As CRX and Teacher said, it’s probably been taken apart and baked. This changes the gray to orange.
It does not look like a different metal construction .
/\ …. 
… 
Let me correct you here. The inner tube does not carry any led power. It only carries the very tiny switch signal.
The emitter gets current through the outer tube when the head and tail are somewhat threaded together. This is why you see the leds blink as you are threading them together.
It takes the precise tightening of the tail first, then the head, for the inner tube to make good contact and allow the switch to work.
The only in between state I can think of is the inner tube not making good contact which means the switch won’t work.
Ok, I just thought that once these levels were set up that people wouldn’t be changing them very frequently.
Is it possible to know when to order to get the updated firmware? Like a specific date where all FW3A’s shipped have this firmware? Thanks for all of your hard work updating it TK!
It's now mostly dark here.
I was afraid that 7A would be too warm, but it's fine.
I like warm tints.
Superb flashlight!
need this light with a 18350 pipe option too O_O
The light is so short with an 18650, that my hand barely covers it!
It wouldn't fit in my hand if it were any smaller.
[quote=raccoon city]
meh at least with the 18350 will be a lot easier to have it as a keychain light 
and when someone needs light boom blind the whole area for a few seconds lol
Thanks for the correction. I understand what you’re saying, but light behavior puzzles me. So I make about a 1~2mm turn of the head while LEDs are powered, which cuts power. I then press the switch and I get a moonlight strobe. Easy to reproduce. So does this mean outer tube contact is still good but switch senses insufficient power because head isn’t fully tightened?
Nope, that’s above my pay grade. I don’t get information like that.
I sent a new build though, and I think the drivers are getting made in a few days, and I think I heard the 219C model might ship in a week or so… maybe it could end up with new firmware?
Anyway, the build I sent includes the following updates:
- Rewrote the thermal regulation. Should be much more stable now.
- Added momentary strobes. Pick a mode in the strobe group, turn the light off, then go to momentary mode. It should do the last-used strobe. Or, to do a normal (steady) momentary level, turn the light off from a normal ramp mode first instead. Only normal ramp modes and strobes are supported though … there’s no momentary battcheck, no momentary sunset, and no momentary lockout. What would that even mean? It does do momentary candle though, since it’s easier to allow that than not.
- Made “hold” auto-reverse in strobe modes.
- Made lockout mode’s momentary moon use 2 levels instead of 1. The second click goes to the other ramp’s floor.
- Added ten-clicks-from-off as a shortcut to thermal config mode.
- Fixed the bug maukka found — hold-from-off then release-and-hold in stepped ramp wouldn’t work until it had been on for a full second.
- Made candle mode slightly more calm but also able to burn a bit brighter sometimes.
- Beacon mode duty cycle is 100ms now instead of 500ms.
- Made muggle mode do smaller thermal adjustments.
- Fixed a minor bug in lightning mode. The brightest flashes should be full power now.
With the new thermal regulation code, here’s what I measured with a fresh 30Q cell:
For comparison, here’s an earlier version measured by Bob_McBob:
It worked, but it had a lot of jitter. So I fixed the jitter (among other things).
These updates apply to all build targets, not just FW3A. I spent the entire day running thermal tests, and every tested light worked pretty well. The only exception so far was a D4S, which was unexpected. It bounced a little before stabilizing. I haven’t been able to test an original D4 yet though.
I like your updates! Wish there was some way to update existing lights. Will definitely pick up an SST-20 when they come out. Thanks again, TK.
Thanks for the improvements to Andúril, TK! You continue to spoil us.
Momentary strobe sounds neat, and stephenk will certainly enjoy it.
Improved candle mode and brighter lightning strikes will be awesome. I think the shorter beacon flashes are a good move.
I’ll definitely be updating Andúril on the dozen lights I have using it. Thanks again for all of your hard work!
momentary strobes? Hoo-yah!
Your in luck, there is a way. You can re-flash them with the updated firmware. :+1:
Yeah, I should have qualified with “Wish there was some way for ME to update existing lights.” 
I don’t have the necessary hardware and lack the knowledge of the program to deploy it into the EPROM. I’ve flashed custom ROMs on my Android phones… if I can do that, should I be able to flash Anduril onto my FW3A?
I would ’think’ so… but I am certainly not the person to ask.
I just know it can be done & the hardware/stuff to get going is supposedly pretty cheap.
Aye, the hardware is really cheap from China. Mine took forever to arrive though. I flashed a D4S easily enough thanks to the driver having little acupuncture holes, meaning I didn’t have to desolder anything. I haven’t tried it on a flashlight that I’d have to do surgery on yet, as I’m terrified of bricking it like I did when I tried to perform my first emitter swap.
Short tube D4 works great for that! Absolute most power you can reasonably get on a keychain. I have seen someone attach their keys to the tripod hole on a BLF GT though. Can’t imagine that’s fun to try and fit in your pocket.
They’re not much brighter. It was maxing out at ramp level 143/150, and now it goes to 150/150. I doubt anyone will even notice.
About that though, momentary lightning is kind of neat. The way the algorithms work, every time the button is pressed, it triggers a new lightning flash. This wasn’t even strictly on purpose; it happens as a happy side effect of some other code I added months ago. Each button press cancels any pending timers and drops back to the FSM library’s inner main loop, so it stops whatever it’s doing and loops back around to the beginning of the next lightning strike.
TBH, it’s kind of a pain. Some lights are easy, like the BLF Q8… but the FW3A is obnoxious to reflash. It requires unsoldering the LED wires and pulling the driver completely out to get access to the MCU.
I’ve only updated one of mine so far, and that was so I could run some thermal tests. I used the oldest one which still works, in case anything went wrong. I don’t like having a soldering iron inside the ones I actually use, at least if it’s not absolutely necessary. It adds wear and tear that I’d prefer to avoid.
I really like newer designs which can be reflashed by pogo pin adapters. Those only take a moment to update.
A few days ago I mentioned that the only improvement for the FW3A that came to my mind would be a less wobbly button. I’d like to add pogo pins to this. Makes flashing so much more beginner friendly, and keeping firmware up to date much less of a pain.
If that optical programming thing could work very reliably, then it’d be even easier. Just press the bezel against a monitor and play a video with a load of different white flashes to reprogram, if my understanding of the concept is correct. 