TK's Emisar D4V2 review

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.

That’s still very strange though. I haven’t seen aux LEDs act like that before. I suppose it could be a physical issue of some sort, but it’s weird that it would be so intermittent.

Is there any chance you could try loosening and tightening the body tube, to see if it has any effect? Also maybe opening the bezel and gently prodding the blue aux LED wire?

If you have the firmware kit, it’d also be interesting to see if reflashing the firmware changes anything. I doubt it’s related to that, but it’s still something to check if you have the hardware to do so.

Has anyone experienced the main LEDs flickering?

My D4V2 just arrived and has this issue. I’ve tried three different batteries.

Looks a little like candle mode… have you tried a reset (hold button and screw the cap on, wait for the light show to finish)?

I agree, it does look like candle mode, but it’s regular mode. I reset by holding button and screwing the cap on, got the light show. Still have the problem.

I can only notice the flickering on low mode, at high power either I can’t notice it because it’s so bright or it isn’t flickering.

Maybe double-check the contacts on the back of the driver, both ends of the battery tube and the tailcap. Make sure they’re completely clean. One time I got flickering and the problem was a cat hair was between the battery tube and the driver contact. And that was enough to give a bad connection.

I took the head and tail cap off. Made sure the head, tail, and tube contacts were all completely clean. Re-tightened everything. No change.

I took a peek at the aux board, lifting it up slightly. The solder joints for the aux LEDs all seem good (open in new tab for full size).

The main LED ground wire was exposed very close to the solder overflow on the blue aux lead. Possibly it shorted to it?

I do have a programmer so I’ll try reflashing it, but I also doubt that will have any affect. One question though, should I use the latest compiled version from here dated Nov 20? Because the latest in your repo is from Jul 21 and I’m not sure what’s changed.

Hank offered to send me a replacement aux board if I was willing to try it. I may take him up on that.

I'd go wih the one dated Sept 28. It's the latest one I have installed and has the safety feature of ramping down if the button gets held on, i.e. if inadvertently pressed while in your pocket.

Not sure what has changed in the Nov 20 version which brings me to a giant want here on BLF. I sure wish there was a thread that was ONLY for discussing the firmware ONLY for the D4V2. It's about impossible to try and read two or three threads that might have info on what's included in what firmware. Yes I know there is info about the changes on TK's site but it sure would be nice to be able to subscribe to a thread here and get email updates whenever new F/W is released.

Oh, the trunk branch usually doesn’t have the latest code. Development for FSM-based programs like Anduril happens in the fsm branch, and then it eventually gets merged into trunk once in a while when it seems stable.

The 11-20 builds include a bunch of kernel-level changes. So far it’s all working great on the devices I’ve tested, but the changes are pretty large and deep so I don’t consider those versions totally safe yet. I’m hoping to get more test results on those.

Thinking about picking up one of these but in brass. I own the copper, and 2 versions of the FW3X series. Just discovered this light after buying the lumintop lights with GITD accessories.

I’m thinking XPL HI 5D, since I really like warm white /yellow with a hint of rose.

Thanks for the review.
I haven’t logged in to this site in 3 years!

Thanks for the clarification! I should’ve realized you had a development branch. :person_facepalming: For some reason I didn’t make the connection, probably because I anticipated more rapid promotion of the code and the dates threw me off.

I flashed it with the 11-20 build but the blue aux LED behavior is the same. Hank is going to send me a new aux board. In the meantime, I’ll put the 11-20 build through some use and DM any findings to you.

Thanks again!