Actually the ramping UI is the shizz, a lot of people seems to really like it for many reasons but one thing that I donāt like is that it makes a flashlight way less predictable concerning runtime.
An OLED displaying remaining capacity in % would be a nice addition and it would be very useful to have a calculation of the remaining capacity in hour / minute, particulary for the DBSAR, even without ramping UI.
I donāt know if it would be better to calculate it based on the voltage or by entering (somewhere in a configutation menu) the total capacity of the battery(ies).
Or could it be possible to have this with a flashing feature without OLED screen to stay more budget friendly ?
Iāve been thinking about it last evening. I think this may be the only major use for modes instead of ramping.
Yes, itās important for the user to know runtime.
Yes, ramping firmware makes it harder.
The problem has 2 parts.
Learn the runtime
Communicate it to the user
Letās start with 1).
For real accuracy you need to know:
current amps drawn from battery
current battery voltage
battery discharge curves
cutoff voltage
If youāre a flashlight manufacturer who supplies battery together with firmware, you can have all these variables.
If youāre a driver developer things are much harder.
Several approaches:
A) Donāt worry about runtime. You know amps, your user knows capacity and can figure out runtime by themselves
B) Track voltage drop, it can give semi-accurate predictions, but shortly after inserting the battery it just wonāt be able to tell
C) Let user enter capacity in configuration
D) Use a smart battery that can tell you its capacity
E) Remember the capacity of the previously inserted battery
F) When user changes modes, amps change. So does voltage sag. You can use it to make more accurate prediction of what will be faster, low voltage cutoff or drop-down from near-full discharge
G) Remember voltage sag of the previously inserted battery, so you can better recognise that it was a different one
Communication is hard too. You can:
A) Blink it out
B) Bink it out with the indicator LED
C) Make blinks as the voltage drops, so user can judge the discharge rate by themselves
D) Have a set of several colours that are distinctive enough and light the indicator diode to such colour (for several seconds?)
E) Use a LCD
F) Send it over bluetooth, so the user can read this info from their smartwatch
My Uniquefire 1401 has a display
9 means long runtime and 1 short
On high it can read 4, switch to med changes it to 9
It annoys me, like Narsil and Bistro, just check the actual voltage does it for me.
I fear a display greatly adds complexity and costs for something one can estimate nicely with actual voltage readout.
Done right, it could tell you how many minutes you have left. Itās way more accurate and way more noob-friendly.
Of the solutions that I see, the last two seem like the only sensible ones. Yes, they add cost, but they add a lot of value. You can display other things too. Iāve seen lumen output somewhere. Personally I consider it to be useless nonsense, but some will like to use it to show off. You can show battery voltage. You can show charging status, with nicely indicated current amps. You can turn the flashlight to an analyzing charger, though accuracy will probably be too low for usefulness. In highly-configurable lights you can make configuration easier. Itās easy to get lost in a multi-layer menu. As well as a flat one with 24-clicks. With TKās alarm clock you can show how much time is left. I believe there are way more possibilities.
May not be a good choice for each and every light, but I think thereās place for them.
Good info.
For a factory, probably a third of that. Someone who buys a $100+ BLF light might be able to accept this extra expense.
I wonder if bluetooth wouldnāt be cheaperā¦
ADDED:
I can buy a BT dongle for $1.31 shipped. So probably a manufacturer could make a flashlight BT-capable for <$1.
It;s obviously not the same optic, led lenser makes waaaay better TIRs than any other company.
The point is that itās a 7-LED tir focusing system that actually works well, unlike the one linked above.
Manker Godmes from a few years ago had bluetooth. You could do all kinds of things with it using your smart phone, but itās app has to stay updated for all that fancy stuff to keep working.
I would love to get a couple of these into the hands of Tom E and ToyKeeper:
At around $40 they are expensive compared to typical flashlights, but they have plenty of pins and memory. Going to production with one of these may not make sense. It probably would be more cost effective to have discrete components.
By any chance, do you happen to have one? I would be interested in beamshotsā¦
As to working wellā¦
I donāt have the polymer optics one. Does it work well? The way they de-focus it make the beam ugly, plain and simple. It may have nice benefits, but I agree itās not working well, though I think that for some users it may actually be fine.
What if there was no rotation? The hotspot in the middle would disappear. As to other changes to the beam shape, I am unable to predict. So as far as Iām concerned, it may or may not work well.
Does the led-lenser work well?
You say they make great lenses, I believe you. So it should have a nice beam shape regardless of whether itās zoomed in or out.
But they lose a huge part of frontal area and therefore just canāt be even semi-efficient when it comes to throw/size.
And personally, I donāt agree that something very inefficient is āworking wellā. Though I certainly think there are people with different priorities.
Yes MRsDNF, Iām well aware you made some of those P60 with screw in pill in some of your projects (I think that one in picture is taken from your customized P60 that belong to djozz now).
Iirc, last one that looks going to materialized is this project (heās going to use screw in pill too, but sinner looks like already drop this project.
Looks like its dropped as it was 3.5 years ago.
I was going to get the above light built in quantity and sell as a host but it was going to cost to much and I didnāt think Iād sell any.