My second Q8 from banggood was delivered today. It was ordered on 17 Sep. Looks perfect, and seems to function great.
I still have one on order from elfelend.aliexpress.com. I ordered from them at $44.99, then after a brief stint at $117.63, they’re back down to $99.99.
"You can have my MC3000 when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers"
There's nothing even close to compare it to.
Say whatever happened to the Elfeland orders?
Did any arrive fast?
Some of you are just closing your minds to the most obvious, realistic uses of this magnificent light. For example, pistol mounted:
Also available for the ninja glock:
Hmm I thought it was 18000 to 19000 hz for Q8 but it seems I am wrong. I do not have a measuring device. I used my ears and brain to measure it 
I probably failed because Q8’s sound is quieter to the ear than S2. And S2 is definitely 12 to 15 khz. I thought they were at same volume but being Q8’s quieter, it would be higher frequency. It turns out to be Q8’s sound is quieter and at near frequency.
S2+ is quite louder if Q8 is really 15 to 16 kHZ. Like 5 dB more at least.
The S2+ uses a tiny13a, which has a much greater clock speed variation from piece to piece. It’s quite likely slower than the Q8, which uses a tiny85 with tighter tolerances.
In theory, the PWM speed should be “MHz * 1000 / 256” for the tiny13a / S2+, and “MHZ * 1000 / 512” for the tiny85 / Q8…
… but in practice, the actual clock speed isn’t exactly at spec:
At least, this is what I’ve found by measuring PWM frequency on my Fluke and estimating clock speed based on that. The Q8 should be within about 3% of its spec’d clock speed, but the S2+ is typically anywhere from 8% to 37% slower than spec. And one batch of S2+ drivers ended up running overclocked by 2X so it was about 36 kHz.
The Q8’s PWM would probably be louder on high levels, but it uses a PWM method which reduces noise and visibility by oscillating between two power levels instead of turning completely off between pulses. If you listen to it during strobe mode though, it’s likely pretty audible.
I don’t have a Q8 yet, but hopefully in a few days I’ll find out if its behavior matches the other tiny85 lights I’ve measured.
Night time with the Q8…
Checked finally the difference between 30Q and Panasonic protected cells
My production Q8 and my son’s
I can’t really tell the difference.
If there is a difference I don’t know if it is imagination or real so close
Checking proto now, pressed against my ear, don’t hear whine, unleas on strobe yes then I can hear something coming from inside
Nice pic Patmurris!
Great night shot. I’m itching to get some night beam shots but it’s pissing it down with rain here (and looks like it’s going to continue all week).
With x4 decent cells, feeding x4 decent emitters, the Q8 is hardly over-stretched.
No more than e.g. an olde worlde BLF A6. Actually less so, pretty much the same driver as the A6, except the FET has to cope with the current from 4 similar emitters, not one, so that is probably the bottleneck.
Sonic whine, for those with bat-ears I suspect is mainly generated by movement (maybe simplistically think of it as inductive repulsion) of loose LED wires, (Lenz’s law) maybe could be minimised by twisting them tightly or otherwise physically damping their movement.
Well, well. My Q8 showed up today. No issues, small nick on the ano. Clean and mean. 30Q’s from Illumn are charging rite now. Nightfall is here, and I got the flashaholic shakes!
Just tried out my Q8 (came yesterday but didn’t get a chance to check the mail till about an hour ago). What stands out the most to me is that, in addition to the fantastic output, ramping, etc., this thing is gorgeous. I’d seen all the pictures of course, but there’s something that just doesn’t translate until you’re holding it in your hand. Thanks for all the hard work and patience!
Has anyone DC-Fixed their Q8 yet? Interested in trying myself? Dumb question, but how do I remove the lens?
I think it just sticks on, doesn’t it? Do you have to take the lens out? I wish there was more info on this stuff, like how much output you lose, before and after shots, etc…
Doesn’t the stainless bezel just thread off?
Mine came in today and looks good. The inside of the barrel for the batteries had a few spots I smoothed down and the threads are a touch gritty, but that’s easily fixable. Not dark yet, but still fun to play with. I like the ramping UI more than I thought I would as I’m used to being conservative with battery life (backpacking), but I realized I really don’t care about efficiency for this light and the ramping is just so much fun. Double-click from off is fun too
For the config UI, I’m not a fan of it advancing automatically through the options as a new user. With the blinks being the only feedback you get and not knowing what you’re looking for, I’d far prefer that it just blinked the number of the current setting (or maybe even the value of the current setting?) every 3.5 seconds rather than advancing. I’m sure I’ll get used to it and I probably won’t spend much time in config. Not being able to see the current value of a setting (if there is a way, I haven’t found it yet) makes it tougher to know if you have the config set the way you want. This is just some feedback and in no way diminishes the function or value of the light. Heck, might even get me into the firmware side of things
I wanted to check out that bike mode strobe and after awhile, I finally got myself into Strobe 1, but from there, a click just turned off the light and a click/hold caused it to ramp. I tried explicitly setting the strobe mode to 3 in case it was just set for 1 strobe rather than all and I think I did it right, but not sure. It was probably set that way by default, but again, can’t tell. I’m sure I’m doing something silly and I’ll get it figured out eventually. I don’t think I’ll ever mount this light to my bike, but a preview for the FW3A will be cool!
LEDs are centered, switch LEDs look great, screws I can see are panhead and look fine (didn’t take head apart), and children are terrified. All in all, I’m happy
Thanks all for the hard work that went into this!!!
My only previous application of D-C-Fix was on the inside of the lens (on a P60 drop in I wanted to make floodier). Light loss is minimal (<5%). I’m assuming the bezel unscrews but my feeble attempts have so far been unsuccessful.
Have you seen my videos? This one https://youtu.be/rdwah7HJAJA shows me going into the blinkies. It’s dbl click, short pause, dbl click, then single clicks to go up through the 5 different ones. Your timing might just be a bit off. Once in blinkies you have to advance through them before 1.2 seconds each click. If you stay on a blinky mode longer than 1.2 seconds it locks in.
I also have a video showing the config menu. Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy. The cheat sheet shows the default settings, so just try changing one thing at a time and verifying it worked.
Still waiting to get mine to find out if there are issues or not. :weary:
A while back, I took some beamshots of an EagleEye X6 and a Convoy S2+ triple comparing d-c-fix and a holographic diffusion film from Luminit.
In that same thread, ‘saabluster’ mentioned the layers of diffusion material used inside newer TVs. I haven’t tried any on a flashlight but I’ve had several TVs apart for repair and the material looks promising. It’s also cheap if you keep an eye out for TVs on trash day. 
