I've heard your feedback on the Quark UI. Our first production run on QK16L lights sold out on Kickstarter and we are about to begin the next batch, so I may have an opportunity to revise the UI to make it more nerd friendly. A term of endearment of course!
First, let's acknowledge that no one ever agrees on UI and the ONLY solution to make everyone happy is fully programmable. That's not an option at this time. So, the new Fourseven's UI (in general) is intended to be as simple as possible while capturing the preference of a majority of flashlight users...not just enthusiasts I would also point out that those two goals are in conflict, and the final solution must strike a middle ground. Given all that:
Should the next Quark UI stay the same but lower the medium output to 40 lumens, or should a 4 mode UI be implemented? My main hesitation with adding a 4 mode is the need to add two additional configurations, bringing the total from 6-8. 6 is easy enough to memorize long term. 8 configs and you better not lose your user manual. I'm also not sure there is enough memory left on the chip to add two more configurations.
Notes on the current UI spacing:
High mode is set to 60% of Max/Burst (100%) output because this is roughly "one step" in brightness. Burst is a battery conservation measure because the change in perceived brightness is not very drastic, but the extension of battery life is.
Medium mode is set to 1/4 the output of High mode because a 4x change in output is equivalent to doubling the perceived brightness. This is a nice spacing (seemed good on paper) but I agree, a resulting 100 lumens is a little bright...especially for us flashlight nerds. I don't think civilians will care.
My personal inclination (proposed UI #1) is to keep the UI the same, but drop medium mode to 40 lumens. This equates to a 10x change in output between medium and high instead of 4x. This is basically the same as the current Mini/Turbo MKIII settings and no one has taken issue with that yet
Existing UI
Config. 1: High - (Burst)
Config. 2: Max - Strobe
Config. 3: Medium - High - (Burst)
Config. 4: Low - Medium - High - (Burst)
Config. 5: High - Medium - Low - (Burst)
Config. 6: Low - Med - High - Strobe - SOS - Beacon - (Burst)
Output Max/Burst: 700 lumens (100%)
Output High: 400 lumens (60%)
Output Medium: 100 lumens (15%)
Output Low: 1 lumen
Proposed UI #1(just change medium to lower output - my personal preference)
Config. 1: High - (Burst)
Config. 2: Max - Strobe
Config. 3: Medium - High - (Burst)
Config. 4: Low - Medium - High - (Burst)
Config. 5: High - Medium - Low - (Burst)
Config. 6: Low - Med - High - Strobe - SOS - Beacon - (Burst)
Output Max/Burst: 700 lumens (100%)
Output High: 400 lumens (60%)
Output Medium: 40 lumens (6%)
Output Low: 1 lumen
Proposed UI #2(add a 4 mode option where the difference between low and medium is also 4x - may not be possible due to memory constraints - seems overly complicated - I get dizzy just looking at the options)
Config. 1: High - (Burst)
Config. 2: Max - Strobe
Config. 3: Medium - High - (Burst)
Config. 4: Low - Medium - High - (Burst)
Config. 5: High - Medium - Low - (Burst)
Config. 6: Moon - Low - Medium - High - (Burst)
Config. 7: High - Medium - Low - Moon (Burst)
Config. 8: Low - Med - High - Strobe - SOS - Beacon - (Burst)
Option 3. 100 lumens is to much. More even modespacing sounds right, but you probably won’t even notice the difference. Might give longer runtimes though.
I have a ramp calculator which can be used to calculate evenly-spaced levels on a few different perceptual scales, if anyone wants guidance on how many lumens to aim for at each level.
On a light which goes up to 700 lumens, I’d normally use 5 levels… 0.25 / 10 / 70 / 260 / 700 lm.
But it sounds like that’s not an option. So within the constraint of 1 to 700 lm in a maximum of 5 steps (including burst), I’d suggest something more like… 1 / 20 / 100 / 300 / 700 lm.
If it needs to hit 400 lm for some reason, it could be… 1 / 25 / 133 / 400 / 700 lm.
Or if it can only use 3 modes plus burst, I’d probably go with 1 / 20 / 150 / 700 lm.
If it helps, the first one was calculated with a command line like this:
On most EDC-style lights I only actually use a few levels… ~10 lumens, ~0.25 lumens, and something in the range of 50 to 100 lumens. But usually just 10. And occasionally turbo, but not very often. So I try to make sure those are included in the ramp. But if the lowest mode is 1 lumen instead of having a true moon level, the entire thing gets shifted upward to avoid having modes too close together. So it hits about 20 or 25 lumens instead.
I voted option 1. The spacing is good enough that way, and in my experience more modes just means you spend more time getting where you need to be. Even four modes on my EDC lights has started to bother me. With proper spacing, three is enough.