some hot running olights has this staged turbo (turbo 1 -> double click -> turbo 2) and it works for the users.
The FW3A overheats (without regulation) in Turbo, so I guess it makes sense.
a double click, double click brings you to TURBO
With this setup you has quick access to 4 different brightness levels froom OFF
floor (or Moon if you chose that low)
memorized level
ceiling
TURBO
The FW3A will run about 15sec on turbo an than throttle, so it will reduce anyway. I guess most will have as ceiling a level which is thermally stable. The ussage of a 15sec blast is for me limited.
you can set the ceiling to TURBO, and you can have different ceilings in SMOOTH and STEPPED
maybe it can be configured by the user if he wants to to have from OFF -> double click -> TURBO
The question will come anyway
Please add me for a 3rd. I am 494 and 1106 already.
Love the clean look of the prototype and would keep at least one as is.
Don’t want anything to slow down production but would also like an optional head with indents cut out to install tritium vials. Guess I could find someone to do that for me but don’t know if that causes problems with the anodization.
Ideally, something more opaque would be better, like the Olight GitD traffic wand included with the S1 Mini, or the Thrunite T10T traffic wand. Those are both nice, except for being too small.
I remind that Lumintop produced some small diffusers for the Tool AA! They are made of a soft luminescent material (silicone?!).
Maybe they can produce something alike, even if not in that material. Not sure how much cost that would add, though…
I prefer a ramping muggle mode. I have eight lights running TK’s excellent Andúril UI. When I lend out a Q8 or Emisar I simply say, “Click for on and off. Hold to change brightness.” I don’t even mention ‘reversing,’ and people still catch on quickly.
Exiting muggle mode with a simple power cut isn’t ideal. Like djozz mentioned and joechina reiterated, the first thing most people do with a flashlight is open it to look at the cell. Then they usually try their best to cross-thread it back together.
Quite often, someone will borrow my light and enter battery check or strobe mode by clicking repeatedly while staring into the emitter. “Hmm, it’s not doing what I expected. I’d better press the button some more!”
T18, the “second batch” is for prototypes only. Things aren’t far enough to actually start manufacturing or other production-related stuff.
The list is public so there is a good chance Lumintop has looked at it, but I don’t think it has been explicitly delivered. People can still sign up whenever.
Thank you TK, so I didn’t miss out that’s great, such a beautiful light.
I’ve sort of learned on some of these projects to sign up and then when it happens it happens,
The BLF GT took along time and I actually forgot about that light until I got the notice,
Thanks again and keep up the great work as always..!
Off -> double click: Go to the ceiling.
Ceiling -> double click: Go to turbo.
Turbo -> double click: Go back to memorized level.
No turbo from off?
As bmengineer and joechina said, the user can configure it to do turbo from off by setting the ceiling to turbo. In that case, the sequence is:
Off -> double click: Go to turbo.
Turbo -> double click: Go back to memorized level.
The floor, ceiling, and anything above the ceiling aren’t remembered unless ramped to. So if you take a shortcut to the floor, ceiling, or turbo, it does not replace the memorized level. It’s safe to turn the light off from those levels, or take another shortcut from those levels, without erasing memory.
maukka wrote:
Hopefully at least with the momentary if turbo was the last mode used.
Momentary uses the memorized level, which is the last-ramped level. If the user ramped up to turbo, momentary uses turbo. If they took a shortcut to turbo, the memorized level is lower so momentary is lower too. Same story with beacon.
What is not yet determined is what the light should do if it’s on, at a low or medium level, and the user double clicks. Should this go to the ceiling, or should it go directly to turbo?
would also like an optional head with indents cut out to install tritium vials. Guess I could find someone to do that for me but don’t know if that causes problems with the anodization.
There probably isn’t enough material to remove for that. Cutting slots for tritium vials would probably expose internal parts of the light or interfere with threads. Some other lights have enough extra bulk for vials to fit, but this one is thinner and avoids extra material to reduce weight.
However, trits could still be installed in or under the optic.
What is not yet determined is what the light should do if it’s on, at a low or medium level, and the user double clicks. Should this go to the ceiling, or should it go directly to turbo?
Since holding the button already ramps you to the ceiling quickly enough, it makes sense to use the double-click to get to turbo.
Please put me on the list. I kept looking at those first 2 pictures in the thread and kept asking myself: do I really want to have a BLF light that I dont like the shape off. Now I finally saw the proto type pics and actually like it.. Much better than the original design, that looked like a $5 ebay light to me. Glad it came out nicer than expected and thats the reason im so late to the game :$
While on, the user can switch between smooth and stepped ramp by clicking three times.
