TK's Emisar D4V2 review

I may be late to the party but, thank you TK for making our flashlight dreams that we didn’t know existed become reality.

The auxiliary light bandwagon just keeps getting bigger. This should be a hot (no pun intended. seriously) selling light even if there are only 3 color choices. Looks like I may have to add a sand colored light to my collection.

Made a demo video showing the 2 features (version check & safety lockout) (D4v2 to the 2019-09-28 firmware)

(I did each function twice, so just fast-play through, no voice-over in the video..)

Oh God, there’s a titanium version now? Just take my money.

I wish I did the same and messages him before ordering. I ordered the flashlight after reading your post about Wang reflashing yours before sending, and YAY, ordered one myself. But stupid as I was, I wrongfully took for granted he would update the rest of the orders. When I recieved the light, the FW was not upgraded, and sent him an email.

The reply:

Please understand that the light was ordered after 28.9 does not mean the

firmware is with the 28.9 firmware, the stock flashlight is not updating immediately

with the firmware.I

f you want the latest firmware, please buy the relfashing kit and reflash it.

Moral of this, order the reflash kit! The flashlight is amazing, and having an up2date light is worth it!

On the bright side, with the kit you can reflash your light each time a new firmware comes out. TK is always adding or improving something. I believe Hank is putting the same flashing pads on all his new lights, so it is a useful tool to have around.

Look up this part of code in the "anduril.c" and replace the following three marked relevant lines:

uint8_t colors[] = {

// 0b00010101 = ????BBGGRR
0b00000001, // 0: red
0b00000101, // 1: yellow
0b00000100, // 2: green
0b00010100, // 3: cyan
0b00010000, // 4: blue
0b00010001, // 5: purple
0b00010101, // 6: white
};
uint8_t actual_color = 0;
if (color < 7) { // normal color
actual_color = colors[color];
}
else if (color == 7) { // rainbow
if (0 == (arg & 0x03)) {
rainbow = (rainbow + 1) % 6;
}
actual_color = colors[rainbow];
}
else { // voltage
// show actual voltage while asleep...
if (go_to_standby) {
// choose a color based on battery voltage
if (volts >= 38) actual_color = colors[2]; // these are the three relevant lines to replace*
else if (volts >= 33) actual_color = colors[1]; // these are the three relevant lines to replace*
else actual_color = colors[0]; // these are the three relevant lines to replace*
}
// ... but during preview, cycle colors quickly
else {
actual_color = colors[((arg>>1) % 3) << 1];
}
}

I've left the full block so it'd be easier to spot and to understand where are the colors defined

The above change would be Green > Yellow > Red

The code snippet it's taken of rev. 450 Anduril: Anduril Rev. 450

Bonus, Beacon mode more like a camera blitz"

inline void beacon_mode_iter() {
// one iteration of main loop()
set_level(MAX_LEVEL); // these are the three relevant lines to replace* (don't change this line if you want to keep the memorized brightness lvl. ability)
nice_delay_ms(5); // these are the three relevant lines to replace*
set_level(0);
nice_delay_ms(((beacon_seconds) * 1000) - 5); // these are the three relevant lines to replace*
}
#endif // #ifdef USE_BEACON_MODE

Cheers!

My two D4V2 sent from intl-outdoor at October 25th had the upgraded firmware.

well……i couldnt resist.i bought also one for me….:slight_smile:

Oh neat, I didn’t noticed that. I have 09/28 firmware.

Is anyone in the business of reflashing the early models, to put Anduril in? I’ve got one I”d pay to bring up to spec.

I find going from Anduril to any other interface makes great demands on my ability to remember what to click when.

You mean unsoldering the driver, connecting a clip to the chip, flashing the chip and resoldering the driver?

To remove the driver (tight fit and/or glued) i put a small allen wrench in the wire holes and carefully tapped it out. One came out using a toothpick and tapping with a hammer, the other took the sturdiness of an allen wrench.

I got brave and did that to my D1 and D1S…with the Android phone app and a USB programmer.

both have latest version of Anduril now.

Do you have the hardware to flash? SOIC8 clip, dupont cables, USB programmer?
Able to remove the driver?

It’s probably less expensive to buy the parts than to pay someone to do it and shipping costs…

Though it is pretty “fiddly” with the wires and all that…

Age, carpal tunnel, and shaky hands have interfered with my ability to do fiddly stuff of late, that’s why I’m hoping someone’s making a business of upgrading flashlights and other small electronics.

