I put in a brass button on the driver and bypassed the tail spring. It draws 10.7a from the tail and output is much improved. The draw back is that it gets super hot in turbo even quicker.
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Really a huge disappointment if the universal 18650 tube that fits nicely across S41/S1/A6 can’t be used on the new S42. Hopefully Astrolux can rectify this for the S42…
Regards…
the 18650 tube works perfectly fine with flat top unprotected 18650. I used Samsung 30Q and Sony VTC6 and they work fine.
Adding my experiences to that of others.
(1) BATTERY/TUBE LENGTH -
With springs at both ends and the existing tube (original batch/pre-order) there is the potential for battery crushing. You can see the resulting depression at the bottom/neg of the unprotect Efest 18350 battery I tried; the depressed bottom was originally slightly raised!
The tail end spring compresses easily and annularly (the coil compresses almost flat.) Whereas the spring at the driver end is rather stiff and only coils down to 4-5 coil thicknesses.
(2) UI ISSUES -
I also second the observations about the UI issues.
- Would be better to also have last-mode-memory in Group 1 (and/or allow toggling Last-mode on/off).
- Would be better if one was able to turn off from moonlight mode without first having tp enter a brighter mode (or accidentally entering Turbo!)
- Would be better if the off-time press was shorter; similar to the other Astrolux/Manker electronic switch models.
(3) USB COVER -
The cover wont’ stay on, the cover or body really needed to have some ridges or other protrusions to keep the cover on more securely.
(4) 18650 TUBE -
I can also confirm that the S41 tube fits the S42 head and tail perfectly with no battery crushing.
FWIW -
To address the height issue on mine, I snipped one coil from the tail spring, and replaced the stiff driver side spring with the snipped piece. This effectively eliminated the space/height taken up by the original driver side spring while still allowing the use of flat-top batteries.
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The S42 finally came in today.
After reading all the depressing news about it in the past ten days or so i guess i was prepared and didn’t even try to force in a 18350.
As mentioned earlier, a few turns of a wire inside the tail cap will do the trick. I used a thick copper wire, wrapped it around a 18650 cell to shape it as a spring with two turns and inserted it in the tail cap. That way the battery tube can make contact without screwing it all the way, and you gain the 2 or 3mm needed to fit a flat top cell. No need to unsolder or mutilate any spring. The only down side is the oring is exposed, but that’s a temporary solution awaiting the longer tube BG is going to send.
That said, and having the S42 working, here are my first impressions:
- It’s compact and light weight, especially compared to the S41
- It’s incredibly bright on turbo - although not for long
- The ‘dragon breath’ lighted switch is a nice touch
However…
- I would rather have it even shorter and not have the bottom tripod/glass breaker hole
- The UI is quite bad to put it mildly
- The usb cover wont stay in place. I hope the new one will work better, but i kind of doubt it…
- Not sure, but the threads don’t seem very deep and robust. Just fumbling a bit with the battery tube i managed to damage them. Anodizing went away in some spots.
PS: this UI is driving me mad! I can’t seem to manage to select a brightness level other then by accident… have already blasted my face with unwanted turbo a couple times… managed to switch mode group without a clue… when in turbo one click goes to disco sometime… turning this thing off can be challenging…
This light is almost unusable! :person_facepalming: 
Yes, I have also accidentally blasted myself in the face with turbo a couple times… Very uncomfortable to say the least.
Typically, a light like this I would just leave it alone, as typically the UI may not be ideal, but usable. This UI is borderline unusable. It would be awesome if they design a proper driver and at least let us buy that to replace ours, but I doubt even that will happen.
I want to like the Astrolux lights, but now I am 2 for 2 for lights with horrid UIs.
Got the S42 today.
-The hammer won’t fit in the tail cap.
-Replaced the big spring in the cap with a DIY small copper convex dish fitting inside the spring’well. Result: It works with the light-blue Windyfire IMR 18350.
-BLF A6 tailcap fit too. It also provides the solution: turn the light OFF with its tail switch.
I am so happy I can play with my new light, either with 18350 or 18650 batteries.
-Can’t do anything about the funny UI.
Cheers
USB cover’s loosing fit. Solved with the help of the CLIP pressing the flap. Hurray!
For everyone who had the temerity to buy that shit you should send a new flashlight head with corrected USB port cover, with corrected driver, with corrected user interface and with corrected a button and button indicator!!!
That will be a moral satisfaction!