In either mode, the user can enter a config menu for that mode by clicking four times. This menu has the following entries:
Floor level.
Ceiling level.
Number of steps (stepped ramp only).
For each option, it’ll blink N times, then “buzz”. During the buzz, click one or more times to enter a number, or simply wait to go to the next setting with no changes. The “buzz” keeps going as long as you keep clicking, so there is no hurry if you want to enter a big number.
Modes which have a config menu are:
Ramp modes (smooth, stepped).
Beacon. (lets user set number of seconds between flashes)
Tempcheck. (lets user calibrate room temperature and thermal ceiling)
The longest menu is three items (for the stepped ramp settings).
There are also settings which are configured without entering a menu:
Ramp brightness. Is also used for momentary and beacon modes.
Ramp style.
Remembers which mode was last used in the “strobes” group.
Strobe speed, for both strobes.
Bike flasher brightness.
Candle mode brightness. (not saved in eeprom)
Whether muggle mode is active. (not implemented yet)
On lights with a lighted switch (Q8, not FW3A): Button brightness while off, for both regular “off” mode and lockout mode.
Lockout mode functions as a momentary moon mode, for quickly checking things without the need to unlock the light. The brightness of this momentary mode is determined by the floor of the current ramp.
For the regular modes, it basically has two profiles which you can switch between with a triple click while on. One profile is smooth, the other has steps. They can have completely different limits, like one with moon and one without, one with full turbo in the ramp and one with a lower limit, one for inside and one for outside, or whatever. There are no predefined mode groups though, because the user can create their own with a few clicks.
What is not yet determined is what the light should do if it’s on, at a low or medium level, and the user double clicks. Should this go to the ceiling, or should it go directly to turbo?
Since holding the button already ramps you to the ceiling quickly enough, it makes sense to use the double-click to get to turbo.
That’s what it does now, but I wasn’t sure if it’s the right choice. It would be more consistent if it went to the ceiling first, like it does when off. But for quickly checking out a sound while walking the dog, it’s more convenient if it goes from 10 lm directly to 3000 lm on the first double-click, then back again on the second double-click.
TK, isn’t it fun explaining the same thing over and over again? A simple look at the diagram explains the answers to all the questions.
The step-down from heat can also be adjusted through thermal regulation, so it’s not NECESSARILY 15 seconds of blast time. You’ll want to let go of it soon after that, probably, but if it’s a cold night and you have gloves on then it’s potentially a run-it-til-the-cell-dies scenario.
Edit: From post number 3… the UI diagram… set it up virtually however you wish.
Please put me on the list. I kept looking at those first 2 pictures in the thread and kept asking myself: do I really want to have a BLF light that I dont like the shape off. Now I finally saw the proto type pics and actually like it.. Much better than the original design, that looked like a $5 ebay light to me. Glad it came out nicer than expected and thats the reason im so late to the game :$
Please sign me up for 1.
Wow what a lousy (dick) comment about the original design, $5.00 E-Bay light? I’m so glad it now meets your approval your highness
There was nothing wrong with the original design, alot of us signed up for it just the way it was, and still like it that way!
a/ I signed up for the original version but
b/ I think the current version is even better but
c/ not everybody thinks that way but
d/ everybody is entitled to have his/her own opinion because
e/ there is no accounting over taste (which has helped evolution a lot) but
f/ the correct way to communicate that is to say that you see it different and not that the other person is a !@#$% blind sod.
—
You are a flashaholic if you are forced to come out of the closet, to make room for more flashlights.
To enter ramp config it is 4 clicks
(from OFF you lock out with 4 clicks)
other configs are 3 clicks
What about: click, click, click, hold for all configs?
So it would be uniform and no problems when sb. wants the lamp to lock out while it is ON.
(So 4 clicks from ON would have no function)
And config would be a bit more hidden.
Well Joe, I reckon having the light in hand and running through the UI makes the chart make a lot more sense. I’ve been using Anduril in several different lights for a while now and it all works beautifully. A lot of us here have been flashing Anduril in our builds, so too much change now is sort of bad to the greater good. Not that we can’t re-flash the drivers we’ve built, but at some point it has to be good where it is and let TK rest.
Think about that.
What happened to MattAus when we used him too harshly, designing our drivers? He disappeared. What happened to Wright, also designing our drivers? Gone. Comfychair? Mr. Hawk? ChicagoX? We mean well I know, but when we have someone that knows how doesn’t mean we have to use them til they burn out. Change this, change that, re-design this, can you do that? Hell if we were paying her she’d quit!
