There used to be the BLF project donation fund (link), and there must still be a few hundred dollar leftover. But it was run by The Miller who has not been seen for 5 months now. But as far as I know him, the fund will still be there alright, if only we can contact him about this. I will write him an email.
To be clear, the money thing came up because of a comment that software doesn’t take much time or effort. It was not a request for money, just a way to quantify effort.
As for the lantern, I already have most of the code written for it… I just haven’t tested it on actual lantern hardware yet. The tint ramping thing works as far as I can tell, though.
So that money was never spent on you either? It sounds like BLF-fundraising does not work very well, does it? At least it makes members organising it disappear. :person_facepalming:
I am not sure why they need Eagle files, the Gerber files and BOM can be given to an PCB factory to make the boards
I can mail you also an excel table with the component positioning for assembly that may help,
but a good fab can easily extract the nessesary positions with their programs from Gerber files and a worker checking that
or going the most easy way, let produce a fab from Gerber the board with solder paste stencil and a warker manually equip the prototype with solder paste and parts for reflow
I don’t know much how the programs work for those types of files, but i remember Barry mentioning that they needed .pcb files instead of .gbr, ( as you said its two different programs Eagle & Gerber)
I created a BLF account just to show my interest and for being put in the list.
I am also very interested in the USB charging mod. Does anyone know of any similar mod for the regular BLF Q8? I’m not skilled to do it myself, or solder/unsolder anything, but would happily throw my money if a USB-capable tube was available. Alternatively, what would be even better, would be a way to charge batteries without removing them from the holder. Not sure if this exist or is doable. I have a MF04 and a BLF Q8, these are my first multiple-18650 flashlights, and easily recharging just by unscrewing them to get the holders and connecting them be very convenient.
Barry sent me a couple of the first images of the BLF LT1 lantern design their engineers did based from the drawings & info i sent them. It looks really good & very close to the design perimeters i sent them.