Yeah, the 7135 chips don’t activate as quickly as a FET. The bottom few PWM levels tend to be “off”. Running right at the edge like that, minimum pulse width, also makes the output more voltage-sensitive. I normally drop the speed to like 8 kHz for moon mode to improve stability, unless I can get some particularly good 7135 chips. Usually the 350mA ones activate faster than the 380mA ones, but it still varies a lot per brand and per emitter type and such.
The 2.9mA MCU current is within the range the attiny uses when it has several features turned on, though I can also get moon mode (including the LED) down to like 1.4mA if I turn off some MCU functions. And you’re using something much more capable than an attiny, so … not bad.
Yes, 1 kHz is easily visible to me. I generally notice anything below ~8 kHz during normal use, and 1 kHz is slow enough to be pretty distracting.
I have about a hundred lights. If I were to list them in order of PWM speed, the bottom of the list looks something like this:
96. Reylight Pineapple, ~2000 Hz
97. CNQG Brass AA, ~990 Hz
98. MELD 2.9, 488 Hz
99. Blackshadow Terminator, 188 Hz
100. Generic UltraFire SK-68, ~130 Hz
Most of the items at the bottom of that list are there only because I haven’t gotten around to fixing them yet, giving them new drivers.
Unfortunately for my MELD light, the PWM speed made the difference between EDC and shelf queen, because all the white modes are so strobey. Here’s MELD 2.9 running at 488 Hz, showing approximately how it looks to my eyes during use: (photo not edited)
… and this is the same test on a $3 nanjg driver at 4.5 kHz:
Some are happy with that speed (4.5 kHz), others still think it’s too slow. I generally aim for the slowest speed which people won’t complain about, which is about 10 kHz for visual purposes… but that often makes an audible whine, so closer to 20 kHz to get rid of sounds in the human hearing range too.
I’d probably be happy with 8 kHz, though it’s still a bit slower than my usual EDCs. The usual is something like this, with the bistro firmware option. I’d be happy to send you one if you’re curious.