Well it was a suggestion, adressing that people in NarsilM end up too easy in config.
And the command would be the same.
If she thinks it’s worthy she may implement it, if it is a brain fart then not.
The config is intentionally easy to access. I also used small mode-specific config menus instead of a monolithic master config mode, to make it easier to use. I always have to refer to the manual to remember what Narsil’s config options are, but I hope to avoid that need in Anduril.
In general, I tried to map inputs so the more common an action is, the fewer button presses it takes. For example, beacon mode. One click is “off”. Two clicks is “next mode”. So it takes three clicks to access beacon config. Then there is only one setting, the number of seconds per flash. Click twice for a two-second beacon (flash once every two seconds), click five times for a five-second beacon, etc. It could be harder to access, but there wouldn’t be much point.
In regular output modes, one click does the most common operation — turning on and off. A hold does the second-most-common operation, changing brightness (and if brightness is “off”, it changes from there by starting at moon). Two clicks for turbo. And throughout the entire UI, click-release-hold does the opposite of a hold… regardless of what hold is mapped to. So all one-press and two-press operations are used. That leaves three and higher for less common operations. Three clicks while on switches between ramp profiles, giving easy access to both without having to enter a config mode. Then to actually configure a ramp, four clicks. It’s not hard to access, but it’s also not hard to remember what the settings are… floor, ceiling, and maybe number of steps. This theme repeats in thermal config mode too — low and high in that order. If entered by accident, the menus are not hard to skip, since with only 1-3 options in each menu it only takes a few seconds to wait through the whole thing.
I could see maybe changing the beacon and temperature config modes so they’re on four clicks, for consistency. Then we’d have a global “three clicks for a special action, four clicks for a menu” theme. I wouldn’t want to make them unnecessarily hard to access though.
There aren’t many three-click “special actions” though.
Ramp: Change ramp style/profile.
Lockout: Change button brightness, if there is a lighted button.
Candle: Add 30 minutes to the timer. (not yet implemented)
Sunset: Add 30 minutes to the timer? (not implemented, currently hardcoded to 1 hour)
Also not many config menus:
Ramp. (one menu per ramp)
Beacon timing.
Thermal settings.
There was also a plan to make “factory reset” easy to access, but it doesn’t work on the FW3A due to the button being on the tail instead of the head. The factory reset on my other devices is mapped to “disconnect power, hold button, connect power, continue holding for 3 seconds”. On my lightsaber, for example, this function is called “self destruct”. It animates an increasingly bright red warning before the reset, then explodes into a fading blue-and-white pattern when the reset has finished. The user can let go during the red phase to abort.
No TURBO from OFF was the reason why I asked.
A few thoughts
The question will come anyway
I am fine with the UI as it is.
Interest
Hi, please add me to the list (1 Nichia). Thank you.
Please add me for a 3rd. I am 494 and 1106 already.
Love the clean look of the prototype and would keep at least one as is.
Don’t want anything to slow down production but would also like an optional head with indents cut out to install tritium vials. Guess I could find someone to do that for me but don’t know if that causes problems with the anodization.
Either way this light may be a game changer.
Please put me on the list for two of these! Thanks!
Brighter every day!
Put me on the list for 2.
Thanks
I remind that Lumintop produced some small diffusers for the Tool AA! They are made of a soft luminescent material (silicone?!).
Maybe they can produce something alike, even if not in that material. Not sure how much cost that would add, though…
MY REVIEWS THREAD /// My Flashlight Collection ///
Mods: 1 / 2 // TIR: 1 / 2 // Others: Biscotti 3 + 1*7135 / Triple TIR w/ XP-G2 /// My Review's Blog (PT) /// OL Contest 2019 /// OL Contest 2020 /// GIVEAWAYs: 1 / 2
Friends ask me almost daily to borrow a flashlight, and I like to share.
I posted my thoughts on muggle mode several months ago when ToyKeeper first asked for input, but I’ll repeat myself.
I prefer a ramping muggle mode. I have eight lights running TK’s excellent Andúril UI. When I lend out a Q8 or Emisar I simply say, “Click for on and off. Hold to change brightness.” I don’t even mention ‘reversing,’ and people still catch on quickly.
Exiting muggle mode with a simple power cut isn’t ideal. Like djozz mentioned and joechina reiterated, the first thing most people do with a flashlight is open it to look at the cell. Then they usually try their best to cross-thread it back together.
