The voltage shown by BattCheck seems to indicate higher. For example, when the battery voltage is checked by the multi meter or the battery charger, either shows 3.87V. My FW3A shows 4.0V.
There is not much of discussion about BattCheck. I don’t think there is voltage calibration, either.
It is not big difference. However, I am curious to know what the other FW3A’s are doing.
Also, what does 4.0V from BattCheck mean? Does it mean like between 3.95V and 4.04V (rounded to the nearest tenth)? If so, 3.87V should show 3.9V.
Not sure about the FW’s, but on my D4S it blinks out 3.9 from 3.99 down to 3.90 and changes to 3.8 at 3.89. Might just be that one light, can’t really say.
They all vary to a certain degree. The same is true for NarsilM lights. I don’t think the voltage detection part of the Atiny85 is all that accurate. It’s a 15 year old design.
Each chip is consistent, though. You can rewrite the code and reflash the firmware with a correction factor to make the voltage readout very accurate. This obviously can’t be done in mass production so we are stuck with what we have.
Thank you very much for the information. The tolerance of +/-0.15V is exactly what my FW3A shows. I understand the limitations. It is still a nice feature.
I added voltage calibration to Anduril - wasn't that difficult to do. TK sounded interested in it, but not sure it went anywhere. I have a modeed Anduril from the Dec 2019 base of code, so doesn't have the new temp regulation.
Is there a chart/table/equation somewhere that shows how many lumens correspond to each step level? Is it damaging to the torch to set a ceiling of the ramp higher than step 130 (say around 1500lm)?
Lumen measurements would differ depending on emitter type and color temperature. As long as the temperature calibration is set correctly there should not be any risk of damaging the light.
I think they switched to a one piece plastic lens about a year ago. It works well. If you want to swap in a Carclo then you need to buy the glass lens seperate. I believe Neil was selling them.
JasonWW, thanks for the info, Lucky i sent for 2 Carclo 10507 and 2x glass lens last week, one for my EDC18 and one was for backup but ill fit it on the FW3A.
Last night I left my LM-10 on until the head got quite hot (this required me double-clicking to re-activate turbo after rampdown).
After several minutes of this I noticed the light was no longer shutting off completely. All the controls worked fine, but in the “off” position, all 3 LEDs were still lit at a very low level. Lower than the moonlight setting.
My first thought was a bad 7135 chip. I swapped the driver for one from an FW3A, but it still wasn’t working properly. The light was still on when it should be off, except now it was brighter than before. It turns out the driver was fine. The problem was the star.
The problem was this:
When I ran the light until it got really hot, excess solder under one or more of the LEDs melted.
Pressure from the optic, then pressed the LEDs into the star. This caused some of the solder under at least one of the LEDs to spread sideways and bridge to the center ground pad. Initially, this bridging was tiny so the light output was very low. After the driver reinstall, things moved again and the bridging was more severe. This explained why it was brighter after the first attempt. The solution:
Removed the star and LEDs. Used a vacuum suction pump to remove all excess solder from the LED pads on the star, then reflowed the LEDs.
During reassembly I also removed the stock thermal compound and replaced it with Arctic Silver 5. Not sure it will help, but it is my standard practice to apply fresh thermal grease any time I remove a star. And it’s especially important with a hot-rod like these lights.
Now the light is fixed and works fine. But one caution is it probably isn’t a good idea to constantly override the temperature rampdown on the lights with a titanium head. These lights look and feel great … and I like them much better than lights with a copper head, but titanium isn’t the most practical material for removing heat from the star.
Unfortunately the shipping from China made it impractical. If you’re ordering another light, though, you might be able to get them to include some parts.