E-switch UI Development / FSM

I don’t have any lights with ramping, never thought of the hold to change brightness thing. I was hoping FSM could do modes just like Bistro.

Out of all the flashlights and bike lights I have only three have the same user interface. I really want to do something about that.

It can do modes, like Bistro. There are several interfaces available, though the most popular one is Anduril. And instead of doing smooth ramping, it can do a mode group. Like Bistro, the user sets the number of modes. Unlike Bistro, the user can also set the brightness of the lowest and highest mode, and it’ll automatically space the in-between levels evenly. The actions from there are a little different than Bistro too — hold for a brighter mode, release and hold to go to a dimmer mode.

Or if you want e-switch lights to work almost exactly like Bistro, Flintrock added e-switch support to Bistro-HD. It pretends the e-switch is a clicky switch, even making sure to turn the light off momentarily while the button is pressed. It uses short and medium presses to go up and down. However, since an e-switch can’t actually cut power, turning the light off requires an extra-long press.

Bistro works fine on the clicky lights.

What I would like to do is unify my bike lights somehow. Getting to low mode fast when rounding a bend at speed on a bumpy trail and meeting another trail user needs to be easier. Too often I wind up in programming or strobe mode.

Now that Narsil and Anduril are available for buck drivers it has me thinking about replacing the Pic’s with AtTinys on a board glued to the LED shelf. How the light reacts to overheating is a big concern. The lights with a remote battery pack are quite small for the power they produce. The light needs to be able to protect itself when going slow or stopped but can’t step down abruptly when going fast in tricky sections.

The way you have Anduril responding to heat looks really good. It can’t match the Pic based lights with an actual temperature sensor but having the MCU to the shelf should be good enough. Ideally I’d like to remove some functions so they can’t be accidentally accessed or heavily debounce the e-switch. One button press can turn into many depending what the front tire runs into on the trail. I’m OK with basic Arduino stuff, a quick look at Anduril code tells me I am in for a steep learning curve.

Hello, maybe this question is already asked, but i dont want to get through 300 posts here :frowning:

i have BLF A6 driver, now i want to flash new FW which supports e-switch, which FW should i flash, thank you
I can reflow the attiny 13 to attiny 85 if needed

The BLF A6 driver has an issue with large voltage spikes on each FET pulse. The attiny13 handles this like a champ, but other attiny models reboot when the voltage goes out of spec. So they don’t work well above 4 or 5 Amps.

So you could stick with attiny13-based firmware, which will only have very simple interfaces, or you could mod the driver even further to fix the voltage spikes, or you could get/make drivers which don’t have that problem.

It sounds like a pretty detailed project, doing fairly deep modifications of both hardware and firmware. Have you considered making a thread for it here on BLF? It’d be exactly the sort of thing people love to see and talk about.

The hardware should be fairly easy if it’s possible at all. Del and (mostly) you have already solved the biggest problems.

The most daunting part is trying to understand FSM and Anduril. All the modes I don’t want to accidentally enter need to be removed or made inaccessible to the e-switch. If I get to the point where I’m able to do this its going to make other small projects I’d like to do possible.

Typing speed and writing skills are not my strong points, any thread I create will be pretty bland.

If, for example, you wanted to disable the ability to go from “off” to the strobe modes… go to the off_state() function, look for the part where it changes state to strobe, and comment that out. Basically, remove this:

    // click, click, long-click: strobe mode
    else if (event == EV_click3_hold) {
        set_state(strobe_state, 0);
        return MISCHIEF_MANAGED;
    }

This basically removes one arrow in the UI diagram, and thus gets rid of an entire set of blinkies.

Or there are other FSM-based UIs which don’t have all that extra stuff to begin with. You might do better making something new instead of removing most of the fancy parts you don’t want. The DarkHorse UI might work for the purpose you described, though it could probably use better thermal regulation.

Using the pyramid method fixed the issue completely when building triples with high current using a A6 or X6 board transplanting the attiny85 running NarsilM. I used Djozz’s pic’s as a guide. :wink:

I’ll have to look at Dark Horse, if it doesn’t have smooth ramping it could be a good place to start. Or taking a functioning program, understanding and removing one piece at a time and seeing what breaks. Ideally it gets so stripped down that e-switch programming is removed. If I end up writing my own program I’ll probably use a different MCU with more pins and do it in Arduino, it comes with training wheels. And it will be very, very basic.

