What's up with Convoy in 2017?

Last new Convoy light was the appraised XHP70 L6 - black and clear… and to a lesser extent a cute SS AAA ‘tiny torch’, so i was wondering what would come next. I just went to Simon’s store on AE and it seems something is wrong. No product categories and dead links…

Does anybody knows what’s going on or what’s next?

The main page explains it: Convoy is on the Chinese New Year holiday until the 16th. Simon must be taking this time to solve paperwork and administrative headaches, as well as stock up on the materials he needs to do his magic.

Be at peace, Convoy will come back to us :wink:

We are just on the tail end of the Chinese New Year; the overseas sites should be back up and running again soon. Give Simon a change to get things caught up and the store should be back in operation…

In the meantime, still waiting on the Desert Tan S2+:

In the meantime, I keep hoping Simon will bring us a high-quality single-14500/AA sized version of the S2 or S6 host…

And that will be possible only with a good AA boost driver without epileptic modes !

…but I’m happy with the Nanjg 101-AK with the three-mode no-blinkie operation for my 14500 EDC, so I’m set… :smiley:
…but a good boost driver for the Alkaline/NiMH crowd would be most welcome…

Yeah. That would be cool.

Yes, please! I’d love to see a AA/14500 Convoy. Especially if a good boost driver would be available. How about a attiny13a based boost driver?

There must be a only a few who both build/mod drivers and use AA/Nimh cells since Harleyquins Attiny nanjg 102 has been out for awhile and doesn’t seem to get built much.

what’s the website of Convoy ?

There’s no dedicated website, only a store on Aliexpress.
But the store is closed until feb 5th (China is on holiday).

Yes, there’s only so many people who master the complete series of skills required to build and program a driver. It would be cool if, like happened to the FET+7135 driver, that driver is sold on a budget by Banggood, or perhaps Richard can pick it up in his line-up of drivers.

Thanks!

I have not looked into Convoy before.

Exactly. I’ve heard of HQ’s driver and have glanced at it (this one ?), but I’m not good at soldering a whole pcb’s worth of SMD components. Maybe I just need to break down and get a reflow station. And I imagine not a whole lot of us have rework stations. Soldering a driver and star together is one thing, but I imagine the group of people comfortable enough to assemble their own drivers is much smaller. Also, how do you source all of the components? Harvest them from another board? Try to locate all of them at Mouser / Arrow / etc?

I’m not trying to put up walls. For the sake of learning, I’d be up for trying to assemble one. But either way, it’d be nice if they were readily available pre-assembled.

Actually Shenzhen Convoy Electronics is closed until the 15th.

The vast majority of drivers available now were just offshoots of a similar hybrid design with Comfychair as one of the driving forces. A team worked together to come up with an FET/Attiny that has blossomed into what we have now and several times members have called out for a similar effort to produce something like HQ’s board. The breakthrough to widespread availability was driven both by several members producing variants but in the main by the efforts of team Kronos in the process of the A6 and X6 GB’s. That’s what actually led to commercially availability. For the HQ board to achieve a similar level I think a GB for a AA/nimh light is needed to get a manufacturer to make them. Once made initially they would find out exactly how much demand there is. The QTeam and team K are capable but may be otherwise occupied and they’re just interested members with the drive to do something. The AA team(whoever they might be) just needs a similar group will.

What kind of annoys me is that there are plenty of AA / AAA and dual chemistry drivers out there (plus dozens of other drivers) that (Chinese) manufacturers use in their lights, but they don’t seem to trickle down to the (Chinese) retailers for us to purchase.

Didn’t WWEFANS had an AA/14500 driver sale a few month ago? I ordered one but haven’t got a host yet to try it out. Maybe I should hook it up outside a light just to test it…

An AA/14500 tube light with the usual Convoy range of tints (from cool to warm) and Biscotti like UI would sell like hot cakes!

I’d be most likely one of the first 50 in the line to buy one!

:open_mouth: