I bought a Crelant V5CS and V6CS to experiment with the variable brightness feature. Although the ramping is a bit slow, I like the flexibility of changing the brightness level to whatever I want. I also liked that there were TWO variable brightness settings, allowing for potentially a lot of customizability.
However, the more I played with the flashlight, the more shortcomings I discovered, which I described below. These shortcomings significantly reduce the usefulness of the variable brightness feature.
I liked the concept of customizable brightness levels so much, I did some thinking and came up with a UI that I think makes the variable brightness feature much more useful. I would like to see this UI or a similar UI in a Crelant Version 2.
Current UI design
Off ---> User mode 1, factory default highest brightness.
User mode cycle
---> User mode 1 ---> User mode 2 ---> Standby --->|
| |
|<----------------------------------------------<---
Special mode cycle
---> Strobe ---> SOS --->|
| |
|<--------------------<---
* Shortcuts from off:
- Momentary on, user mode: Half click the tail switch. This is always user mode 1, and always the factory default setting of the highest brightness.
* When on a user mode:
- Cycle through the 2 user modes and standby: Single click the side switch.
- Change the current user mode's brightness level: Hold the side switch.
- Jump to the special mode cyle, starting with strobe: Double click the side switch.
* When on a special mode:
- Cycle through the special modes: Double click the side switch.
- Return to the user mode cycle: Single click the side switch.
* Problems I encountered:
- The user brightness settings are lost when you power off the flashlight with the tail switch or when you change the battery.
- You must use the standby mode to remember the user brightness settings.
- If you're on user mode 1, you must always cycle through user mode 2 to get to standby.
- If you single click really fast to cycle through the user modes, the UI interprets this as a double click and jumps to strobe.
- When in standby mode, it's not possible to use tail switch's momentary on. That's because you have to POWER OFF the flashlight first. When you do this, you lose your user brightness settings.
- When in standby mode, there's no instant highest brightness. You must POWER OFF the flashlight, then turn it back on, which erases the user brightness settings.
- When in standby mode or powered off, there's no instant lowest brightness.
My proposed UI
First, the firmware must memorize the user levels even when the flashlight is powered off by the tail switch. This eliminates the need for standby mode. Next, I propose adding a 3rd user mode. I also propose adding a user mode memory setting, which can be toggled on/off. Finally, I propose several shortcuts from off.
Here's my UI:
---> User mode (last memorized, or user mode 1)
|
---> Highest brightest special mode
Off ---|
---> Strobe special mode
|
---> Lowest brightness mode
User mode cycle
---> User mode 1 ---> User mode 2 ---> User mode 3 --->|
| |
|<--------------------------------------------------<---
Special mode cycle
---> Highest brightness ---> Strobe ---> SOS --->|
| |
|<--------------------------------------------<---
---> User mode cycle
Lowest brightness mode ---|
---> Highest brightness special mode
* Shortcuts from off:
- Momentary on, user mode: Half click the tail switch. If memory mode is on, go to the last memorized user mode. Otherwise, go to the first user mode.
- Momentary on, instant highest brightness of the special mode: Double half click the tail switch.
- Momentary instant strobe of the special mode: Triple half click the tail switch.
- Momentary instant lowest brightness mode: Hold the side switch, half click the tail switch.
* Other operations from off:
- Toggle memory mode: Hold the side switch, half click tail switch 9 times, full click on the 10th time. Flash 3 times to indicate that toggle was successful.
- Reset user brightness settings back to factory default: Hold the side switch, half click tail switch 19 times, full click on the 20th time. Flash 3 times to indicate that the factory reset was successful.
* When on a user mode:
- Cycle through the 3 user modes: Single click the side switch. (Same as the current UI).
- Change the current user mode's brightness level: Hold the side switch. (Same as the current UI).
- Jump to the special mode cyle, starting with highest brightness: Single click, then long press the side switch.
* When on a special mode:
- Cycle through the special modes: Single click, then long press the side switch.
- Return to the user mode cycle: Single click the side switch.
* When on the lowest brightness mode:
- Jump to the user mode cycle: Single click the side switch.
- Jump to the special mode cyle, starting with highest brightness: Single click, then long press the side switch.
UI features
- Single clicks of the side switch always takes you through the user modes. Single click + long press always takes you through the special modes.
- The user can program the 3 brightness modes in any order that he wants: L-M-H, L-H-M, M-L-H, M-H-L, H-L-M, H-M-L.
- If the user wants a single brightness, he can program all 3 modes to the same brightness. This way, if he accidentally presses the side switch, the brightness remains the same.
- Fast single clicks do NOT trigger a double click mode. So you can single click as fast as you want.
- Multiple shortcuts from off.
What do you think?