At this time of the day I don’t know if this was meant as a joke, but I have to clarify anyway in case of any uninformed readers taking this seriously.
“Unprotected” means just that - the lack of any protection (by the means of an added protective circuitry). Unprotected li-ion cells do, however, have safety features including more than those inherent in the chemistry, materials, insulation etc. Such devices include over-pressure valves and fuses or a combination of these; in case of cylindrical cells, typically found under the positive contact. These are irreversible and will cause the cell to read a dead 0 volts when they operate correctly. These will also not activate from overdischarging or just from overcharging by itself. When they do, it’s often quite dramatic.
Just going very rapidly from about 2.5 to 0.8 volts is not indicative of a protective measure activating, just a feature of the li-ion chemistry. However, this is not expected behavior in most typical LED flashlights like the linear regulated or FET driven variety. This IS expected in various other scenarios including a dead short.
Mistaking electrically protected batteries for non-protected ones is common, though. It’s not unheard of that unprotected li-ion batteries were sold as protected and vice versa.
Mostly they should have that; a pressure relief valve that permanently opens under a high internal pressure, designed to prevent/interrupt a thermal runaway during an internal short, a dead short or other overload event. It appears this can be missing in cells of questionable quality.
They can also have an actual fuse that melts at high temperature(even caused by a high temperature inside the cell itself), and the pressure relief valve can be separated in two stages: open circuit at a certain pressure, release pressure at a higher treshold.
The cell should read 0 volts after the activation of these features and show a very high resistance, refusing to accept charge at all.
A “protected cell” as a device consisting of an unprotected cell and a protection circuit will also have the same features as the original cell.
According to ToyKeeper, the first batch lights had led wires long enough that you just undid the 2 screws holding the driver down and you could tilt the driver enough to get the clip on.
The later batches switched to slightly shorter led wires and those require unsoldering them from the mcpcb in order to rotate the driver enough to get the clip on but still allow enough room to reflash.
Don’t listen to me, I have a sample size of one. Listen to Tom.
The second batch is shorter, but should still be long enough to reflash without soldering. Tom measured several and found the wire lengths were very consistent and just long enough.
As for flashing info, click the Link in my signature or use the “README” in the code repository.
Thanks for those info, ToyKeeper. That’s great to know. And of course, allow me to thank you and Tom E for programming all these nice firmware (although I’m still trying to learn about them…)
I’ve ordered these 3 items a couple of weeks ago, waiting for them to arrive, maybe in a week or two…
Any idea if the item you linked — “ATMEGA/ATTiny51 AVR ISP USBASP Programmer” is better (can flash more chip types?) or just the same with the one I ordered ” ATMEGA8 ATMEGA128 AVR ISP USBASP Programmer” — what are the differences between various programmer devices?
in RAMPING: Triple-click, double-click, double-click
There shouldn’t be any batch 1 lamps left. And the coated lens shouldn’t be any longer on new lamps. It made a visual tint shift vs. an only measureable brighter light (you couldn’t see it)
I dont think the Q8 has recieved the newer firmware yet, has it? Tom just finalized it a couple weeks ago. Has it officially been updated? There’s not much talk about it here.