This active-cooling test was just a sanity check to make sure the regulation doesn’t do anything dumb. The 45 C limit was arbitrary. The thermal ceiling will be user-configurable, so you can change its stable output level by changing the temperature limit.
Most likely, the calibration procedure will be:
Fast-click 10 times from off, then hold the button on 11th click.
Light comes on at a low mode.
To disable thermal regulation (or set it to a very high temperature), let go of the button now. Otherwise, keep holding.
Light goes up to maximum.
Keep holding until the light feels hot.
Let go of the button to set the thermal ceiling.
Attiny85 chips use un-calibrated thermal sensors, so a factory default value will be inconsistent. It seems best for the default to err on the safe (low) side, with a config option so the user can set it to whatever they like.
Just a thought that occurred to me. Let’s say 600 lumens is what the light can output comfortably and with stability:
1 click from off = low
2 clicks from off = 600 ish lumen
3 clicks from off = FET turbo
Easy access to a nice high mode of 600 lumens, and slightly more effort is needed for the FET turbo, which is reaaally a burst mode. Just a thought, and certainly not a request.
Edit: Beacon mode, would be nice if the light emitted was at a higher level or user defined like the M43, I know you don’t own one, but by holding down on switch will increase beacon light output and a much better brighter flash, maybe a slight bit more speed in between flashes also, counting the flashes in battery level is so perfect, but can’t for the life of me figure out the flashes for temp check, 10 degree Celsius per flash, starts when very hot hot at 4 flashes but as it cools will then start a second group of flashes like the bat check, so not understanding what each group represents, or why I am wondering about it actually, when it’s hot it is real hot and when it’s cool I can put it back in my pocket, no need to watch temp flashes I suppose, just there so had to look at it and try to understand.
Yeah… I mean this light is just stupid bright that it gets too hot in, what 30 seconds or less? So this output is purely for wow or burst use. And that is perfectly fine, but personally I consider this output for my taste “outside regular use of flashlight”, so I wouldn’t mind if this output is only activated with additional effort so to speak. Especially because this is an EDC light. Maybe the idea is comparable to turbo and turbo max for the X7.
Surely people still prefer a single click to turbo for this light; to each his/her own of course.
Reminds me of my smartphone telling me that it is raining today. And I’m like thankfully I have windows in my house, so I can look outside to see what the weather is like… Not really high tech… but it gets the job done…
Only issue I think with the 3 click idea is that it would then cause TK to have to adjust all the other clicks since 3 click now is bat check, but nice idea I think, could be double click from off to high then double click again to fet turbo …?
Ha Ha Ha, to funny, I know what your saying, phone tells me stupid things like that and makes me wonder why do I own this thing, my old flip phone worked just fine, until the phone company said I had to buy a new phone since my flip was so old it was the equivalent of the rotary dial phones, I liked them to… ha ha,
I am not sure those phones are that smart but they are capable of scaring me sometimes, like how did this phone know that, and it wants me to turn on photo recognition, ha I don’t think so, making me paranoid now…
Oh no no no, I don’t want anyone change anything because I said something: it’s just me thinking loud…
M43’s UI1 is also great for this light when it comes to press and hold for momentary turbo (no ramping then). That would work for me as well.
I’m trying not to change much of Hank’s design, so I don’t think the click patterns will change. However, it might be feasible to make double-click toggle turbo instead of being a one-way trip.
Additionally, with mode memory you can set the brightness to whatever you want, and then it is a simple one-click on/off at that level.
Mode memory is not saved across battery changes. This means it needs a default value. The default could be moon, 10 lm, level 65 (100% on 7135 chip, 0% on FET), or something else. I’m thinking the 100% 7135 mode might be a good default, since it’d be nice to have a shortcut to the highest regulated level with no PWM. I measured it at 133 lm on mine. This level would be accessible at any time by loosening the tailcap, tightening it again, then clicking the button once. However, 10 lm might be nice too.
Sound like a plan?
