My apologies blinker…. I have been out & about since I wrote that…. playing in the snow… 
I had a brain fart when I wrote that this morning…. :person_facepalming: …. But I see Jason & joechina got you squared away.
Again…… my apologies. 
Snow in Alabama. That must be rare. Not where I am. Am still having a hard time with my temperature step down and the timed step down for that matter. Would like to change it but I must be doing something wrong.
If you are in ramping mode you go into the configuration menu and on the third blink (thermal/timed stepdown) you click the button twice. It does a couple of blinks then goes to Turbo. At this point you just hold on to the light until it gets to the temperature that you want it to step down at and then click the button once. It does a blink or two then continues to the 4th menu option.
Note: If you click the button in less than 5 Seconds the settings will not be changed.
I confirmed this on my Supfire L5-S which has NarsilM v1.
Yep… pretty rare blinker. Usually an inch or two every now and then… we did get 5 inches this time… but it will warm up tomorrow & melt.
However back in early March 1993 we had a blizzard. Where I was got just over 2 feet of snow as did about half the state. The whole state had snow & a deep freeze for about a week. Even the coast had 2 - 4 inches.
The state was pretty much crippled for several days….
As far as temp stepdown, I have not fooled with that. I am just leaving mine on timed…. so I can be of no help there.
Good luck….
We had a little snow here in Houston last night. That’s a very rare site. Luckily it didn’t get to 32° so there was no ice on the overpasses or bridges.
mine worked for a day before one of the springs on the tail pcb came off. I tried to solder it back on but the solder just won’t stick to the spring!
ahh
Did you add flux? You might need to remove the old solder and use fresh along with flux. Flux it what helps it stick.
Actually, it might be best to not use the normal leaded solder with its lower melting point of 190°C. This job might be best for unleaded solder which melts at about 220°C. Which reminds me I need to buy some lead free.
Thanks Jason. It’s working. I have one of mine going for coming up on 2 hours and it is still just warm. Not close to hot. I don’t have 30qs in. Just solder blobbed Samsung batteries from a almost new laptop battery. Thanks again.
I had AIT at Fort McClellan in Oct./Dec. of 1969. It got cold but I can’t remember snow. I wasn’t prepared for how cold it got. Somewhere around freezing if I remember right.
Temp stepdown taken care of I think. Thanks.
Yeah… I live about 20 miles from Fort McClellan (It is closed now… 
)
Yeah it usually get cold here. We will hit single digits a couple of times a year… down to about 0 F.
Quiet a few nights in the high teens & low 20’s. Varies from year to year of course.
I talked with a friend in SE Alaska yesterday and we were a lot colder than they were. 
It’s always best to do this with fully charged high drain cells so you don’t have wait 2 hours. Lol
I did…but i just ended up with a spring I found in my parts bin and that took a second to solder. Once I bypass the springs, the mismatch current flow compare to the other 3 springs shouldn’t be a problem. Still waiting for my 20awg wires to arrive…was thinking about using 22awg but what the heck might as well go a step further.
Just cleaning up the battery tube, tin the screw holes, removed the small tail springs, and lightly sanded the positive ring…I’ve ready made great improvement on the output according to my light meter. Can’t wait to bypass the springs and replace the screws.
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Thanks for sharing that vanessanie. :+1: … 
…
Received my Q8 today, and I must say that I’m thoroughly impressed. Somehow I ended up in the discrete modes setting and couldn’t get back to ramping while I was walking my dog - but since I’ve got back and read the instructions, it all makes sense! Really looking forward to setting everything up to my liking.
Thanks to those who made this project possible!
I don’t know if this has been posted, but I just got an email from ThorFire saying they had a limited number of codes for Q8’s on Amazon US for $40. Based on the wording it sounds like it was sent out to other Q8 owners as well.
Took some time, but now my reply:
Yes, you might be right.
I’ve been using the light for some time to light up a room.
During than time, the light was just lying on its side on a windowsill.
The blind spot on the reflector is exactly at the bottom side.
So it might have happened, that some flux was flowing down the reflector, when it got hot…
The LED at this reflector also has a burn or dirt on the dome on the exact opposite side….
Maybe those two things have the same cause.
Strangely this light gets less hot than my second one.
Maybe the mcpcb doesn’t have good contact with the housing? Could it overheat because of such a possible problem?
And btw, I also discovered another minor issue with my second Q8:
Temperature blinkout is always 15°C higher, than actual temperature….
(Measured, immediately after a cold start of the lamp)
Temp calib is all over the place unfortunately. That's why we implemented temperature regulation based on a user defined level. Depending on the temperature being somewhat accurate would be awful.
The diff in heat between 2 lights is not a good sign, but the good thing is the lower temp light should be safer, not more dangerous. Could be lots of reasons for the temp differences - poor ground, maybe poor contact at the ground driver rim, etc.
Really?
My first Q8 was fully accurate, temperature related… (but it measures Voltage 0.2V lower, than actually, and has an AR-layer on the lens, which btw. is not bad)
That’s why I was wondering when the second Q8 was +15°C off…. (this one on the other hand is accurate, when it comes to Voltage measurement)
The second one is also a little bit brighter, maybe because of this it also gets much hotter, and it has NO AR-layer.
I tweaked the temp cal on one Q8 to be dead on, then with the same firmware got results of +3C, -3C, others up to 10C give or take. Range can be +/- 12C or so it seems, so having two at 15C from each other is certainly possible.
Talked to DEL bout it and the variance in the MCU's and Schottky diode can cause this. From DEL it sounds like we would have been better keeping the R1/R2 resistors for better accuracy, as long as the resistors were 1% or better, 0.5% sounds like the way to go. The extra parasitic drain wouldn't have been that bad. I didn't realize the error variance was going to be so great like this. I've been very disappointed with this, depressed I'd call it -- just wish I saw this as a possibility. It probably can be improved by installing a good R1/R2 of 220K/47K and of course the firmware changed accordingly.
I spent a lot of time improving the calculations using the internal ref (non R1/R2) method all for nothing... Again, I'm very down about all this. I don't think a "better" Schottky diode would help - I also spent time on researching alternate parts.
Again, sorry bout all this.