Yes, but not quite yet. Iâm still working out a few details. Mostly trying to coordinate with other people, which takes time.
The timer is pretty good (in my test, it timed an hour to a precision of less than a second), but waiting 8 hours before turning on is a little tricky. It would mean one of the following:
Leaving the MCU on all night, at about 5 mA, so ~40 mAh power used each night just waiting.
Implementing a special âtwilightâ half-sleep mode specifically for things like this alarm clock mode. (like standby, but the WDT would wake up every couple seconds and send a âtickâ to the current State handler, with ADC turned off so it canât sense low voltage)
I donât like that first one, because 5mA is really high for a mode where it isnât doing anything. I may be able to make the second one happen though, and it might be kind of nice for other things too (like controlling an indicator LED during standby mode).
In any case, if you want a light to blast in your face each morning, that might be do-able.
(itâs just going to need a bit of plumbing work first)
(OTOH, timers exist which plug into wall outlets and turn on whatever theyâre connected to at a specified time, so thatâs probably a cheaper and easier way to do it)
TK, as you already stated, a refined thermal regulation would be a welcome feature. Perhaps the possibility to config in the ui itâs sensitivity to react to temperatures changes, and the correspondent amount of decrease and increase of power to the emitter(s), would permit a fine tune of this function to the many different setups that we use in ours lights (small and big hosts, single and multiple emitters, drasticaly different levels of driver current etc).
I have a SRK with Q8 driver, and a D4, and hopefully soon a D1, to test on. If I can make the thermal regulation âjust workâ on all those, itâll probably be flexible enough for most purposes with no need to fine-tune anything. Hopefully the physical traits (like power level and thermal mass) will give the regulation enough feedback to adjust itself. Like, a big light heats up slower so it can react slower or in smaller steps.
However, that said, at a firmware level there are quite a few knobs to tweak, to make sure it reacts at the right speed and intensity without oscillating. And I need to test with tail-standing and no fan, since that was a scenario where the D4âs regulation would over-shoot and then take a long time to recover. It did fine with a hand to sink heat to, or with moving air, but the stagnant air case didnât behave very well.
Sure, it would be easy to add heart beacon and SOS. Iâm not sure it would add much though⌠It already has a beacon with adjustable frequency and brightness, and the momentary mode is good for sending Morse code.
Can you imagine an actual event where an emergency worker sees a strobing light, stops, watches it for a while and says - âwhelp, I know itâs a blinking light out here where I donât expect to see one, and Iâm a lookin for a missing person, but that ainât an SOS strobe, so theres no way Iâm gonna check it out!â
A flashing light will attract attention. If it happens to be flashing out the current state of the battery, rather than slavishly repeating three dits, three dahs over and over, someone is going to count them and realize there is a pattern. Heck, even amateur radio has done away with Morse code requirements, most people are not going to notice it.
I would personally like to do away with SOS, I donât minds police strobe, or biking strobe, and I use batt check a lot. SOS just seems like a gimmick.
UI (by Tamagotchi) that very popular in Russian forum.
From off:
sc- short click
lc- long click
1 sc â memored mode , (may be adjusted in menu)
2 sc â transition to turbo and back
3 sc â strobe mode. change of strobe modes by hold.
4 sc â lock â 1 mode (beacon off). Unlocking 4SC.
5 sc â lock â second mode (beacon mode is determined by its settings). Unlocking 4sc.
1 lc â moonlight.
Hold â change modes from the first (red) firefly, than moonlight and then Minimum> Medium 1>Medium 2>Maximum>Minimum>âŚ
1Sc and hold â the battery indication.
from on
1 sc â turn off.
2 sc â transition to a turbo from any mode except the munlay. Repeated 2k â switch to the mode from which the turbo was switched on.
3 sc â the inclusion of strokes. Retrieval of strobe modes with hold.
1 lc â change mode to 1 mode down.
Hold â change modes from the main line up in a circle.
1sc and hold â scrolls down to the minimum mode .
That sounds like a Far Side cartoon!
Iâm reminded of a early DX light I had that spelled out SOSOSOSOS.
If you really needed to signal someone you could just run your hand in front of the light and âtapâ it out yourself.
To save you extra effort remember that mountaineering distress signals are simply groups of 3. Can be 3 anything, just something that stands out.
The Batt Check would work with a slightly depleted battery if you covered it up for the decimal readings.
âAll it says is SSSSSSS, must be someone messing aroundâ.
Awesome, thatâs pretty close to what we came up with too, which is a good sign. It seems several people have independently created very similar e-switch UIs with roughly the same basic operation. This tells me itâs probably a genuinely good solution, one of the tallest peaks in the problem space, since people keep creating similar designs.
