Hello all,
Thanks so much for your patience! The Lume1 driver timeline was delayed a little more than I was hoping due to shipping delays across the world due to the current situation. However, I'm glad to say that thanks to Neal and his team at Nealgadgets, they were able to produce the first few factory prototype Lume1 drivers for production. I just received them in the mail.
In the following pictures, I'm comparing them with my copper FW3C and Lume1 driver.
Both flashlights with Lume1 driver, with my build on the left, and the prototype directly from Nealsgadgets. We have here the standard FW3A with XPL-HI LEDs.
Neal also provided the RGB AUX LED board. The tri-LED board provides so many options that it may be difficult for Neal to customize individually... but I'm not sure yet. If you're interested, do drop a message to Neal about it.
In this prototype build, I'm please to say that all functions checks out Ok!
As we know, R+G+B = white
And here's how the RGB AUX LED board looks like. Neal originally populated the RGB resistors to be too low a value and they were extremely bright! I have revised the resistor values for Neal to take note of in future builds.
And here's the raw Lume1 driver from Neal.
Overall I was pretty happy with how the functionality turned out - all functions were verified, and it's pretty cool to see the FW3A with a factory-made Lume1 driver!
There were some issues in the prototype that I need to sort out, though most of them are cosmetic. For example, while electrically the PCB is good, I wasn't pleased with the overall finish of the PCB soldermask, HASL, and silkscreen. Likewise, there were some component swaps that Neal's team made to reduce BOM cost, the most obvious is the sense resistor (confusingly a slightly higher value was used). I'm in the process of discussing these with Neal so hopefully we can get an excellent product to everyone. I'm suggesting to Neal to have a matte black soldermask with ENIG gold finish, or at least the same as the stock driver (purple with ENIG) - if you have other opinions please drop a message to Neal as well.
At the moment, I'm not exactly sure what Neal's plans are but it appears he plans to release the Lume1 driver in some special edition FW3 flashlights first, and then proceed with a driver sale. I've communicated to Neal about the community's interest in individual driver sales, especially to those who signed up on the original GB list!
Thanks and stay safe everyone!