FW3A Troubleshooting / FAQ

Mine does it to ,it’s probly a bug.

Hoping TK chimes in here on this and sets the record straight, please. Is the MANUAL correct or not?

The manual is correct.

If you DO NOT care if the ’room temperature’ reads correctly you can do what ToyKeeper says in the quote below.

No worries. I struck out the content of my post. I didn’t mean to be an idiot, but what was throwing me off was having read a few comments scattered about, rather than circling back to the actual manual. I made a poor choice on terminology. It should be “base value.” And there’s 2 things: actual temperature representation and the number of clicks.
See, this threw me, from 1st post:
“At the first menu option, while the light flickers and waits for input, click to enter the current room temperature. This is typically about 20 to 25 C, meaning 20 to 25 clicks.”
Then I saw a post from TK saying only 1 click was needed and you’d have 20C set for current temp. No need to click 20 times to get 20C.

I know what you mean by “padding”… that is where you are not correct.

For ambient temp calibration it starts at 0C. If room (ambient) temp is 17C, you must click 17 times for the temperature sensor to be properly calibrated. (1 click = 1C)

Max temp limit starts at 30C. If you want to have a Max Temp Limit of 48C, you do 18 clicks. (1 click = 1C)

You were not being an idiot, just temporarly confused. :slight_smile: We have been there before. :slight_smile:

Yeah, but I feel like I shouldn’t have been confused…
And maybe I am still not completely clear on this. Because from what you’re saying, if I enter current temp setting and click once, I’ll have 1C set? Current temp just above freezing? Because after I did set that, the light was telling me 21C… (I presume 1C above 20C because of LED temp just a little up from the flashing).

I understand. I don’t think you are the only one that misread what ToyKeeper wrote.

Read it again… slowly. :wink:

Well, that backfired.

So… yeah. To be safe, click 20 times at the first option and 20 times at the second option. If you’re anywhere close to an average room temperature, that should give it a sane thermal config.

I was mostly just pointing out that, if you click the same number of times at both, it should end up with a temperature limit 30 C higher than your current room temperature… whatever that is. And technically, that can be shortened to 1 click at each option, but only if you don’t care about having accurate values in the temperature check mode.

But it seems that was confusing, so it’d be best to enter accurate values instead.

can we just keep the confusion rolling? enuf already. STOP! Teacher seems to be the only one helping!

Yes and no.

It shouldn’t be possible for the light to overheat in muggle mode, because it’s limited to such low power. But people wanted it to be really safe, so they can let kids use it. So if it does detect a “getting kinda hot” condition, it doesn’t even try to regulate the output… instead, it panics and drops to the lowest level.

This worked fine in testing, but it seems that some lights detect enough heat to trigger the panic response. It sounds like it’s probably sensing noise in the ADC readings instead of an actual high temperature though.

Do you think it should have the muggle thermal condition removed, so it ignores temperature? It shouldn’t be overheating in that mode at all, and it seems to mostly just cause problems.

No… just forget everything you knew or thought you knew.

Read the instructions below that came word for word from the FW3A User Manual & follow them exactly.

This is how it is done correctly… taken straight from the FW3A User Manual that came in the box:

Thermal configuration

Look at a thermometer to check the current room temperature. Let us assume it says 21 Celsius Turn the light off and wait for its temperature to settle to room temperature.

Go to TempCheck
When you are in TempCheck, then click 4 times to enter thermal config mode, and calibrate the sensor.

Thermal config mode has two settings:

1. Current temperature Calibration.

  • Click once per degree C to calibrate the sensor. For our example, the ambient temperature is 21 C = click 21 times.

2. Temperature limit.

  • This sets the maximum temperature the light can reach before it will start doing thermal regulation to keep itself from overheating. Click once per degree C above 30. For example, to set the limit to 50 C, click 20 times.

The default is 45 C (15 clicks).

Hint: If you don’t click,the lamp will leave the value unchanged.
The lowest value the user can set is 31 C, by clicking once.

Edit
Mine behaves normally now, I did take it apart & cleaned it & took the retaining ring out & put it back ( there was nothing to clean to be honest) , and I was also disappointed because it steps down almost straight away on turbo ,so I set it to 70* ,but it still stepped down straight away ,I then did it again & it still steps down quicker than I like but it’s better , but anyway Muggles behaves ok now.

I can’t get my light out of lockout, I tried 4 clicks and also tried 6 clicks. All it does is moonlight no matter what… do I have a defective board?

Never mind, I reset it by removing the battery… I thought loosen head was enough apparently not.

Hi All,

I just received my FW3A and I can not seem to get it to work. Here is what I've tried so far:

1) Confirmed I am inserting the battery positive side towards the driver. I see the flashlight blinks once as I am tightening the cap).

2) Pressing the power button there is a nice tactile click but I've unscrewed the tailcap just to verify to see if the "nub" is there (it is)

3) Tried re-tightening the tail cap first and then the head.

4) Tried the battery in my D4(works fine).

Anything else I can try?

Thanks,

WFP

You saw the light flash when you started screwing in the battery tube. This means main power is connected to the driver. However, nothing happens when you press the button. The problem is likely the switch connection to the driver. Try the following:

  • open the light up and confirm that the driver is in its socket the driver retaining ring is tight.
  • examine the contact ring for the inner tube at both the driver and the tailcap. Make sure there is no debris present that would prevent them from making connection.
  • Reassemble. Tighten the tailcap first. Make it tight quite. Then put in the battery and tighten the head.

I got through thermal config OK (Light thought it was 45C in a 28C room - LOL) with the visual guide. But I thought I had done something weird with the ramp config veiling - was disturbingly dim after setting the levels and steps for stepped ramp!

By actually RTFM’ing , I learned that one subtracts the desired value from 151.

Hi…. Go HERE . Read it, do what is says, and hopefully that will fix you up. :+1:

@Firelight2

@teacher

It was the retaining ring. It "looked" like it was tight but apparently not. A couple of twists of the ring and I am now good to go. Cheers!

Nice!