Flashlight Firmware Repository

Good News! I think in the beginning, someone posted having probs with 6.0, so most people stuck with the older 5.x tools, but I quickly found the problem and fixed it - some compiler directive, or mnemonic that luxdrv had in it, I think.

Thinking of implementing a lock-out like this in my e-switch firmware for the 25/45/85. This is from a review on the Sunwayman C15A:

Lock out:
The flashlight should be more than seven seconds off, press 1 click and maintain a second click (short flashing) the flashlight will be locked. To unlock, do the same.

Not sure if it's the best way, but I got a couple of side switch lights that don't have lock-out threaded connections, so something like this might just work. Richard's SupFire M2-Z is one example. Dunno bout that 7 second delay though - seems odd.

FWIW, the way I did locking on Ferrero_Rocher/Baton.c is:

  • Start with the light off.
  • Hold the button for 3 seconds. Light will enter moon mode, then turn off. This indicates that it is locked.
  • To unlock later, hold the button again for 3+ seconds. Light will then enter last-used mode.

I havenā€™t used it much on a real light thoughā€¦ simply copied the UI from the popular Baton series.

That's another way, just that if the button was stuck on, it would go to last mode? I really dunno what is better. I think the quick click to hold might not be so easily reproduced in a pocket or bag. I know my F6 had gone on in my pocket sometimes when I forget to lock it out.

You know that F6 is simply an awesome light! I got the Convoy (2nd version) and drilled a hole in an indent next to the switch and mounted a light pipe (tube) in there now. Works really well - on the nightstand it's a clear low green glow - bout perfect. Didn't know the light is the exact match/copy of the Sunwayman C15A (https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/18681), just the C15A is a small tube for an AA/14500 cell. The C15A's switch looks better. Actually I might buy one from ILLUMN if I can get a good deal - they've been great before. He's got them marked down to $33 now (illumn.com/sunwayman-c15a), hoping the F6 driver will fit, and swap the LED. I have a T5-5D3 LED in my F6 and it's just a perfect milky white, at least to these ol eyes. I want to add a 2nd light pipe towards the rear, in another indent - it would be closer to the color LED's and should be even brighter. This light works so well with a SANYO GA cell - not as quickly burning hot as with a higher amp cell.

Iā€™d love to see a picture of that, sounds very cool.

I'll have to take some pics of it...

Edit: Post #236 here: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/26078 has the pics.

Thanks Tom. Really neat looking that is. :beer:

Toykeeper,

I only just how had a chance to look over your BLFA6 UI. That is really great. It adds a whole new dimension to the open source pool for sure. I can hardly wait to start playing around with it.

Thanks again.

Hi, just wanted to mention that the code repo now has some attiny25 tools and firmwares. Itā€™s only a small amount so far, but itā€™s a start.

TK, I was still puzzled by the much lower than advertised PWM frequencies we see (and hear) on the BLF A6 and re-flashed Nanjg drivers.
I get 13 kHz - 14 kHz, as opposed to the expected 18.75 kHz.
The delay_loop_2 function that is supposed to take 4 CPU cycles is also way off, as you probably noticed.

I stumbled across this document:

There is also this in 17.3 of the data sheet:

It seems the specified 10% clock accuracy is only valid if using the default 9.6 MHz internal oscillator (and at 25 C and at 3 Vcc).
Maybe I am just late to the party, otherwise I hope this bit of info is helpful.

A fix, without getting into the user calibration procedure, would be to manually write the 4.8 MHz calibration data (it is there, just not used) to the calibration register.

Personally I decided to run at 9.6/8, phase-correct PWM only (2.352 KHz). Any higher and the PWM signal turns ugly on an oscilloscope. Probably not a good option if you want to avoid noise with a high-current driver. Also slightly higher MCU power consumption.

PS. Your s7.c firmware got me started in this. Thank you :slight_smile: !

Hi TK,

Thanks for this thread and the work. I was wondering if you might include Tidoā€™s work in the repository (or maybe itā€™s there and I missed it), the BLF-VLD:

Jim

I didnā€™t have that in the repo, but itā€™s included now. :slight_smile:

Iā€™m not sure how I missed that one. It looks like itā€™s pretty decent, has some interesting tricks, and is free under the GPL.

Thanks!

This probably explains why the attiny25 appears to run so much faster than the attiny13. And why selfbuilt measured ā€œ15 kHz circuit noiseā€ instead of 19 kHz. I expected the tiny25 to be 166% as fast, but I measured about 210% instead, perhaps because the 13 is running slower than expected. I suppose I should probably figure out how to activate the attiny13ā€™s 4.8 MHz calibration dataā€¦

As for 9.6 MHz / 8 (2.3 kHz PWM), itā€™s not used because faster clock speeds use more powerā€¦ and because I find 2.3 kHz PWM both loud and obnoxiously slow. Anything under 10 kHz is hard for me to not see, so I try to keep the pulses fast enough that theyā€™re a little beyond the human perceptual range.

