I guess they were salvaged from a battery pack (laptop battery, etc). What you see on top of the cells seem to be the remainders of the metal tabs that used to connect the cells in the pack together. They are now cut and folded to act as makeshift “button tops”. Neat trick.
I tested a number of different flat top 18650’s to see if the trim pot was an issue but none of them made contact with the trim pot. So perhaps it’s a matter of manufacturing tolerance that’s causing contact with some of the LT’s?
Man, just got a big “ah ha” moment. I’ve been pulling off the soldered tabs on my laptop pulls, then scraping pliers over them to flatten down the sharp bits. Doing what you did, simply clipping and leaving the main tab, makes perfect sense. I feel so… stupid. :disappointed:
I’m a day late and a dollar short 
I wish I had seen this lantern earlier! I mean I have more than enough lights but a good lantern has been eluding me for a long time…
Don’t beat yourself up too far. You’re not the only one to figure this out after totally stripping too many cells.
Exactly.
I wasn’t worried until I took a small straight edge and noticed that the trim pot on my unit did stick up above the battery ring. You can see the cells I’m using are not exactly clean on top, so I just opted to remove the non-value added for me trim pot. Now I have no concerns.
A note on these “button top” laptop pulls, one can do a much cleaner job than I did with the left over tabs, but these are functional and safe as best I can tell, so I left them as is. Like others, I used to completely remove the tabs, but when I was preparing for the LT1, it made sense to leave on the short tab and fold it over for a equivalent to a button top cell. I’ve got 50 of them, so I’m hoping the extension tubes will come to fruition.
Ok, here is the short video of where i discovered the trimmer pot hooked the edge of the wrap on a Pana CGR18650E (MH12210) Laptop pull.
-Next video here, describing how i re-aligned the bail handle 90 degrees to the on/off switch.
-New video upload: November,9,2019, -Basic operation-101 of the Sofirm BLF LT1 lantern Andruil firmware: (have patience with my fast accent talking, i need to practice to talk slower and get a better camera mic set up.)
This is a GREAT help to get all the benefits of the Lantern !!!
It is very easy to understand how the Lantern by watching your Video.
Thanks for doing this.
I’ll be up all night playing with this.
:+1:
Thanks DBSAR for generating these videos. A great job of explaining ways around the LT1 Anduril.
I’ll comment on the momentary mode. As you mentioned, the only way out of momentary is a hard lock out. In this post, mentions that,
So it seems intentional that a hard lockout is required to leave momentary mode. I’m not sure if she was saving 5 clicks from that mode for something else, or the nature of the FW and chip required it, or ? But for now it is what it is.
On final minor comment, you mentioned that for ramped mode the lowest low is lower than for stepped mode. Definitely true. However, the ends of the ramp for both modes, as well as the number of steps are programmable. 4 clicks in stepped mode, and you can program (or not change) the settings for bottom of ramp, top of ramp, and number of steps. To get the bottom of the ramp in stepped mode down to level 1 (and as low as it is in the default ramp), do the following:
Put LT1 in stepped mode if not there already
click 4 times
while output is flickering (after one flash), just click 1 time. If you wanted level 20 instead of level 10 for the bottom of the ramp, click 20 times.
If you don’t want to change anything else about stepped mode, just watch the LT1 eventually flash twice, then buzz for a bit, then flash 3 times, then buzz for a bit, and eventually return to the setting where it was before you entered programming by clicking 4 times.
I’ll skip talking about how to change the top of ramp setting, other than to say to you are counting down from level 151 to where you want to establish the setting.
To change the number of steps, during the flickering after 3 flashes, click for the number of steps you want. I changes mine to 8 levels instead of the default 5. So 8 clicks, they don’t have to be super fast, as long as you continue to press the switch the LT1 will continue to listen for additional clicks for about 5 seconds.
A video would be better I suppose, but my internet prohibits me from uploading something of a the length required to explain this via video.
Hope this helps, and again great job on all the features of the LT1 that you covered, it will help a lot of folks not familiar with Anduril. :+1: 
Do you think it’s possible to just twist and pull the trim pot off with small pliers or is it held in too tight to remove it that way?
This is the legacy of momentary mode as used on flashlights that are easily locked out and reset. No one wants to “accidentally” escape from momentary mode when the whole purpose of that mode is to allow repeated button presses, whether those presses occur coincidentally or when sending Morse code, in which case your rescuers had better be octogenarian HAM operators.
The power reset may be less convenient on a lantern, but I would argue that it’s required to allow a proper momentary mode. Speaking for myself, if a light left momentary mode because I clicked the button 5 times in a row, I’d throw it against a rock and curse it’s UI designer 
. I may never actually use momentary mode on the LT1, but I’d want it to work properly if I did.
Thanks for the explanation, it took til now but I learned something new today. 
Hmm, I would have to be really good with some very abrupt pliers for that to work I think. If I was going to try to twist it off, I would probably select tweezers over pliers. I just don’t think I could get a good grip on the part as it sits on the board with any pliers I have. The flat blade screwdriver I used was one from a set of small flat and phillips screwdrivers I got at harbor freight or equivalent. I think an eyeglass screwdriver would likely work just as well if you had one.
I do think just attempting to lift it off would work. My assumption is the worst I would do would be to lift a pad off the PWB, but since I don’t need that part on there I wasn’t worried about doing that. It seemed like on mine only two of the three trim pot legs were soldered, and my method broke part of the trim pot pad off at the leg nearest where the LED would go if it was installed.
Upon further inspection, I see I did pull off one of the pads from the board. The one I thought was not soldered. :person_facepalming:
Oh well, my LT1 still has full functionality.
I have needle nose pliers that are small enough as well as eyeglass screwdrivers but potentially pulling off pads concerns me 
Since my testing didn’t indicate any problems with flat top batteries (at least the ones I have) I think I’ll leave the trim pot as is on the LT that I have 
Thanks!
seems like a good plan, leave well enough alone.
Also, just a quick note in case it wasn’t mentioned…the tops of the battery channels are rather sharp, they were NOT chamfered to allow “speedloading” of the cells. Be careful if removing the cells to charge, or when reinserting the cells to operate.
DBSAR, I was noticing you have a blue rubber bumper on your LT1 in the videos above. Is this just a rubber band you had, or did you acquire it specifically to replace the orange one that came standard with the LT1?
Ok, I watched all three videos and learned the answer. Thanks for sharing!