Fireflies ROT66 Flashlight

Ideal if you’re a one torch guy, I have 80…
It’s getting a chore to set temp control, bypass the ceiling mode which shouldn’t be default, disable the flashy modes, set the desired moonlight level. It’s getting to the point you accidentally press X number of times trying to do something and you have to re-read a 50,000 word User Manual to undo a cock-up.

Rant over.

Thanks JasonWW it worked. Thanks to everyone else for the helpful info. It ramps up much higher now. When I did 1 click for moon mode, it is a little brighter on the lowest setting and the flickering stopped. What's interesting is that turbo is still not as bright as my first rot66 xpl hi, maybe about 25% less bright. I'll put it down to the emitters themselves and call it a day.

Eh I like the ramp ceiling for the ROT66, since it has so many 7135 chips. It lets me reliably set the light to its highest regulated output.

I have about 60 but this is my first Anduril. I think it's a bonus to have so much room to customize the settings as much as one would want to. Not everyone has the same needs for a flashlight.

Doesn’t twisting the tailcap off and on do that?

No - wrong UI

I’m kinda indirectly saying I love it but I had to reshoot my D4S YouTube video as I realised I was presenting Turbo as 80% power!!! and believe me my vids take some making.

Yup!

I love a variable ceiling but it needs to be disabled from off and desperately needs to be able to be set easier. You should tap 10 times, the light buzzes, ramp up to set max, the light buzzes ramp down from your choosen max to set min. Leave buzzing on the min setting prompt for 4 secs if you want a 1 level light.

….white walls beg for help!



Newlumen (thank you) included a ‘correction key’ for us.
The window in the background, on the other side of the fence, features varied levels of luminosity.
If an attempt is made to balance the levels, we can see more rose/pink/magenta in the lowest CRI emitters (SST-20). In comparison, the 3A pooch pic is more neutral, and the Samsung has a typical hue.

I had not seen it. Thanks, very helpful. And thanks Mitosis for identifying a fix.
Loosened screws, pressed in batts, tightened screws. A simple fix.

I hadn’t seen how low parasitic drain from the Auxillary LEDs takes the battery voltage. Has that been measured, and is it safe since it can’t fit cells with a PCB? Thanks

The default configuration in Anduril sets the ceiling to the highest regulated level, which on most models is level 125 of 150. This can be changed to whatever you want though, and regardless of the value it uses, true turbo is still available by doing a double click while the light is on.

I’ve heard a few people report that, but I’m not sure what exactly causes it. The only time I’ve seen the lowest level flicker was on the first FW3A prototype, and swapping out a 7135 chip fixed it. I haven’t seen any flickering on any of my Fireflies lights though.

Another way around it is to set the lowest level a bit higher. Using level 3/150 should work.

To configure the ramp to go from 3/150 to 150/150…

  1. Turn the light on.
  2. Click 4 times.
  3. Light blinks once, then stutters. Click 3 times during the stutter to set the floor to 3/150.
  4. Light stops, pauses, blinks twice, then stutters. Click 1 time to set the ceiling to 150/150.

Then just wait for it to fall out of ramp config mode.

The stepped ramp also has a third option, to set the number of steps.

It’s 150 levels, not 250. Same as Narsil. This number was chosen because Tom wanted the full ramp to take 2.5 seconds from one end to the other, and the light’s timer runs at 62 fps (0.016 ms per tick), so that works out to about 150 frames or 150 steps.

I’m still trying to find the reason why some units flicker on the lowest level and some don’t. It may be that one of the 7135 chips isn’t quite right, or maybe there’s some electrical noise somewhere causing interference, or maybe things were flashed with the wrong fuse values, or maybe there’s some sort of weird timing interaction between the PWM cycle and the ADC cycle, or … I don’t know. But I haven’t been able to make any of my Fireflies lights flicker like that, so I haven’t been able to test theories.

I have seen some odd behavior on the aux LED board though, during specific parts of the ramp. So I think there may be some sort of feedback going on which is weak enough that it only affects the most sensitive parts at only a few specific levels. But I don’t have an electrical scope to look at the behavior of that in detail.

The aux LEDs turn red at 3.3V and turn off entirely at 3.0V. The amount of power drawn while off drops to a very low amount which I think is lower than the cell’s self-discharge rate.

The main LED driver also has low-voltage protection, causing it to shut off when the battery is too low.

So there isn’t much risk of having the battery drained below safe levels.

Thank you, very helpful to know.
Ever since I learned my Astrolux S42 breathing mode can deplete the battery to 2.38V, I am concerned with any type of drain when the torch is “off”. I do a head lockout on the S42.

The ROT66 has redundant protection and with the low draw you mentioned gives me comfort enough to not lock out the ROT66 when not in use. Happily too as the Aux LEDs are pointless if you can’t leave the torch “on” to admire.

The S42 was very badly designed, in general. But the breathing mode, in particular, is something I’ve avoided on purpose. It’s a nice-looking effect, but it greatly increases standby current. It’s implemented by drawing a slow triangle wave on the PWM duty cycle value, which requires running PWM while the light is off, which requires leaving the MCU on instead of going to standby. So the “standby” current is about 4 to 5 mA.

I usually aim for standby current in the range of 0.2 mA to 0.001 mA. So… no breathing mode.

The ROT66 with aux LEDs runs a bit higher than that, like 0.2 mA to 0.5 mA, but that’s pretty okay with a multi-cell power source like it has. That should last about 2 to 5 years on standby… and the user can turn the pots on the aux LED board to reduce the brightness as far as possible.

Thank you, very helpful! Can ramp to turbo now and flicker is gone by setting the low just a little higher.

Okay, I corrected my earlier post and let the fellow in the video know it’s 150 steps.

I do get confused that it’s 150 steps, but I think it’s in the code where you have 255 levels. :disappointed: Ah, confusing.

It’ll get more confusing when we get drivers with 16-bit PWM counters. Then it’ll be 0 to 255 sometimes and 0 to 65535 sometimes. But probably still 150 ramp steps, because that number seems to work pretty well.

Ah so that’s what you meant by 125/150 earlier. I’m gonna try experimenting with maybe 120/150 or 115-110/150 to see if I can get a slightly lower output that will manage heat better.

Man, the temperature calibration was a good 10c or so off on my particular ROT66 from the looks of it. I didn’t have a thermometer on hand to get a completely accurate reading of my room temp, but I do know it was around 18-22c, so I dialed in 22c just to play it safe. My ROT66 read 35c!
I also changed the temp limit from 45c to 55c.

I also set the ramp ceiling from 125/150 to 120/150, and now it manages what looks like a 1100/1200 lumen output for at least 10 minutes without any heat issues. It did get warm, but it never got super hot, so I think I found the level where it can shed heat well enough on the SST20 4000k version.

You didn’t have the light running beforehand, did you? If so, the lights internal temperature might have been higher than its external temperature. I mention it because a lot of people forget about this.