BTW, the difficult thing about reading battery and temperature values is that “0” digits don’t get a blink. So, a temperature of 21 gets “blink blink pause blink”, while a value of 20 gets only “blink blink”. I intend to fix this by making zeroes give a very short blink instead of nothing.
Yes TK the temp reading was impossible for me to figure out even after taking a actual temp reading then attempting to figure blinks to the actual reading.
First mistake I think I made was an attempt to read the blinks from the point of extremely high temps and seemed rather pointless because of how fast this little light really does cool down, it cools very quickly and will give you blinks all over the place, it doesn’t seem to have set temp levels to give an accurate blink reading but seemed to me that would have been thought of but mine at times would either just kept blinking steadily when very hot but when cooled quite a bit there was continuous blinks of sets of four and light was just warm, a cold light is 9 blinks so not sure what that translates to assuming in Celsius, 9 °C or 48.2 °F… doesn’t seem logical to me. ?
Edit: The Beacon mode is rather low,
I think the beacon light output must be set at 20% of max output and that seems way low to be very effective, it is also very slow and should be more like a flash if that’s possible, present light level is a good default level but it would be nice to have the ability to ramp up the beacons output to max if need be by just holding down the switch while in beacon mode like it is in the M43, Edit: Delete wrong info…
Glad your on the upgrade team TK but also means I will be buying more D4 lights with the improvements or drivers for change outs if available and then Hank will probably have the other D1S light about ready I hope… Thanks for listening TK
It’s funny that people want the beacon mode to be brighter. I find it way too bright.
Maybe it can use the memorized ramp level instead. That’s an easy change.
Anyway, Hank sent sort of a “care package”. It consists of a bunch of parts which (mostly) were either prototypes or failed QC, but can be assembled into working lights for testing and development. There are sharp edges and dents and other issues on nearly every piece. These are the kind of parts you won’t get in production units:
There is one XP-L HI and one XP-G2, unknown tints. I’ll get measurements after they’re assembled and working:
Of particular interest is that these show how the switch is assembled. It appears to be very compact, just a membrane switch and a rubber boot, with a ring press-fit over the boot to keep pressure on the parts:
Since I know someone will ask, here are the dimensions:
Boot hole depth: 1.9 mm
Boot hole diameter: 13.7 mm
Membrane switch thickness: 1.3 mm
Membrane switch PCB: 6.0 mm x 6.0 mm
Switch hole: ~1.0 mm (?) x 6.0 mm x 6.0 mm (plus cutout corners)
…
On a totally different note, I updated my thermal regulation simulator today to try to make it match what I measured on the D4. It’s fairly close, but I think the actual D4 gets less-hot and reaches its stable temperature sooner than the simulation. And for some reason I had to use attn=6 here instead of attn=4, but otherwise the parameters are the same as I used on the actual hardware. Here’s how it looks when simulating the “regulation test 5” from earlier:
The most interesting parts are a bit easier to see if I give the simulator a smaller “battery”:
There is, um, probably a bit too much info packed into each graph… but I think what it shows is pretty close to what I measured on actual hardware. So it seems like a fair model for testing changes without waiting an hour for each test.
My opinion about UI is
From off
Long click min
Click - saved ramped mod
Two Click - max mod
And some idea about ramping. Now there are 150 levels and it is impossible to tell which one is selected now. Idea is to make 2 mode of ramping one with 150lv and another with only 10lv. Mods are easy to distinguish and have nice spacing. The ramping time is the same ,but mods change every 0.25c
This is already implemented in the new D4 code. Additionally, it has:
Loosen + tighten tailcap, then click: Go to maximum 7135 level (~140 lm with no PWM and no FET).
I implemented those two UIs in 2014 in the “Ferrero Rocher” project. They’re called Ramping_UI_table.c and Baton.c in the firmware repository. I plan to make updated versions for the D4, but it won’t be part of the production run. They’re example UIs or test cases for a new generic code base.
Thank you for the switch info didn’t want to pry on the retainer until someone had some info, so thanks TK I can pry away,
Do you think Hank will have any replacement switches and boots, mainly switches, drivers would be great also, thank you…
