Got my C8 today. More on that in the next post. But first…
This has been brought to Simon’s attention, and IIRC something is being worked on. Web sites aren’t really his specialty, and he’s a pretty small operation, so I don’t think he has had enough spare resources yet to make it happen.
Not sure, but I think the drivers are compatible so there’s a good chance.
Not sure what’s causing that. Mine is working fine on moon. However, the driver is also running twice as fast as expected so it’s very possible that moon’s pulses are only half as long as they’re supposed to be, which would make it rather unstable. The symptom here is that moon would work on fully-charged cells (especially high-amp ones) but wouldn’t work with a nearly-empty cell. Similiarly, it would likely not work after using the light in a high mode for a while, but would work when rested.
Looks like that was answered both earlier and later in the thread, but… the pulse speed is explicitly lowered on moon (to 1/16 normal) and low (to 1/2 normal) in order to make the pulses longer and more stable. So, PWM=1/255 should work on pretty much any hardware configuration, assuming it’s only running at 1 kHz. But it seems it might not actually be running at 1 kHz.
It’s intended as a relatively universal driver for many different types of lights. For throwers, there are mode groups with no moon, or with high first. For smaller EDC lights, there are mode groups with moon first. Not quite as flexible as bistro, but I put in as many options as I could fit.
That is good news!
But I’m still concerned that even one had issues. And, counting mine, that makes at least two which are behaving out-of-spec.
The attiny13a has a known per-unit variability which can interfere with the method used for distinguishing between long presses and short presses. As far as I can tell, it affects maybe one out of every 256 units, at most. It happens because it relies on a quirk of physics which is most definitely not part of the attiny’s official spec.
It works because of the way SRAM reverts back to a default value while power is disconnected. Usually each bit reverts to a value of 1; about 75% to 90% of the bits do this. The remaining ones revert to 0. So, to determine if the light has been off for a short time or a long time, it checks the value of a byte of SRAM at boot time. If the value is the one we previously set, assume power was only off for a short time. If the value has changed, assume power was off for a longer time.
Where this fails is if the value we set, by random chance, happens to be exactly the same as the value it naturally reverts to. The chances against it are huge, but it still happens on rare occasion.
As for being “right at the edge” though, that’s also a factor. Moon mode is very sensitive and hard to get consistent across multiple devices even for big-name brands. And we’re attempting to do it on much cheaper hardware with much wider tolerances. So, even with every precaution taken, it might still have issues occasionally.
Me too. He even sent me one specifically because he was having trouble with it, and it turns out all it needed was a gentle tap of a soldering iron at the right place. Worked fine after re-melting a single contact point.
Geez, take a couple days off and there are 75 new messages and a bunch of questions I need to answer!
(life has been a bit turbulent lately, but I’ll try to keep up)
I actually had to tap the glass on mine to be sure it was there. Totally invisible. Yours probably just needs a bit of care from a lens cloth and some lens cleaning solution. Should be pretty easy to do.
I’m not 100% certain, but it looks likely. The C8 I got has a retaining ring and the driver isn’t soldered in, and it has 8x7135. So I think it’ll probably work the same way on the S series, but I haven’t actually tried it.