^ THIS!
I been sitting here playing with it and can not for the life of me understand why anyone thought this was a good UI.
They tried to simply port the functionality of the BLF A6 to an e-switch light, and it's apples and oranges - the two types of lights have very different UI's for a good reason. To do what a power switch light does is not practical because it's an easy built-in function to turn off a power switch light, not with an e-switch. e-switch lights give you a lot more capability, but you have to go with the technology advantages you have with the e-switch.
I think you should never implement multi fast click operations where the UI uses single clicks to navigate modes. You either have to slow down the single clicks, or you will hit into a lot of inadvertent fast clicks for changing modes. They chose to slow down the mode changes so you can't fast click unintentionally. Also slowing down the single clicks means you can do double clicks without taking action on the single click, so it works better - it's a total pain because things are slow, but you don't get flashed from a single click action when you double click. Ideally a double click, when used, should be something that steps up from a single click. Say from OFF, you single click to go to last mode, but click quickly again it goes to turbo. You are counting on the first single click and emphasizing it more on the 2nd fast click.
Double and multi clicks work great with a ramping UI because you use press&holds as opposed to quick clicks. This is what I did in Narsil, but when in mode set operation, double and multi clicks don't work - it would interfere with fast clicking thru modes.
well, if there was ANY copper in that tail spring, it flaked off while my less-than-careful and increasingly forceful machinations created a model for a theme park thrill ride
GRRrrr! :rage:
the revealed metal is shiny silver, SS?
(never did get it right)
I think an e-switch light should almost always use single-click for on/off. If you can’t articulate a really good reason for doing something else, do that.
Update again,
We suggest you don't open the head optionally so as not to damage the lamp or other head accessories, by the way, if you have ordered 2 stainless steel material S42, but have not shipped, we will ship the newest to you, without any problems.
Please wait more patiently, we will reply your mails one by one and the factory need sometime to produce the new items, thank you for your understanding!
Best Regards,
Swi
Hi Swi,
Apart from the new needed parts, a much bigger problem that people have is the user interface, the S42 is almost unusable because of the way it is operated. Even people who are used to complicated flashlights have the immediate problem that when the light is switched on, it can not be switched off again and instead of off it goes to TURBO. Please try it yourself.
Is the factory also working on a new user interface so that the flashlight can actually be used?
djozz
+1
So far we have focused on the mechanical issues - battery tube and usb cover, but now that some of us managed to get the light working, the user interface appears to be an even bigger issue. Almost everything about it is wrong!
So I wish BG would also produce a new version of the driver with a new firmware and either send it for free to the actual owners who ask for it or make it available as a separate part we can buy…
A couple other comments on the S42:
- Although it seems to have the same head/optics design as the S41, the beam contains far more artifacts - you can clearly see them while rotating the light
- Long click from off to lock/unlock the light is very unpractical and probably unsafe. This combined with the long click to turn off, which itself can only occur from the second mode, makes it incredibly complicated to use the light for a short burst: Two seconds long click to unlock, one click to turn on in moon, one other click to move to the next mode, two seconds click to turn off and another two seconds click to lock again - 3 long clicks (6 seconds) and 2 short click!!! :person_facepalming: :weary:
But not only that.
The current consumption in the “breathing light” mode is 1 mA. This means 1 month in this mode and 16340 / 18350 battery will be discharged completely. However, the button’s indicator will blinking green optimistically.
I'm not a fan of long clicks to shut off the light, but many e-switch lights use it and I don't see lots of complaints about it - Lumintop, On The Road, Manker. However this S42's hold time is excessively long. Lights I have that single click ON/OFF have to be long clicked to change modes, such as Sunwayman, DQG, Olight. Of these, some change modes too slowly, others maybe too quickly.
The Manker and OTR lights I find annoying that a simple click when OFF does nothing. At least the Lumintop turns the light on to last mode.
The Manker, OTR, and Lumintop change modes on simple clicks, but if you click fast, you will get strobed on the Manker and OTR - easy to get very annoying undesired actions. The Lumintop at least avoids that by not supporting double clicks at all.
Models I'm discussing are the Lumintop SDMini, OTR M3, Manker GODMES T01, Sunwayman C20C, DQG Tiny 26650 3rd, Olight S1.
Could they run the Q8 firmware on the S42? Narsil is it?
Somehow, the S42 is a pico Q8…
That's what I'l be doing for sure, but it's a driver replacement.