + (if possible) aluminium diffusion sheet.
What about a charging cable? Personally I think a cable is more important than the batteries. I don’t want to settle for low tier Sofirn batteries. I don’t really need the cable, but I think most people might need one, especially if buying the case.
The cable would be included in all versions obviously…
A flashlight that is supposed to use 4x cells should have a USB cable included.
I can understand with an 1x18650 flashlight and a micro-USB cable, since there are way too many m-USB cable on this planet already.
But, until it becomes as widespread as micro-USB, every USB-C light should include a cable, batteries or not.