It sounds like thereās some large source of resistance somewhere in the head end of the light, or between the head and the tube. As suggested, try cleaning and loosening/tightening everything.
ā¦
On a different note, the first three modes donāt use the FET at all, so they donāt dim until the battery is almost empty. Anything over ~140 lm uses the FET though, at least partially, and will change brightness with battery voltage. Mode 4/7 only uses the FET a little, so it doesnāt dim very much. This means four of the seven modes keep pretty consistent brightness, and only the top three are really prone to sagging.
Thanks for the suggestions. I have done the āspring bypassā mod to try to improve/reduce resistance where i could. Initially I thought it had fixed it but the victory was short lived.
Iāll take it apart again and confirm the connections are firm.
It definitely steps down through the modes right down to Moon mode.
Okay Iāll start by saying I have ordered this flashlight blf A6 but Iām still waiting for it to come in so I donāt have hands on experience yet. I also ordered the USB interface so I can reprogram it if necessary.
What Iām trying to do is interface it with my Morse code paddle. A morse code paddle is basically a fast way to type Morse code. Iāll try to attach pictures; but long story short thereās two paddles, hold one down and it goes dit-dit-dit hold the other down and it goes da da da hold them both at the same time and it goes dit da dit da dit da ( dit = the shorter or . sound and da = the longer sound or - ) when it alternates it starts with whatever paddle you touched first. If that doesnāt make sense and easier way to say it is thereās two levers and with just two movements you can type any letter. I built this myself Iām not an electronic genius or anything I followed YouTube blindly soldering together what I was told and lo and behold it works. I also had help from Friends.
Youāll see a schematic below basically the paddles make a buzzer beep the morse code out thereās also a connection for headphones which is labeled external speaker and there is also a mosfet it is labeled U2 BS170 there is an auxiliary cable just like a headphone connected to that mosfet there is a picture Iāll attach that shows what it out puts on the cable for when it is keyed and when it isnāt that is making sound and not making sound.
What Iām hoping to do here is make the flashlight flash the code as I type it this is going to be sort of a niche novelty thing not every day so I really donāt want to majorly modify the flashlight or the paddle as itās normally used connected to my radio for international coms.
What Iām wondering is can I connect the output cable from the mosfet to the driver and it just work that way or do I need to come up with something more complicated like figuring out how to connect the pic leg that drives the mosfet on the paddle directly to the mosfet on the board? I have a magnetic connector ordered Iām hoping to put it on the side of the head of the flashlight and use it to connect whatever wire I have to use so I donāt compromise the waterproofness. I can send more pictures if anything would help let me know and if anyone knows who would be able to help me with the driver interface here please tag them or let them know this is my first post so I really donāt know anyone. I want to thank you all for your help just by existing and sharing your knowledge led me to this moddable driver and the tutorial on how to flash it and thatās why I chose this light and this forum for this project.
Thanks for any help.
Rowe
PS if there are major modifications necessary to the paddles I can build a second board and dedicate it to the flashlight exclusively but it was kind of expensive mostly in shipping of everything so I would rather have something reversible or preferably just using the mosfet driven output switch that is already connected to the auxiliary cable.
Hi all.
I successfully build and flashed two different blf-a6.hex files on my modded c8 and on my triple s2+ to change the turbo timers, but I have an issue.
The medium and the long press require pressing the switch for much more time compared to what it should (0.5s-1.5s and >1.5s respectively). On stock firmware it works fine.
I also flashed the latest blf-a6.hex from the ToyKeeperās repo and it works fine.
I suspect that it has to do with the off time capacitor values in tk-calibration.h file.
The thing is that I donāt know what values to use.
The drivers are the banggood a6 ones.
Any help will be appreciated. Regards.
gismo, you may want to use the blf-a6 code branch instead of trunk. I think it has the values calibrated to match banggoodās drivers. Or use the values in battcheck/readings/manker-a6.*. Or measure them yourself using the other tools in the battcheck/ directory. The process is explained in the README file there.
ToyKeeper, the code from blf-a6-final branch did the job.
Thank you for your prompt response and for your contribution to the budget light community! :+1:
A couple months back I received a BLF A17DD-L driver that would misbehave.
Basically even though I would trigger a mode change, the output always stayed at the lowest level.
If you change the resistor value, itāll mess with other things tooā¦ and youāll have to recalibrate and reflash the firmware, assuming it even works at all.
The calibration process is documented in the ToyKeeper/battcheck/ directory.
Thanks for the answer ToyKeeper. Your readme describes thoroughly the whole procedure.
As you might have already guessed, I wonāt be going through the hassle
I damaged the LED so I need to replace it. I have the 1A version (cold). Can someone please tell me where I can find a replacement? What exactly do I need? If it is possible to replace the whole headā¦ even better. So I can spare myself of soldering. I canāt find any parts on the web :(.
Grab a Noctigon MCPCB with an XP-L or XM-L2 emitter already installed, probably from somewhere like intl-outdoor.com, and it should be pretty easy to replace the emitter and the board itās soldered onto. Just get one matching the original MCPCB size, and it should work fine. This will require unsoldering the +/- contacts though, then soldering those wires onto a new board.
BTW, if you want it more throwy, try XP-L HI.
My favorite for this light is XP-L 3D or XM-L2 3D. They give a nice wide hotspot in a neutral tint. I donāt recall offhand which one fits the centering ring better though.
MCPCB CREE XP-L V6 1A LED on Noctigon 16mm MCPCB
Thermal compound under the MCPCB Search - compound
As your from greece this may not be a good shipping option but this is what youāll need for the swap.
16mm copper board with led and thermal compound to transfer the heat to the flashlight.
Fasttech, or Kaidomain, may be cheaper on you from your location.
The swap will require soldering as Toykeeper explained. Not very high on the difficulty scale.
Hey guys, I need an other advice. It is not possible to unscrew the head of the lamp. And I mean, I cannot unscrew the tube that contains the driver & the LED from the tube that contains the reflector. Anyone who had similar issues? Any suggestions? I donāt want to damage the tubes, thus I didāt use any tools, but for sure I tried very hard, itās just not possible. Thank you!
If you have a pair of rubber gloves lying around, that might give you a bit of extra grip. Otherwise, you could try a pair of strap wrenches, although you might be just as well buying a new light for the cost of the strap wrenches and the spare parts.
We have an A6 each and are waiting on the tools mentioned in this thread Guide: how to flash ATtiny13a based drivers (NANJG, QLITE, etc.) with custom firmware to arriveā¦ But my question is this what else can we do with regards to modding/flashing the firmware? what othe firmwares are there?? I have the the 11mode(think its that) and partner has the 7/4 mode firmwareā¦ Could we flash the 11 mode version on her A6? if so where do I get it etc?