I wonder why big-name commercial lights are usually so different than this obvious solution.
That sounds more complex that I was expecting. How about if it was done from moonlight (Iâm guessing thatâs under 20mA in most lights)? Would that make it pretty simple to implement? Overnight moonlight is often useful in these cases too.
Do you think a half-sleep mode would use much less than 5mA?
Iâve actually got one of those mains powered âsunrise clocksâ that are supposed to emulate the sun rising to help you wake up in the morning. The technique works (fairly well, at least) but instead of a gradual ramp it jumps up about 10lm of 6500K every minute (to about 100lm). I can imagine something like the D4âs ramp being much nicer. Having it in a flashlight would make it useful for camping and hotels too.
Really, I just want an excuse to buy the equipment needed to flash a driver
Copying and quoting from another thread, we have a perfect host for the above described light: The S42. I realize that the uC would need to be changed to an AT of some flavor, but perhaps by giving up in light charging we could gain enough real-estate to get the USB interface to function.
My S42 just sits on my desk at work, begging to be used, but the UI is just prohibitive.
But joking aside, a wide range of things fall into the category of âPID algorithmsâ and it basically already uses one. It just has kind of a weird âIâ term implemented as a lowpass or latch on the âDâ term. And itâs heavy on the âDâ term in order to predict temperature in advance to compensate for lag in measurement.
Iâve been meaning to try a version which uses an actual âIâ term of sorts as its primary output, to see if it behaves any better, but Iâve been busy and the testing for thermal stuff always takes a long time.
Yes, a half-sleep mode should be well under 5mA. Hopefully well under 1mA, but I donât recall offhand what the sleep mode power is with WDT enabled. The full standby mode is only like 0.02mA, which is nice, but it doesnât wake up unless the button is pressed.
Using moon mode wouldnât reduce power use. Idle mode with the MCU running is ~5mA, and moon mode is ~7mA. This means most of the power in moon mode is wasted just to keep the MCU running, not to make light. I wonder if thereâs a way to reduce that without sacrificing any functionality⌠like maybe turn the ADC off most of the time, or run the MCU at a slower clock speed, or something.
I mean, if you wanted to combine the alarm clock with an all-night moonlight mode, thatâs do-able right now with no plumbing changes. But the high idle power has been bugging me anyway, so I should try to fix it. And a half-sleep mode is probably worth adding to the toolkit.
Itâs a good idea; I just need to add some extra plumbing to make it feasible without wasting lots of power. I have other plumbing to add too, like an option to use âshort click, long click, or holdâ instead of just âclick, or holdâ. That one is mostly for the Russian crowd though, since I havenât seen that type of UI anywhere else.
If you need any reasons to get firmware flashing equipment, there are plenty of reasons at the links in my signature.
One of my favourite E-switch UI is the Skilhunt H03.
From Off:
-one click: last used mode
-hold: lowest mode
-doubble click: highest mode
-hold more than x seconds: powers on moon then blinks and go to Lockout
In lockout mode : one click activete or deactivate the button lighting beacon flashing red led.
From ON:
-one click: go the next mode
-doubble click: change to other submode (every mode has two submodes and if you choose one the light will store it and you can adapt the mode spacing to your taste)
-hold: OFF
Some of the H03âs UI looks pretty similar. Some of the differences are interesting, while others are things Iâve been avoiding.
The clicks during lockout to change indicator LED behavior might be a good thing to keep in mind for later. I donât have any lights with indicator LEDs and recent drivers, but as soon as I get a Q8 Iâll be adding indicator LED support to the toolkit.
Another thing which might be worth adapting is the hold-for-moon thing during lockout. Not sure if the H03 does that, but my Baton lights do. It gives nice feedback and doesnât cost much power. Basically, lockout mode becomes sort of a momentary moon mode with four clicks to exit.
I donât really care for âhold to toggle lockoutâ though, since that kind of thing can happen pretty easily by accident. I implemented it once ~3 years ago (hold for moon and continue holding to enter lockout), because I was cloning the Olight Baton UI. But since then Iâve gone for multiple clicks instead, to avoid lockout accidents.
On hot-running lights, people have expressed that âhold to turn offâ is probably not a good idea, especially if the button is near the emitters. That didnât go over well in the S42 and E14 II.
Edit: I added momentary (ish) moon to lockout mode. Itâs not good for signalling, since it still needs to check for the 4-click exit action, but itâs still useful for quick tasks in the dark without exiting lockout.