To exit muggle mode, I like TK’s ‘password’ or ‘unlikely-to-be-done-by-accident sequence of presses’ concept. Nothing complicated, but perhaps six-clicks-and-hold rather than just six-clicks or similar.
Quite often, someone will borrow my light and enter battery check or strobe mode by clicking repeatedly while staring into the emitter. “Hmm, it’s not doing what I expected. I’d better press the button some more!”
Thank you TK, so I didn’t miss out that’s great, such a beautiful light.
I’ve sort of learned on some of these projects to sign up and then when it happens it happens,
The BLF GT took along time and I actually forgot about that light until I got the notice,
Thanks again and keep up the great work as always..!
As bmengineer and joechina said, the user can configure it to do turbo from off by setting the ceiling to turbo. In that case, the sequence is:
Off -> double click: Go to turbo.
Turbo -> double click: Go back to memorized level.
The floor, ceiling, and anything above the ceiling aren’t remembered unless ramped to. So if you take a shortcut to the floor, ceiling, or turbo, it does not replace the memorized level. It’s safe to turn the light off from those levels, or take another shortcut from those levels, without erasing memory.
Momentary uses the memorized level, which is the last-ramped level. If the user ramped up to turbo, momentary uses turbo. If they took a shortcut to turbo, the memorized level is lower so momentary is lower too. Same story with beacon.
What is not yet determined is what the light should do if it’s on, at a low or medium level, and the user double clicks. Should this go to the ceiling, or should it go directly to turbo?
There probably isn’t enough material to remove for that. Cutting slots for tritium vials would probably expose internal parts of the light or interfere with threads. Some other lights have enough extra bulk for vials to fit, but this one is thinner and avoids extra material to reduce weight.
However, trits could still be installed in or under the optic.
Since holding the button already ramps you to the ceiling quickly enough, it makes sense to use the double-click to get to turbo.
link to djozz tests
Okay, so WE can adjust our ramp ceiling?
I was thinking along the lines of NarsilM v1.2 were the ceiling is set before flashing the driver. It’s not user setable.
But if the user can set the ceiling, it’s all good.
Texas Ace Lumen Tube and JoshK Sphere calibrated with Maukka lights
Click this to go to signature links. I'm still around, just not reading many new threads.
Please put me on the list. I kept looking at those first 2 pictures in the thread and kept asking myself: do I really want to have a BLF light that I dont like the shape off. Now I finally saw the proto type pics and actually like it.. Much better than the original design, that looked like a $5 ebay light to me. Glad it came out nicer than expected and thats the reason im so late to the game :$
Please sign me up for 1.
The Eneloop 2005-2021 info thread
You can set the bottom (Moon level) and ceiling in both, smooth ramp and stepped ramp. They can be different in smooth and stepped!
Yes.
While on, the user can switch between smooth and stepped ramp by clicking three times.
In either mode, the user can enter a config menu for that mode by clicking four times. This menu has the following entries:
For each option, it’ll blink N times, then “buzz”. During the buzz, click one or more times to enter a number, or simply wait to go to the next setting with no changes. The “buzz” keeps going as long as you keep clicking, so there is no hurry if you want to enter a big number.
Modes which have a config menu are:
The longest menu is three items (for the stepped ramp settings).
There are also settings which are configured without entering a menu:
Lockout mode functions as a momentary moon mode, for quickly checking things without the need to unlock the light. The brightness of this momentary mode is determined by the floor of the current ramp.
For the regular modes, it basically has two profiles which you can switch between with a triple click while on. One profile is smooth, the other has steps. They can have completely different limits, like one with moon and one without, one with full turbo in the ramp and one with a lower limit, one for inside and one for outside, or whatever. There are no predefined mode groups though, because the user can create their own with a few clicks.
That’s what it does now, but I wasn’t sure if it’s the right choice. It would be more consistent if it went to the ceiling first, like it does when off. But for quickly checking out a sound while walking the dog, it’s more convenient if it goes from 10 lm directly to 3000 lm on the first double-click, then back again on the second double-click.
TK, isn’t it fun explaining the same thing over and over again? A simple look at the diagram explains the answers to all the questions.
The step-down from heat can also be adjusted through thermal regulation, so it’s not NECESSARILY 15 seconds of blast time. You’ll want to let go of it soon after that, probably, but if it’s a cold night and you have gloves on then it’s potentially a run-it-til-the-cell-dies scenario.
Edit: From post number 3… the UI diagram… set it up virtually however you wish.