I resemble that remark! Realizing the creeping sedimentation of self, I made finacial arrangement to be able to care for this property which I always enjoyed the upkeep chores. Now when I need assistance of robust high-schoolers for heavy lifting, I find them out on their ATVs, Jet Skis, lifted 4bys on the weekends or work one day and chase skirt til it’s gone.
We used to save cans and plastic bottles for the local HS teams until a few months ago we were told that iffn we would stand at the collection machine and collect the tokens that they would thankfully accept them.
Sorry, pet peeve.

I just got Emisar D4SV2 in my hands.
I find Andruil amazing….
I’ve got some comments.

1. I used to think that aux LEDs were pure bling. A better tritium replacement. Nice for a light that’s primarily meant to look good but useless for pure tools. Since I bought a tool - I didn’t care about them the slightest.
To my surprise now I view them as one of the biggest features.

I set them up to show voltage when the light is locked out, with low level. And to show a solid, bright colour when not locked out.
This way:

  • I have a voltage indicator
  • I can immediately tell whether the light is locked out

2. Momentary 2-level light when locked out is great. Makes the lockout much easier to use.

3. 4 clicks is a lot to enter and leave the lockout. I misclick quite often. At the same time the only blinkie that used to be useful to me was batt check - which seems redundant now that I have aux LEDs showing me the amount of energy. I would much prefer a 3-click lockout.

4. Red MCPCB makes it harder to see red LEDs when they are in low mode.

5. I see that RGB aux LED support is not open sourced yet. I bought the light with the flashing tool in order to be able to tweak the light to my needs - but I can’t do it. That said I recognise how you need it to give your customer a competitive edge. I respect and I accept that.

Many thanks TK for this great firmware that you gave us.

1. To make the battery last longer, I’d suggest using “low” and “blinking” as the two aux LED modes. The “high” mode uses more power than simply leaving the main LEDs on all the time at moon level.

3. I can definitely see the usefulness of doing it that way… I almost made 3-click lockout the default, with battcheck on 4 clicks. But to make the UI more compatible with Narsil, I swapped them. It should be reasonably simple to swap them back in the source code though.

5. That code was published 3 months ago.

High power consumption is OK. I don’t want to keep it unlocked anyway.

Now that’s a good news!
I remember that you published some limited 1634 compatibility but I thought that RGB support was not included. Nice! :partying_face:

And thanks again. :slight_smile:

My brand new D4v2 Aux LEDs have started acting up. Specifically, only the red and green now work when set to low. Specifically I’ve noticed that when set to low, when I toggle to any of the shades that use the blue LEDs, the blue LEDs briefly come on (~2 seconds) and then turn off.

I compared the Aux LED behaviour side by side with my D4Sv2 which works flawlessly. The D4v2 is definitely wonky.

Interestingly when the Aux LEDs are set to high, all the colors still seem to work including the blue. Unfortunately I don’t use the high modes. The low mode is what I want.

Anyone have any thoughts, or should I just contact Hank for a replacement?

That’s strange. Mostly, strange that it turns on for a short time and then turns off. Do they stay on for the same length of time in both “off” mode and “lockout” mode? Does the low aux LED level turn on during the blinking mode’s animation?

The only thing I can think of which might cause that would be if, for some reason, the MCU is delivering a different amount of power when it’s awake than it does while asleep. If that was the reason though, it should turn off faster than 2 seconds. It should only stay awake for about 0.4s before going back to sleep.

ToyKeeper, thank you for taking the time to respond and for your suggestions.

I created a video that shows the conditions you asked about.

There does seem to be a difference in behaviour between off mode and lockout mode, with the blue LEDs seemingly working (better?) in lockout mode. Also, in this video the blue led went off much faster than other times I have seen it. The only difference I can think of is that the light had been powered on for a while, whereas when I noticed the blue led stay on for ~2 seconds the light had been off (tail cap loosened) for a few hours.

Let me know your thoughts, and if you have any ideas. If not, I’m guessing I’ll need to contact Hank for a replacement.

Thank you again!!

As a follow up, I set the aux LED to low-blue, and powered it off for ~24 hours.

When I powered it on they worked for a few minutes, then started flickering for several minutes, then stopped working completely again. So I’m guessing it’s totally physical. Maybe a bad resistor that stops working properly when it heats up (resistance drift?), or a bad solder joint of some kind?

I’ll contact Hank for a replacement. I’ve purchased 7 (or more) of his lights and never had a problem, but I guess there’s a first time for everything. :slight_smile:

No worries, he’ll take care of me.