BTW, how do you measure the PWM speed? Above ~3 kHz I canā€™t usually get a loud enough signal to measure it with a microphone. Iā€™ve been tempted to try an optical sensor instead, maybe wiring up an LED in reverse, shining a light at it, and sending its output to a nice DMM, the DMM might be able to measure voltage pulse speedsā€¦ but I havenā€™t tried it.

I've used a scope in the past to measure high PWM's, just needed help from guys here @work to set it up. Great though seeing the exact waveforms, sliding the markers to get a precise measurement - pretty cool.

For the 25/45/85's, I'm really liking the 8 Mhz operation - the timing for every driver/MCU I tried has been dead-on accurate with no calibration -- 90 secs turbo timeout is accurate to within a second, and even that slop is probably me using my stopwatch.

I know it must be using more power than the 4.8 Mhz 13A, but thinking it's pretty insignificant in terms of LED ON and standy mode power - dunno the detials though.

Iā€™ve been wondering if I should use 6.4 MHz instead.

At 8 MHz, the PWM should be 31.25 kHz, which is a bit fast. Or 15.625 kHz with phase-correct. At 6.4 MHz, it would be about 25 kHz or 12.5 kHz.

However, 8 MHz seems to work well enough in my initial testing. BLF-A6 runs fine on it, and moon mode even seems reasonably stable.

Yikes, that PWM is pretty darn high. Didn't realize that - good or bad? Hhmm...

Hi,

Thanks. BTW, it appears you looked at the code? Might you have any idea why the ā€œfixed modeā€ version (not the ā€œsimpleā€ one and not the ā€œextendedā€ one) might be giving me only two modes (kind of ā€œhighā€ and ā€œmediumā€) and it seems to be skipping clicks, i.e., Iā€™ll click, click, click, and then light will light then click, clickā€¦ā€¦ click and then it goes off, then click, clickā€¦. and then different mode. Its like itā€™s missing the clicks?

Jim

I am still debating the 2.3 kHz PWM. I can see it when flicking a credit card, otherwise not. But I much prefer the resulting signal on the oscilloscope. Power consumption also seems lower actually. I get ~1 mA in between the flashes of a 5 s beacon. A 4.8 MHz clock gives ~2 mA. (I am running the MCU with the 9.6 MHz and 8 pre-scale fuses set, so 1.2 MHz.)

With an oscilloscope it is of course easy to measure the frequency. I also have a few FFT apps on the phone that seem to be reasonable accurate (E.g. FrequenSee HD and Speedy Spectrum). FFT with logarithmic amplitude scaling is the way to detect frequencies. The base and harmonics really pop out. They have no problem picking up the BLF A6, especially using your black cloth trick.

Using a regular 5 mm diode as a photo detector does work with the oscilloscope (I use a green or red one). Mode 2/7 on the A6 gives a ~0.5 Vpp signal with ~1.5 V DC offset. Just the bare LED between the scope probe and ground at 2ā€ from the light. Neat to check strobe frequencies etc. without opening the light.
I just tried it on 3 different multimeters, it only worked on an older one.

I posted on my other thread that I just tried nlite.hex and that seems to work well (3 modes) on one of my NANJGs.

Does anyone know which ones are designed to work with NANJGs/7135 drivers? Iā€™ve tried a few and many behave similar to the BLF-VLD with NANJG, i.e., the modes are somewhat inconsistent.

Thanks,
Jim

I didnā€™t look at the code very closely, so Iā€™m not sure how the UI works. However, I think it uses on-time memoryā€¦ so the only ā€œclicksā€ which really count are the ones which happen immediately after it gets power. Iā€™m not sure what the on-time timeout is though, or how exactly it handles memory.

Mostly, I noticed that Tido used some interesting code techniques which are totally different than STAR. It looks like he has done a lot more C programming than I have; mostly I use Python and shell so my C is rusty.

Something else I noticed is that it only uses 3 slots for wear-levellingā€¦ so itā€™ll wear out the eeprom about 10X as fast as STAR or 20X as fast as blf-a6. Most of the eeprom is used to store the mode table, instead of putting that in regular ROM or RAM.

Anything tagged with attiny13a and ā€˜ontimeā€™ memory should work fine on a nanjg.

Yeah, 2.3 kHz seems too slow. Even 4.5 kHz stands out to me during regular use, and I can see up to about 20 kHz with the credit card trick. (if I look really closely, I can just barely see the 31.25 kHz PWM on attiny25)

I wonder if the clock divider puts the MCU to sleep for 7 of every 8 cycles. That would explain the lower power use. Given Atmelā€™s design goals, I bet it does something like that. Or, it could actually be running at a slower speed, underclocked.

Now that youā€™ve confirmed it works, I really want to try the LED photosensor trick. Until today it was just a random idea I had, but hadnā€™t actually triedā€¦ Iā€™m pretty sure my DMM has some sort of relevant mode for that, though I havenā€™t explored that yet. Itā€™s a Fluke 8846A which is mostly used for automated testing at work, but I can do other stuff with it between tests.