Wow what a lousy (dick) comment about the original design, $5.00 E-Bay light? I’m so glad it now meets your approval your highness
KB1428 “Live Life WOT”
a/ I signed up for the original version but
b/ I think the current version is even better but
c/ not everybody thinks that way but
d/ everybody is entitled to have his/her own opinion because
e/ there is no accounting over taste (which has helped evolution a lot) but
f/ the correct way to communicate that is to say that you see it different and not that the other person is a !@#$% blind sod.
You are a flashaholic if you are forced to come out of the closet, to make room for more flashlights.
DB Custom,
no, it doesn’t. Even with the text
e.g. I don’t know if the FW3A resets the memorized level to max7135 when you repower it.
And the blinks in the smooth ramp? I think there was a poll they should be in.
And some things are better explained in #2963 than in #3.
@Toykeeper
To enter ramp config it is 4 clicks
(from OFF you lock out with 4 clicks)
other configs are 3 clicks
What about: click, click, click, hold for all configs?
So it would be uniform and no problems when sb. wants the lamp to lock out while it is ON.
(So 4 clicks from ON would have no function)
And config would be a bit more hidden.
To late to join in? Man I want one!!
It all started with just one flashlight.
Interest list updated.
- TK
FW3A thread – contact Neal on BLF or email for FW3A questions and support
Please add 1 more for me (total of 4)
Thanks
Please add me for 1 of these, thanks
The BLF Flashlight / Accessory / Battery / Spares Retailers Thread with Discount Codes
Well Joe, I reckon having the light in hand and running through the UI makes the chart make a lot more sense. I’ve been using Anduril in several different lights for a while now and it all works beautifully. A lot of us here have been flashing Anduril in our builds, so too much change now is sort of bad to the greater good. Not that we can’t re-flash the drivers we’ve built, but at some point it has to be good where it is and let TK rest.
Think about that.
What happened to MattAus when we used him too harshly, designing our drivers? He disappeared. What happened to Wright, also designing our drivers? Gone. Comfychair? Mr. Hawk? ChicagoX? We mean well I know, but when we have someone that knows how doesn’t mean we have to use them til they burn out. Change this, change that, re-design this, can you do that? Hell if we were paying her she’d quit!
Well it was a suggestion, adressing that people in NarsilM end up too easy in config.
And the command would be the same.
If she thinks it’s worthy she may implement it, if it is a brain fart then not.
The config is intentionally easy to access. I also used small mode-specific config menus instead of a monolithic master config mode, to make it easier to use. I always have to refer to the manual to remember what Narsil’s config options are, but I hope to avoid that need in Anduril.
In general, I tried to map inputs so the more common an action is, the fewer button presses it takes. For example, beacon mode. One click is “off”. Two clicks is “next mode”. So it takes three clicks to access beacon config. Then there is only one setting, the number of seconds per flash. Click twice for a two-second beacon (flash once every two seconds), click five times for a five-second beacon, etc. It could be harder to access, but there wouldn’t be much point.
In regular output modes, one click does the most common operation — turning on and off. A hold does the second-most-common operation, changing brightness (and if brightness is “off”, it changes from there by starting at moon). Two clicks for turbo. And throughout the entire UI, click-release-hold does the opposite of a hold… regardless of what hold is mapped to. So all one-press and two-press operations are used. That leaves three and higher for less common operations. Three clicks while on switches between ramp profiles, giving easy access to both without having to enter a config mode. Then to actually configure a ramp, four clicks. It’s not hard to access, but it’s also not hard to remember what the settings are… floor, ceiling, and maybe number of steps. This theme repeats in thermal config mode too — low and high in that order. If entered by accident, the menus are not hard to skip, since with only 1-3 options in each menu it only takes a few seconds to wait through the whole thing.
I could see maybe changing the beacon and temperature config modes so they’re on four clicks, for consistency. Then we’d have a global “three clicks for a special action, four clicks for a menu” theme. I wouldn’t want to make them unnecessarily hard to access though.
There aren’t many three-click “special actions” though.
Also not many config menus:
There was also a plan to make “factory reset” easy to access, but it doesn’t work on the FW3A due to the button being on the tail instead of the head. The factory reset on my other devices is mapped to “disconnect power, hold button, connect power, continue holding for 3 seconds”. On my lightsaber, for example, this function is called “self destruct”. It animates an increasingly bright red warning before the reset, then explodes into a fading blue-and-white pattern when the reset has finished. The user can let go during the red phase to abort.
Pages