I realize youāre just one person, but if too many people did that, the LT1 wouldnāt be made, and therefore, the LT2 wouldnāt get a chance either. :cry:
Besides, it will be a while before the LT2 comes about. You should consider how much longer youāre willing to wait.
Thatās the thing about future releases; sometime they never come to fruition. Sometimes itās better to to buy something very good than wait for something perfect that may never get built. Life is short so enjoy having the very good while you can
Ok, after a few dozen designs, shapes & ideas i tested for the ādown shadeā or lamp shade as a part of the LT1 Accessory kit, i finally hit the perfect one.
- This is something i been trying to perfect for some time, to get the correct shape, color, angles, and configuration to add to the LT1 design, so the lantern can be hung from a ceiling or a tree and direct all its light downwards as smoothly and evenly as possible, with as little light lumens loss as possible, and achieving a good balance of directional light for the times when a above-light source is needed, ( as in hanging above a camp site, hanging on a ceiling over a table to light up that table perfectly, or just as a perfect warm lamp style lighting in a case where regular electric lamps are not a thing.
- I found this perfect bowl shape that was a great color of warm yellow, and painted the inside with a flat white paint. (as mentioned before, i tested every type & color of reflector from shiny chrome, silver, aluminum, gloss white, etc. and out of all of them a very flat/matte white reflects the most smooth light of them all. (I will take photos soon of how that works, and how well this upper-shade-reflector really works for down-lighting.
- Take note of how smooth & even the light is illuminating the entire area down to the base of the LT1 test unit, there is no artifacts, no hard-lighting, and no tint shift. ( here its running on the #2 mode above the lowest, ( the mode that will allow the lantern to run for days or weeks non stop on four 3000 mAh cells with less than 0.14 amps draw, (0.035 amps draw on each cell. ( this test LT1 has 5-AMC chips per channel enabled. (Lantern set at average 4000K mid-range of the tint ramp) The CRI is beautiful & natural, and at this setting its still far brighter than a 7-watt incandescent night light, more around a 15-watt incan range.
- I am also working on the same for a side directional shade reflector for the lantern.
I donāt get the current hype about a potential LT2 or better LT1 premium which isnāt more than a collection of features that are to unessesary or expensive for a mass production model at this point. It will probably take one or two more years to design it after the LT1 is finished and then we still have to find a manufacturer that is willing to invest into a product that costs $100+ and is only interesting for a very small target group.
Meanwhile we have the almost finished LT1 which is good for over 99% percent of usecases and better that every other lantern on the marked, so what are you waiting for?
There will always be something better if you wait long enough.
The ability of the lamp to run by USB only is a HUGE advantage and opens it up for precisely this.
Iād like to see a V1A created (āAā for ABS plastic). Tough ABS plastic body instead of anodized aluminum. This cheaper version could be priced more like $19. And then with subsidies, it could be made available at half that (or less) to impoverished nations. This was done previously with a solar cell project, to provide a cheap renewable power source for people in impoverished nations. So the whole product cycle for a cost-effective version was probably already done. It could be repeated with any product, I imagine. Including the BLF LT1.
I wish I could speak more authoritatively about this, but Iām going off of an article Iād read a couple years ago and donāt have any practical experience in this area. But it might be worth tracking down the agency that was the conduit for that solar cell project and see if there might be interest.
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V2 feature request: Either a dedicated switch or some UI control that will govern how the light is charged. This is to address the possible batteries overcharging when the light is on plugged into USB. So you could optionally āshut offā battery charging when not desired.
The main intention is to prevent overcharging of batteries. Now there might be several ways to address this without any manual control. Iām presuming that the battery charging stops once the software detects that the batteries are fully charged. If this is the case, thenā¦ maybe reroute the circuitry such that when plugged into USB, the driver pulls power directly from the USB source rather than the batteries. Iām guessing this would be too complicated. Soā¦ maybe something more simple? For instance, the logic test: if USB plugged in ā> if light is ON ā> if current power cycle has detected 100% battery charge, delay battery charging again until 90%.
The other thing Iām thinking of is a manual lockout to the battery. So it requires some user intervention. The idea being that when the user sees that the batteries are fully charged, twist the body to break the battery connection. Now the LT1 running off USB will not affect battery drain.
My apologies if any of these ideas have already been discussed. I was AFB for a good number of days and now thereās too much to catch up on.
Hey BSM, thatās absolutely something Iād not managed to address but youāre totally right ā for such a project youād definitely want 4xAA. Because 18650 are probably scarce and costly in impoverished nations. Iām sure some people have gotten into harvesting 18650ās from dead laptop battery packs, but commercially the cells would be significantly more expensive than brand new rechargeable AA cells.
Yeah, itās easy to get ahead on this when LT1 hasnāt even gone to retail mode. But itās hard not to, because itās such a wonderful tool ā well thought out and opening up so many possibilities.
Fantasy. It has been mentioned as a possibility for later, but no concrete plans have been made that Iām aware of, and the focus is on getting V1 released.