Good temperature regulation is important, there won’t any hands monitoring temperature for long periods of time. And stepping down to 400 lumens after cresting a hill on the trail and heading down at 20+ km/hr will probably end badly for me.

Step one is to wait for a new buck driver to arrive for a flashlight and then use the old driver as a proof of concept.

If you’re familiar with Arduino, FSM should be pretty comfortable. It uses a very similar code interface, except it has a bunch of flashlight-related and e-switch-related stuff already taken care of in a library. You mostly just have to design the interface flowchart-style, then convert the flowchart bubbles into _state() functions and convert the flowchart lines into state changes.

The Baton UI might be a simpler place to start. ZebraLight (DarkHorse) is kind of a funky interface.

So i have do some research on BLF A6 driver and attiny 13, the driver already uses the Interupt pin, so E-switch is hard to add, i guess

I’d like to try Anduril on the BLF Q8.

I don’t have any knowledge on flashlight programming, so maybe just a precompiled hex file that will work on the stock BLF Q8, and also what exact command-line to use (Windows command line).

(I have a USBASP programmer device and have downloaded AVRDude software; but have yet to try a successful flashing with it)

I can’t seem to find the correct Anduril repository from TK’s firmware repository here:
https://code.launchpad.net/~toykeeper/flashlight-firmware/

~

another question:

I’d also like to flash an old Convoy C8 XM-L2 (the one with the 5/3-group modes L-M-H-Strobe-SOS) into Biscotti, I’ve found the biscotti.hex file from here (hope it’s the correct one):
https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~toykeeper/flashlight-firmware/convoy/files/head:/ToyKeeper/bistro/biscotti/

what specific command line should I use with avrdude?

Pardon my newbie questions…

The avrdude commands are in the bin/flash*.sh files, one file per MCU type. Like, flash-85.sh for attiny85.

Anduril (latest dev versions) are in the fsm branch under ToyKeeper/spaghetti-monster/anduril/. Or I have precompiled versions here:

http://toykeeper.net/torches/fsm/

I’ll probably add hex files to the repository at some point, maybe next time I merge the dev branch back into trunk. But for now they’re on my janky personal site simply because it’s convenient.

Thanks to the above responses.

I was able to flash the BLF Q8 from stock NarsilM v1.0 to NarsilM v1.2 (check version will now blink v1.2). Then I also flashed to Anduril (thanks for the link).

The command I used for flashing to Anduril, I copied from here:

“avrdude -c usbasp -p t85 -u -U lfuse:w:0xe2:m -U hfuse:w:0xdf:m -U efuse:w:0xff:m -Uflash:w:anduril-q8-2017-11-08.hex”
(I changed the hex file name to the correct name)

In the above message thread, Tom E says:

“The 0xde vs. 0xdf does make a difference —

0xdf is Not Recommended. It disables Brown Out Detection.”

I wonder what is “Brown Out Detection”? Also, since I just copied and pasted the command line above, I used the “0xdf” which is supposed “not recommended”.
Do I need to reflash Anduril on the BLF Q8 using “0xde” which is recommended by Tom E?

~

So far, I’m still trying to figure out Anduril’s usage (lots of options… but then again I also haven’t tried out all the tons of options in the stock BLF Q8 firmware; just that the Anduril “special strobe modes” look more interesting.)

I do have a question regarding the “thermal control/tempcheck mode” for Anduril on the BLF Q8 (I used the 2018-07-01 BLF Q8 Anduril hex file)

“Tempcheck mode:
* 1 click: off
* 2 clicks: battcheck mode
* 4 clicks: thermal config mode

  • Hold: thermal calibration mode

Thermal config mode:
* Setting 1: calibrate sensor:
At buzz, click N times for N degrees C. For example, if the light
is current at “room temperature” of 22 C, click 22 times. Is
intended to only be done once upon initial setup, or not at all.
* Setting 2: temperature limit:
At buzz, click N times to set thermal limit to roughly 30 C + N.

