This long body tube is quite unexpected… It sorts of voids the whole compact soda can concept.
I would suggest a screw in USB charging extension between the head and tube… That would only add about 10-15mm to the length and would make the Q8 easier to gift to non flashaolics.
Have you ever charged 20000+ mAh powerbank with usb 2.0?
If they make this, maybe also upgrade the driver to the latest Anduril for some additional features?
They are at least in contact with TomE, so a Narsil upgrade is likely, not sure about Anduril…
Thanks for the info, BlueswordM and djozz.
I don’t see much meaning in a 8P setup for this light. For more runtime it’s easier to carry 4 additional cells separately than their weight and the tubes weight all the time in your hand.
But if the cell configuration can be changed to 2S4P without too much work, I would rather buy this light as a modding host for 6V LEDs for a proper price.
Shouldn’t it be doable with QuickCharge over night?
Quickcharge will cost too much. Was discussed before.
Anyway, for the 4 cell version it’s usually not more than 12000 mAh capacity, and that’s not too much for USB-charging over night, and the cells won’t be completely empty everytime.
What I have seen how the battery carriers are constructed, with some cutting traces and adding wires you should be able to make them 2S4P. Then a 2S driver can be used that has the same battery connection side as the stock Q8. A more neat solution is designing new contact boards for the battery carriers (and upload on Oshpark for everyone to use 
) to get this done.
Sounds good, I wouldn’t mind to design the new carrier boards.
I haven’t followed the modding discussions for a while, is a MCPCB for XHP 50/70 available meanwhile?
Led4power has in stock mcpcbs for Q8 , 4040 and 5050 footprints 
https://led4power.com/product/l4p-blf-q8-40405050-38mm-dtp-direct-thermal-path-copper-mcpcb/
Great, thanks!
One concern here, if all 8 cells are run down to minimum voltage, then some bright spark decides instead of swapping them all out (since he only has a 4 bay charger), he will charge one carrier load and insert it, wouldn’t the resulting current from 4x30Q fully charged to 4x30Q fully discharged be rather like welding? There must be some sort of protection against that built in right?
With the proliferation of 4 bay chargers I suspect that charge imbalance would be quite a common problem. One easy way to encounter this would be to run a “normal” test on your cells in a Lii500, and forget that when END is flashing it doesn’t mean the cells are fully charged. Do that once on an 8 cell recharge with this setup and you now have one fully charged set and one set at a random voltage, without being aware. Happens easily.
XPL-HI, you say… :heart_eyes:
This could happen in any parallel setup, it’s not a specific problem of the light discussed here.
Btw. with a 4P2S setup it would be even worse, since the carrier with the depleted cells gets reversed voltage.
Especially when they’ve both publicly said they have nothing to do with one or the other
I guess it’s better not to ask haha … It’s a nice move Sofirn selling parts that Thorfire won’t …
Not only worse, far more common, since the 8 cells will rarely be charged together, or if together, nearly always in different chargers since more people will have two 4 bay chargers than an 8 bay.
How do you reach 20Ah with 4x18650? Max would be about 4x3200mAh - 12.8Ah, nowaday.
Whatever time it takes is much better for most people then having a dedicated Li-ion charger and handling the cells in and out of the light. It makes it straightforward, like charging a phone or a power bank without worrying about whatever cells are inside - and much safer (no chance to put one cell the wrong way).