FW3A mod thread. Post yours!

yea sitting ON the switch is a deal breaker for me. This switch is finicky enough without protruding.

I guess the only solution is for CRX to make me one

So, I got a FW3A intending to turn it into a green dragon.

I got the Steve Ku trit button, a drilled for trits Carclo optic and filled them both with green trits. I got a dragon mcpcb with green secondaries and replaced the primaries with Nichia 219b sw45, which I prefer. Then oppened the light to see the driver board is a larger diameter and that it makes contact with the button via a tube, so I will have to keep the original driver.

It is a nice driver, with the Anduril firmware, for sure, but I want green secondaries on it.

I saw JC Customs offers FW3A lights with secondaries so I contacted them via Facebook and asked to buy a driver. I got an answer saying they do not sell drivers but I could send mine to be modified and flashed with the required firmware. I replied I would be interested in that and asked for the cost and the location where I should send it. I never heard back. I have send a couple more messages which have been received and also ignored.

I saw there is another option for a secondary board available for purchase and a modified firmware and instructions to flash it, but I really want to be able to use the turboglow gasket I got that fits the dragon MCPCB.

Does anyone know of a solution to my situation? I would be happy to do any required mods myself (hardware wise) and follow any instructions to flash any required firmware (and purchase the required cable / adaptor to do it).

Many thanks in advance for any help offered!

Mmmmm…Green……

Yes, that colour exactly. But how?

I forgot to mention, for anyone who does not know, that the dragon MCPCB needs common positive and separate negatives for the primary and secondary LEDs.

Here ya go…

Thank you KawiBoy1428, but I believe this picture shows a mod used for a secondary board, which holds the secondary LEDs. Not the Dragon MCPCB. As mentioned before, the Dragon uses the same positive for primary and secodnary LEDs. Does this mod work with a Dragon MCPCB and if so, how?

Ground (-) off the FET

So, I should follow what is in your photo and just ommit the thin red wire? Won’t that just turn on the secodnaries all the time?

Put the primary led’s on the board in reverse polarity then everything will be common cathode then run a tiny wire to the anodes of each secondary led. That’s how I did my first mod before the aux led boards were available. As of yesterday though I swapped back to the standard mcpcb and lexel aux board and it’s so much better looking!

WAY easier just to get the lexel board.

I would get the lexel board but I want a turboglow green gasket…

the glow gasket is pointless with the lexel board cause the lexel board is either 1) Always on or 2) on when the light is off so no need for a glow board

dragon driver uses the XR-E leds as secondaries so much brighter and they do not come on when the light is off like aux boards do with low power

JC’s are set up as secondaries not low power AUX

You need to decide what you really want first

I know exactly what I want and I thought I had made it clear:

1 I want secondary green LEDs, that work in a way similar to the Dragon driver.

2 I have a Dragon MCPCB with the primaries and secondaries I prefer and would like to be able to use it in the FW3A, either with a dragon driver (which sadly is small for the light and will not fit), or a modified FW3A driver, which I do not know how to modify to do what I want and have not found any instructions for that.

3 Using the Dragon MCPCB will allow me to use the turboglow gasket I have. I do not want low power LEDs that are always on or on when the primaries are off.

4 I tried contacting JC through FB as I saw he was selling FW3A lights with what seemed to me to be secondaries. I asked if I could buy a driver and he replied he does not have any drivers for sale but I could send him mine to modify. I then asked him how much it would cost and where he is located and never heard back. He has received, read and ignored my subsequent messages. So, I am not thrilled with the way he has treated me and I am in no way with (or against) him on the subject you are raising. It could be argued he is not profiting off free code but just charging for his service of modifying the driver and the code, but this is not something I would like to get into, as this is not what I am after.

I hope my goals are now clear enough and also hope there is a solution. I do not want to run thin wires on top of the PCB, as I find that too fragile a solution to be reliable. I would prefer to keep Anduril, with all its extra functions and have secondaries as an added funtion, but it his is not possible, I would welcome a solution that uses the dragon driver (a way to fit it into the FW3A, reliably).

Many thanks for all the help, comments and suggestions!

Dragon seems unlikely to be made to work.

My point I was making was if JC followed the rules you could have what you want with new firmware and a few wires like the above posters did without having to send it to him. Since he is not sharing his code changes you are out of luck unless someone else knows how or you pay him.

He’s only required to share the changes with people who buy his light. Has someone who bought a custom light asked for the firmware source code?

Is the issue simply inverting the output of the optical nerve pin? Seems like that’s the only other possibility for an aux LED mod…and shouldn’t be difficult to implement.

Well, if someone figures out how to use dragon MCPCBs with the FW3A and shares it, I am usre it will be a very popular mod!

So as I understand it someone can buy it and just make it public themselves. Might as well post it publicly to begin with since it isn’t likely to effect his customer base much if any. (I don’t think they are going to do the mod themselves in other words)

IDK I guess i’m just salty since people are generally pretty good about contributing here.

Totally agree.

I may be wrong, I’m not a open source license expert but I don’t believe that’s correct. I’m under the impression the moment he uses open source code for commercial reasons he must publicly release the code. It’s a share alike license.

In short, don’t do business with him.

I believe this would work with MCPCB 2- wired to the optic nerve pin (see Lexel’s instructions for removing the resistor and using the pad). Some caveats: high/low won’t work, and the aux LEDs will come on with the light until you modify the firmware. Ensure the MCPCB aux LED resistor is populated before trying this.

Someone please check my work:

In anduril/cfg-fw3a.h, add:

#define USE_INDICATOR_LED
#define INDICATOR_LED_SKIP_LOW

(and maybe some other stuff depending on desired behavior)

Then in fsm-misc.c, look for the indicator_led function. Change the “case 0:” to “case 2:”

That will invert the aux LED control, so Anduril will drive the output low to turn on the LEDs and high to turn them off.

What am I missing?

I do not know, I am good at hardware modding and following instructions but I have no idea what should be changed in the hardware and software. If anyone figures it out, I will be obliged.