What did you mod today?

Spring steal has resistance in it and will cause heat and voltage sag in high power mods:)

thanks it makes sense now so is it worth doing on stock lights like c8s L2 and the like .

I was going to change the driver and the emitter in a Thorfire C8S, but ended up with only swapping the emitter to a XP-L HI because they changed the driver to 20mm in the version I got :disappointed:

EDIT :

I was going to put a BLF X5/X6 in it , but the driver size put an end to that plan.

Here is the new plan : 20 mm boost driver from KD and a XHP50.2 :

Looks way better with the G2 too :slight_smile:

But things happened to the stock OP reflectorā€¦

Yup, I accidentally scratched it up with the burr from drilling out the hole so had to take off the coating with 0000 wool :blush:

Does this mean you can swap to a 6v emitter without driver modification/swap ?

Today I taught a flashlight how to see. It turns out that LEDs can be used to sense light if you run them in reverse. So, all I had to do was solder on an ā€œoptic nerveā€ between its brain and its eye (MCU pin3 to LED-), tell it how to distinguish bright and dark signals (auto-calibrate), and then teach it something like Morse code.

The upshot of this is that you can configure it by pointing it at a phone or computer screen and playing an animated GIF or something for it to watch. (eventually, havenā€™t written the app yet)

ā€¦ and the compiled code for it is shorter than the text of this post.

Iā€™m not really sure yet if itā€™s actually a useful feature or just a silly gimmick, but it was fun to make.

Nice :+1:

BLF should start protecting the IP we are generating here and file patents! Unbelievable amounts of progress we are achieving here, seeing flashlights, apps or screens to program lights, ā€¦ before you know you can talk to flashlights directly.

So proud to be part of this community.

Patents for what, a flashlight?
Pretty sure that was patented a loooong time ago, lol.

Simple triple mod for Novatac 120T

I am sure many of the technical solutions discussed and developed in various threads on here are 1) new and 2) not patented yet. The amount of innovation and curiosity here is mind-blowing.
i.e. ā€œdata exchange for contactless programming of flashlights via a light-emitting diodeā€

I didnā€™t do a patent search on these things but I do have access to various content providers at work.

This is very very cool, I saw this few months back in some youtube video, good chance it was on a shot show, they made software for pc where you set all preferences (modes) etc and then point the flashlight at dedidated part of the screen, it blinks out (black/white) ā€œsettingsā€ and thats all you have to do to get custom modes.
I just hope this could be done with so widespread Atmel Tiny13A mcu.

Well technically it will be either brighter or more effitient with a spring bypass but the difference probably wouldnā€™t be noticeable. That said, I bypass springs in all lights that run 2amps or higher.

Patents? Hah. I suspect the patents for this have already expired. Itā€™s not new.

Thereā€™s a Lux-RC driver which does it, though IIRC it uses a dedicated light sensor instead of the LED. Itā€™s used in the super-expensive BOSS light. And for some reason, it has a ridiculous limitation of only 4 modes. At that point, why bother? I know someone who has one, and he wishes it was more like his Convoy triple.

Whatā€™s actually new or different is:

  • Itā€™s open-source.
  • It can work in any host without changes. Just make sure the driver has an ā€œoptic nerveā€.
  • It runs on low-end MCUs like the tiny25 (sorry, doesnā€™t fit on tiny13).

I only have an early prototype so far, a proof of concept. All it does at this point is calibrate itself then read a list of modes to configure a mode group. Itā€™s pretty janky. Donā€™t expect anything stable for a while.

Iā€™m using an old BLF X5 prototype for testing (bistro tiny25 driver), totally stock except for the firmware and a small wire I added. Hopefully there will eventually be drivers which include this connection by default instead of requiring an extra wire. Otherwise though, itā€™s a totally normal build. Cheap stock host, normal MCPCB, only two wires going between the driver and LED (s). It likely wouldnā€™t work with multiple cells in series, and it shouldnā€™t work on UV or infrared lights, but those are really about the only restrictions.

One other thing to noteā€¦ While all this complex onboard-programming stuff is fun and fancy, itā€™s not necessarily an upgrade compared to something simple and straightforward. I think Crescendo (ramping UI for clickies) is probably better overall, precisely because itā€™s so simple. And Narsilā€™s ramping UI is better still. Why bother with a dozen buttons and levers when you can do everything with a single knob?

  1. youā€™d be surprised at how much stuff you think is original and new has actually been patented already

2) I would suggest you do some research into how stuff gets patented. It requires money, lawyers, and a lot of time. Itā€™s not just ā€œI made this, plz patentā€. Also a lot of stuff cannot be patented because it does not fit the requirements.

The only real risk is if a corporation took it and didnā€™t give anything backā€¦ Fortunately, the GPL is pretty good at dealing with that. And publication of open code is good at invalidating bogus patents filed after-the-fact. Sure, there will be people who sell it for profit without contributing, but everyone is free to do that. And if anyone does make improvements, they have to share those improvements with everyone.

Would be nice if playing on BLF allowed us all to pay the rent, but thatā€™s highly unlikely. At least itā€™s entertaining.

That is way cool Toykeeper! Will be following this! Not for me btw, low-med-high no memory does not require much app-programming. But it sounds like a really fun developement!