Yeah, so…
When is the newest model TomE light gonna hit the shelves? :partying_face:
Already has, hit my shelf that is... 
I'm more afraid of breaking the shelf from all the weight. 1,000's of lumens sure is heavy.
Like many of us, my family thinks I'm nuts for some reason... Showed my office (flashlight shop) to my sister over the weekend ("this is where I reflow the boards", "these are the parts", etc.), and she was at first stunned, then of course comes the question on selling them, making money, etc... I still can't figure out how to make money on these - too much time. Better to sell $6 lights for $50, and know how to advertise with a catchy name, like G700?
I use internal VCC measurement all the time with my ATtiny?5 builds. With my RGBW driver (ATtiny85) the standby current is about 0.3 µA, it survives a battery change running (well, sleeping that is) from the 10 µF 0805 buffer cap.
Halo: I only use my free time for firmware development; and (since 2 years with 2 small kids at home) mostly don’t have much of it. I only occasionally have enough time and leisure to do something new. H17F & Icarus took me about a year in the end. However I did spend a lot of time on firmware - especially on optimizing code. However the money I get from my hobby mostly stays in my hobby (e.g. LD50, SL2, TM16GT, soon a Meteor…)
And of course I spent quite some hours on the PID algorithm. I tried a simple stepdown first, but to which level depends on the host and environment, so I soon wanted to have the real thing, PID. I wrote a simplified thermal simulation (in PostScript 
) with PID regulation and changing environment, and it was quite nice. Then I made an implementation with MCU limitations (integer math and limited accuracy), and it was quite bad - well, the thermal regulation was still fine (PID works under much worse conditions), but the light output was quite unsteady (PID is not designed to keep the ‘heating power’ steady, just the temperature). I spent several hours to think of alternative PID-like aproaches and finally made one I’m happy with. It also seems a bit more tolerant to a wide range of hosts (i.e. their thermal properties). So it’s actually not the normal PID algorithm, but one that combines P~~, I~~ and D-terms in a different way.
Ahh, I see - no voltage divider resistors, of course! That’s an extremely low draw in sleep, what it should be. Cool!
If at some point you switch over to the internal vcc measurement then, before sleep, you need to disable the Analog Comparator (or not leave 1.1v ref set as input). Otherwise the 1.1v ref will remain on and eat power during sleep.
Narsil -> Tiny85's Only
Sorry, haven't been posting here much. Got a new release/update of Narsil posted (shared google drive folder), nothing major, but improvements for the Indicator LED support - documented in the manual. I now have this latest version installed in 6 lights, with the 47K and 220K resistors, from a SWM C20C to a SupFire M6 SRK style light. I still want to put it in smaller lights, and bigger lights. 5 of the 6 have an indicator LED and they all drain at 0.016 mA with the indicator/locator LED off.
Here's the new manual section that includes the new features. Now the Locator LED feature is turned OFF when in Lockout, and you can quickly turn it OFF and ON. I found this comes in handy.
Indicator LED
When enabled, the Indicator LED can be used for the following:
- to locate the flashlight in the dark (Locator feature)
- to blink out the battery level
- as an secondary indicator of blinking when the main LED blinks
When the Locator feature in enabled, the LED can be temporarily turned OFF, by:
- with the main LED OFF, 1 quick click followed by a click&hold til the main LED goes off. To toggle it back on, repeat the same procedure (OFF -> quick click, click&hold)
Note the locator feature is turned OFF when the light is in Lock-Out.
Hi Tom E,
I just did my very first flashing attempt! It’s for an e-switch mod on the BLF A6 17DD driver.
All goes quite well, test in AVRdude is ok. So I guess I rewired the clip O.K. and the BLF driver is programmable and not locked.
The Attiny13A is now erased, and Narsil seems the nicest option for my DQG 4 mod. Nice work on the firmware!
I would like to enable beacon mode, do I need to change the .C file for that in wordpad?
When trying to flash Narsil.hex from your google drive I get the following error:
avrdude: ERROR: address 0x0410 out or range at line 65 of narsil.hex
avrdude: read from file ‘narsil.hex’ failed
Am I missing something, or might there be a flaw in the .hex file?
Narsil is written for ATtiny25/45/85. It won’t run on a 13A. The error message is because it won’t fit. Even if it did fit it wouldn’t work as registers are different.
OK, so I guess I missed something :laughing:
Is there a momentary firmware that would fit the ATtiny13A? STAR momentary maybe?
Yep, the title of this thread
I have no idea what flavors of 13A firmware there are now days, I’ve been done with that little thing since ages ago. You should be able to find a flavor for your needs here somewhere: Flashlight Firmware Repository
Thanks, I’ll look for a FW with beacon mode on your provided link! And will try post in the right thread next time 
Think it's called STAR momentary, or Momentary STAR, probably under JonnyC in TK's repository -- this should be the e-swtich version for 13A's. There may be others as well. I should make it cleared that Narsil is only for 85's. Even 45's don't have enough memory.
Yes, 13A's are obsolete in this thread . Talk bout tiny...
I’ve found that 1M3 as R1 and 300K as R2 are fine for voltage divider resistors and off time cap charging on single cell voltage drivers. However, I’ve just tested with 2M7 as R1 for double voltage drivers with zeners and found the off time cap charging to take a little too longer than I would like. My intended solution is to stick with the single cell resistors but use the 2.56V internal reference voltage instead of 1.1V. The variation on the 2,56V reference voltage is much higher but I already do calibration on the internal reference voltage.
Anyone tried using same resistors as single cell drivers, but switching to 2,56V for internal reference?
I have!
I sucked it up and replaced the resistor on the driver. It works just fine, now my off time cap measurements are all good, slow charging issues are gone. So for those interested, with the ATtiny25/45/85 the same voltage divider resistors can be used for both single and double cell drivers as long as you switch to the 2,56V for internal reference for double cell readings. I used the option without the external capacitor (page 134, table 17-3 in datasheet). You might have to do some sort of calibration because the datasheet specifies that the 2.56 vRef varies from MCU to MCU even more than the 1.1 vRef does.
I’ll test weather I can stick to 2,56V vRef for single cell drivers too, because if the readings are good enough after calibrating I will be able to clean up my code a little by removing a few #ifdef definitions.
Interesting, that’s all good to know, but not sure I understand how this helps or what problem it’s solving. A 1 cell driver and 2 cell driver have to be different anyway in hardware? You have to use a zener (tail switch) or LDO (e-switch) for 2 cells anyway, so not a big deal to use different resistor values for the 1.1v ref? Plus the complication of extra fine tuning for the 2.56v ref?
It solves my issue of slow cap charging times because of too high R1 voltage divider resistor. I was having issues, I asked a question, then tested and posted the answer. But lesson learned, I’ll just delete the question the next time.
Ahh, no problem. Sorry, didn’t understand - what was the impact/effect of the slow cap charging?
Quick short presses just after turn on where measured as long off presses, and my normal long off presses where being measured as cold starts. I had to wait a short moment before doing mode changing. It was annoying enough for me to attempt solving.
Maybe I’m being slow this morning but with both higher voltage and higher R1, shouldn’t you end up with roughly the same current and charge time?
Ohhh, ok. I’m not a fan of OTC’s use for short/long presses. Just don’t see enough consistency. e-switch’s solve all of that.