Thermal calibration mode:

  • Hold until hot: set new ceiling value
  • … don’t hold: blink out current ceiling value and exit”

So when I got to TempCheck mode, 4-clicks gets me to “thermal config” mode. I notice 2 buzzes, so that corresponds to the “Calibrate sensor” and the set “Temperature Limit”.

However, while in TempCheck mode, I also tried HOLDing the button to get into Thermal Calibration mode. But the flashlight does not seem to be doing anything

(I’ve tried it Temperature Calibration on other firmwares, namely: Bistro (Astrolux S2) and NarsilM (Emisar D4), which will put the flashlight in Turbo, and just hold down the button until it’s too hot, then release the button.)

However, when I HOLD down the button while the BLF Q8 (Anduril) is in TempCheck mode, the flashlight does not seem to go into Turbo mode, so it’s not getting hot. What could be the issue and how do I set Thermal Calibration?

Toykeeper:
Now only the Q8 version has the indicator led support in Andúril or it is easy to activate it in other versions?
I want to put one led in the center of my D4 optic as an indicator.

Oh, sorry. That text file was originally a todo list. Items marked with “*” are completed, and items marked with “-” are not. Items marked with “+” are partially completed.

The “hold until hot” thing was never implemented. I used a more precise calibration method instead, which is the two “buzz” parts you noted. Tell it what the current temperature is, and how hot it should get before regulating down.

About brownout detection, it works kind of like LVP / low-voltage protection, except in hardware instead of firmware. And it increases standby power draw by about 20-30 uA, if I recall correctly.

In the case of a genuinely low battery, the firmware’s LVP activates long before the BOD would. It steps down repeatedly until it gets to moon, at which point it has the MCU underclocked enough that it should keep running fine until a much lower voltage. And then it shuts off. This happens at around 2.8V to 3.0V. But the 0xDF brownout detection doesn’t activate until 1.8V or so, at which point the battery has probably already become permanently damaged.

There is also 0xDD BOD at 2.7V, but it risks shutting the light off during turbo or other really high modes, instead of allowing the LVP to step down as intended.

So, as far as I can tell, there are three choices:

  • 0xDD (2.7V BOD): May activate too early and interfere with firmware-based LVP.
  • 0xDE (1.8V BOD): Unlikely to activate at all, because li-ion cells don’t safely go that low and LVP shuts things off long before it would happen.
  • 0xDF (no BOD): Reduces standby power draw and relies entirely on LVP.

The one situation where I could see BOD being useful is if something physically interferes with the power connection for a moment, briefly dropping power to very low voltages. LVP won’t respond because it doesn’t act until voltage has been low for at least one second. And during the split-second of low voltage, the MCU could potentially behave very strangely, executing random instructions which most likely make it freeze.

Basically, if you drop the light and the battery connection gets briefly weak enough to confuse the MCU, the flashlight could lock up and require a power cycle. BOD could, in theory, make it shut off instead of locking up… but I’m not sure if it actually works. I’ll have to try it on my lightsaber prototype and see if it makes a difference, because the lightsaber’s charge port is weak and can probably trigger BOD during impact.

Of course, for lightsaber use, it needs to not lock up or shut down at all. So I plan to add a big capacitor somewhere to keep the MCU running until normal power is restored. But the prototype doesn’t have that, so it might be a good platform for testing BOD.

If you want an indicator LED on a D4, edit the D4 config file to copy a few things from the Q8 config file. These are probably the options of interest:

// the button lights up
#define USE_INDICATOR_LED
// the button is visible while main LEDs are on
//#define USE_INDICATOR_LED_WHILE_RAMPING
// enable blinking indicator LED while off
#define TICK_DURING_STANDBY

The “while ramping” option should probably be off, if the aux LED is under the optic instead of the button.

Thank you TK! I thought I will put there a warm white led but with the off while ramping option I can put there anything.

Thanks for the clear explanation, TK!

Although I’m still not sure if 0xDE is used, any idea how much would be the power draw versus when it’s just 0xDF.

In stock form for BLF Q8 versus Q8 running Anduril, would there be an increased power draw when OFF?