StephenK
Wow, thats double the price at least, ill keep them in mind but ill keep looking for now.
i ordered these on the 20th.
ssschen, can you link the ones you ordered and let me know what shipping option you took please.
Of topic @ Tom. You mentioned somewhere you had a soft spot for a triple with no pill you modified. Was it the HD2010 triple?
My second Q8 arrived today.
It does have the mismatched SW LED’s when sitting in standby state, unlike the first one.
It has an intermittent problem.
It will sometimes not shut off.
The first time I turned it on, I ran it up the ramping about half ways. Released the SW and immediately ramped it down to ML. Ran it back up and down a couple or so times. Then hit the SW to turn it off. It stayed on. I hot the SW again. Nothing. I untwisted the body from the head a quarter turn and it went off. Of Course it would.
Turned on. Turned off. that time all was okay. Since then I have done many of the tricks it is capable of; battery level check, OK. Four click lock out and back in, OK. Double click to jump to turbo, OK. I let it run on turbo to check the timeout; 3 minutes, so OK.
A couple of times during these trials it would not turn off. Clicking the SW caused the SW LED to flash, but the light remained on. Sometimes after several clicks it would go off. Sometimes I would give up after a half dozen clicks and turn it off by loosening the body to head.
Sometimes, when it will not turn off the LED’s will flash and be very slightly brighter, then with the next click go back down. This is with the light on ML.
I attempted to make a video. Naturally the light worked fine during that time. I’ll try again later. I have both lights with 30Q’s, one in left hand, one in the right hand, clicking in unison. The good light, #1, works flawlessly but #2 hiccups every so often.
Sure would like #2 to work reliably.
Hmm MtnDon that is a new thing.
Yet is seems tied to the switch assembly again.
Will update OP tomorrow.
Yep - dunno why, still like the rough, not so pretty, but great performance of a HD2010. So found some great deal on a triple version, so couldn't turn it down.
Found it: Beamtech BT-4000 form TMART for $22 - back in April 2015.
Hhmm, MtnDon's issue sure sounds like a mechanical switch problem. The description sounds like one click acts as 2 clicks, but hard to say.
To save me reading through hundreds of posts has anyone got a link to a pouch/holster for the Q8 that is either available in the UK or will ship to the UK without incurring high shipping charges please 
I think there was a smoke grenade pouch available for people in the US only ?
One of mine has just now done that too. I'd double-clicked to turbo to see what the noise was in the back garden & then grabbed the 2nd one & did the same, after a few seconds of having fun beam waving I shut them both off, only the 1st one wouldn't turn off.
I could ramp up & down no problem just couldn't switch off, I unscrewed the head then re-tightened and it has been fine since, I can't repeat the issue. :shrug:
One more possible issue: earlier today after maybe 11 hours without use I noticed both switches were no longer illuminated while in standby, turning on then off brought them both back to life and again, it hasn't happened since.
I bought this one
Ha! Beat me to it MtnDon!
Don’t agree. I got two Q8 and measured 5250 and 4820 lumens which is close to other measurements. After tail PCB mod 1000 lumens more though.
Thanks just ordered :+1:
A real teardown will have to wait (I want to know if the ledboard looks any different from proto3, did they have a new type made after the delamination issue was found?), but here's my initial findings.
Out of the box output in djozz-lumen, I did wipe the contact area's of battery tube and driver cleam with a tissue:
with charged 30Q's:
3 seconds: 5400 lm
30 seconds: 5220 lm
with Panny BD (lower drain but still powerful):
30 seconds: 4780 lm
After cleaning up some stuff under the switch-board and swapping driver screws (I killed a driver screw while screwing it out):
with charged 30Q's:
3 seconds: 5560 lm
30 seconds: 5280 lm
(after some recent checks with reliable sources I believe that my djozz-lumen is about 9% high. But it still seems lower than most calibrations found on BLF and CPF, and what flashlight manufacturers list as ANSI -measured output of their flashlights)
Here's some pictures:
The tailboard screws look ok:
The earlier reported stuff in the screw-threads:
Some of that stuff is in between tailboard and body. I removed it and screwed down the tailboard really tight.
