Lume1-FW3X: Constant Current Buck-Boost & FET Driver with Anduril1/2 + RGB Aux

Excellent! Ordered three. Thanks so much for all the work you put in on this!

is 28 AWG silicone wire small enough for RGB board? Looks like we may have to go smaller or open up hole on already small shelf. I guess I should learn to read. First post suggests 30AWG or teflon so the answer would be a no to that :slight_smile:

Can these new boards (or the the old boards) be retrofit for other traditional e-switch lights if the diameter is similar? Could it be flashed with a mechanical clicky firmware if such a thing was made?

Just trying to figure out how many I should buy.

Ordered! Thanks for all the folks that put this together and saw it through getting it made!

In one of the prototype drivers I received early on, I believe they used AWG28 silicone wire for the RGB board. The wire diameter is fine, but typically silicone wire insulation is fairly thick. This made for a very tight fit. As a result, I recommend using as thin a wire as you can manage, and teflon coated is good since the insulation is thin (though it's hard to strip the wires if your wire stripper is not sharp). Soldering to the RGB board shouldn't be too difficult, just need a pair of tweezers ideally and make sure the wire ends are not frayed (or use solid core).

This driver was specifically designed for FW3x.. I guess it could fit other flashlights but it wasn't designed to do so, hence you'll probably need some modifications. The driver was also designed for e-Switch flashlights, so it will not work with mechanical clicky flashlights, and probably there won't be any firmware written to support it. Likely a different design using a clicky-specific firmware would be more appropriate. Hope that helps!

I remember another user recommending 30 AWG kynar insulated, solid wire for applications like aux LED’s. 30 AWG is thin enough that even solid wire is fairly flexible, but it tends to stay in the position you bend it to instead of the insulation wanting to pull it back straight, and it can be a little easier to strip. I think Kynar was recommended simply for better cost and availability than teflon, and thinner than silicone.

The other recommendation was to just buy white wire and mark your wires with colored sharpies (or number them with stripes if you don’t have colored sharpies). Most of us don’t need multiple rolls of fine wire in all the different colors like to color code aux boards.

This should work fine in an FW1A right?

And how hard would it be to “swap the MISO and MOSI lines” on my Emisar programmer? I don’t see anything that looks readily swappable, and I don’t know what I’m doing :).

It should work for FW1A, yes.

You could probably unplug one side of the adapter and use something like male to female jumper wires in whatever order you need. You could probably unplug both sides and use female to female jumper cables too but I dont have an Emisar one to verify.

For the soldering advice: Tin your leads (solves the fraying issue) and flux it up. For something that small you shouldn't need much more than a tap. Be sure to clean any flux residue afterwards.

I'm planning on 30AWG silicone. Floppy wet spaghetti-noodle wire.

Also: The driver should fit FW1A light just fine ;)

Ordered a Lume1 today. Plan is to put this in my brushed titanium LM10.

@asdqqq
If this is the programmer your talking about. Emisar D4V2 Flash Kit Instructions (Official How To)
Then contactcr’s solution should work great. You might could cut MISO and MOSI leads coming from the pogo pcb to the cable and wire them around the opposite way.

Just bought three. Thanks loneoceans for all that work and now just waiting for delivery from Neal.

Its a pity about the flashing pins. I might have to buy another one from Hank and swap the pins around permanently. Theres no easy & safe solution I can think of.
I bought 5 of the first batch so i will no doubt use them.

That’s the programmer I’m taking about. So would these work? https://www.amazon.com/IZOKEE-Solderless-Breadboard-Arduino-Project/dp/B08151TQHG

And then basically make a new ribbon cable out of them to patch in? How do I know which are the 2 that need to be switched?

Thanks

Is it confirmed that they will be doing another batch with this fixed? If so, I might just hold off until then for the convenience of having matching pads, even if it might mean missing out on the discount.

Dang it. Too late :frowning: Bought already, but who knows if it’s shipped. Will have to get another pogo adapter because I’m not rewiring things every time.

Actually I had sent Neal (who sent Lumintop) the updated board files to have the swapped miso and mosi lines a long time ago, so we're not sure why Lumintop went with the older board files for fabrication. In any case, I don't have confirmation yet that future batches will swap the MI and MO programming pads, but I have certainly raised it up to Neal again. Apologies for the trouble but I did my best to convey the message to use the latest files for production, and I can confirm that Neal has received updated files.

contactcr is right - the easiest way is to simply get a bunch of female-female 0.1" headers and make your own cable, if you're using the Emisar pogo-pin flashing kit. These headers are cheap and plentiful. You can also use female-male headers if you unplug only one of the sides. This set on Amazon is fairly cheap and has all 3 variants: https://www.amazon.com/Elegoo-EL-CP-004-Multicolored-Breadboard-arduino/dp/B01EV70C78/.

If you're planning to modify the firmware, please get the latest version specifically for the LUME1-FW3X from either TK's repository, or the github page with the latest Anduril firmware.

There are some modifications that were made to Anduril to help take advantage of the additional hardware in the Lume1 driver, so it's a little more advanced than other Anduril-based flashlights. Some of the base files (non hwdef or cfg files) are modified specifically for Lume1. One example is the external temperature sensor handler. The comments in the code should describe these in detail.

For soldering the Aux LED boards, Scallywag has the right idea. Use some flux and just a touch of solder. I highly recommend using tweezers to hold the wires and pre-cut and tin them to length (details in the datasheet PDF here: https://github.com/loneoceans/lume1-fw3x-anduril/). Solid core AWG30 is great, but any other thin wire of your choice will work well too. There are also detailed instructions about prepping the flashlight for driver replacement.

Just a suggestion: this 8-stranded multi-colour wire-wrapping wire works really well, but the insulation is prone to melting at low temperature, so it needs a little finesse when soldering to prevent the tweezers squeezing the (melting) insulation: https://www.amazon.com/URBEST-Solder-Coated-Wire-Wrapping-Celsius/dp/B01LWI20M0/. This wire is also great for PCB rework since it's solid core.

For the FW1A, I actually do not have one myself so I cannot test nor verify that it will work, but there should be no reason why it shouldn't work electrically, as long as it fits mechanically. Just be careful with the turbo-mode; direct drive FET may be too much for a single XPL LED, so you may have to limit it by perhaps using some 'low-drain' cells like the Panasonic 18650B, and make sure that the heat-sinking of the LED is done really well. However, there should be no problems with FET drive if a 3V XHP50 is used.

I ended up getting this:

30 awg ptfe stranded

It should arrive in the next few days. If it’s any good I could probably sell a few feet of each color if someone needs.

For 30-gauge, I’d recently ordered this after dealing with overly fat switch wires in another light recently: multiple colors, 60-ish feet each, 30 gauge silicone, $12.95 prime as of posting

The dupont wires I ordered were this item for my flashing kit recently (with SOIC8 clip, I don’t have a progkey yet), which looks to be an identical item to the one LoneOceans posted and $0.50 cheaper at the time of this post. Either will work if prices fluctuate.

I prefer to wait for the final version, but can you confirm that the discount code will work for future batches?

Unfortunately I have no idea how long the discount code will work for, nor have any control or knowledge of how many batches there will be (or if there will be future batches for that matter); this would be a question for Neal and Lumintop. They have a business to run so I assume that if it's selling well they will make more of what will sell; likewise with what they want to sell and which flashlights they want to put it in. I've just been able to convey my preferences to them but I don't know how much influence I have.

I'll be happy to help answer technical questions instead, thanks!

It seems that some folks are interested to change the firmware with their own modifications - what sort of changes are people thinking of making? Just curious.