The driver screws look fine but are soft as butter, one was demolished while screwing it out with a well-fitting screwdriver.
I changed out the screws with a couple that I found in my box of screwy thingies:
The driver looks good, notice the 7135 with 'claw' mark.
The leds are more off-center than needed, you can see that the centering suffered from twisting the reflector. The beam is good though. But I will center the leds better when opening up the light in the near future.
Preliminary conclusion:
The production light is very close to the proto3, which is good. Wished that Thorfire was less sloppy with screws and screwdrivers, I don't really get that when they make a nice product like the Q8. But the performance of my copy is fine, also out of the box, nothing to complain about that, a 3.5% output drop in 30 seconds in a 5000 lumen soda-can-size light is a sign of a very very good heat path. And if I would not have opened up everything, the screws would not be an issue.
Now on to a busy weekend....
Nice djozz! I'm finding lots of variations, but if I swap battery tubes with heads, the performance seems to track with the battery tube, not the head. Might be the first one I tested was the best. The material around the upper left screw hole in your pic appears to be the glue I've seen on several - just one out of 4 has it, mostly there is a blob stuck against the black outer tube, like it was squeezed out, then set hard.
hahahahahaha …. this is BLF!
TF knows that’s what we do.
Well, almost everyone at TF except whoever picked the screws they used, I guess.
Our job is to find that guy — and professionalize him.
I will bring up something I experienced. I was using the light on a fairly low level maybe 25% to move some stuff around the basement and I clicked to turn it off, the indicator LED blinked, but the light did not turn off. It happened again when using it as a bed side light as I turned off the lights in my room. I almost forgot it was on and clicked to turn it off, but indicator flashed and it stayed on. Another click turned it off both times. I was curious if this was firmware intended once the light has been on for X amount of time.
Back to my other post #13497
After much more on-off here’s what I think is going on. I don’t know if it makes sense.
Light #2 seems to require a more rapid click to go off than light #1. Slight difference, but it seems that #2 needs more of a “peck” to go off than #1. I switched hands thinking my left thumb was slower but that doesn’t make any discernible difference. I’ve been clicking on and off for 40 minutes in short groups of activity. If I consciously make the effort to short click #2 always goes off. But the light #1 is easier, a more relaxed light. Even the SW LED’s seem to be closer in brightness, Batt check voltage at 4.0 to 3.9
I have intermittent switch issues from time to time. I’’l be in battery check mode and I click the switch 1 time and NOTHING happens. Seems to just get stuck. Keep pressing it and eventually it will exit battery check mode. This happens very, very, infrequently.
Weird - I got switch debounce logic in the firmware that attempts to handle short jitters on the switch detection. Debounce logic and algorithms go way back - we used them in keyboard driver/firmware wayyy back. Every computer keyboard used to have a dedicated micro-controller built in to handle things like this - it's all transparently done for programs running on the computer.
These algorithms tend to be very hardware dependent, but don't think we've noticed these problems in prototypes, or have seen them consistent. Once in a while it might happen, but we don't notice it - click again and it works, and blame it on the mechanics not triggering. Not sure if it's another 1% thing or not: 5 units out of 500 is 1%.
If the 1 click got interpreted as 2 clicks, you'd think it would go to turbo, but the flash of the SW LED seems like it's seeing a click to OFF, then click to ON.
I gave my mother an original SRK with a “Narsil Lite” driver (er, Ferrero Rocher ramping UI from 2014), and she seems pretty happy with it. I showed her a few different interfaces she could choose, and she wanted the ramping one. It’s not as nice as a Q8, but it’s the same general idea and was the best I could fit on the hardware I had.