ENEDED

I certainly could make mods to Anduril myself, but with the current config/default setup, there's only like a handful of bytes in code space available, so there's not much room for doing anything.

The enhanced voltage reading I could probably handle, but will probably take more code space. The OFF delay could be a tricky one - I would not think she simply put it in there intentionally, it's probably needed to differentiate input sequences or states, so I'd suspect a fix for it can get complicated easily, and of course take more code space....

Ugh... I spent a little time, built in in Atmel Studio for Windows, but haven't installed and tested it from my own build. Everyone else seems to be using Android/Linux though it was easy for me to compile/build it on Windows .

There's a ton of things I prefer about Anduril, but the basic ON/OFF functionality right now is a major issue to me, though everyone else seems ok with it (?) I guess...

I only have 2 lights right now running it: an E07 and PL47.

She’s mentioned in the past that there’s no real way to get rid of the turn off delay.

You two should probably talk directly.

We did actually, on posts in a thread, forgot where. Dunno - she said in a post she was gonna look at it, or someday fix it, dunno - different timeframes I'm sure.

Well from what you are saying, it doesn't sound good - worse case scenario. In Narsil I always gave the 1st click priority and kept delays really tight - it can be annoying to some. Only thing I dleayed longer than TK was blinks, but I think in Anduril she slowed them down. In her earlier power switch drivers, i simply could not count the blinks - maybe it's an age thing or something, but I needed the blinks to go slower, otherwise I couldn't count after 4 or 5. My hands are still quick but maybe my brain slowed down... I'm sure I'm 25+ years older than TK

Several people also mentioned that they wanted instant off as well when I brought it up in the firmware thread last year. She said it should be an easy change and a define could be added to allow this to be selected at compile.

She mentioned she was working on some updates and got some pushed to the repo but not sure if this was included. I agree, this is also the biggest sticking point for me as well other then the thermal control that does not prevent 100c temps.

Like I said, both have their pros and cons, I think they could be blended together to get all the pros without the cons since they are very close already. I do like the simplicity of the anduril defines and the fact it makes it easy to change the driver layout.

I think you are right about the voltage sag. This MT03 is about 15% brighter than the other one. It is the old MT03 with 6 wires between MCPCB and driver. I think it draws much more current and cause the voltage to sag more than the other MT03 TA that has only 2 wires between MCPCB and driver.

That is really good UI and easy to use. But will there be situation voltage measured too high and needs an negative offset?
Also, I wonder is there solution to include voltage sag into LVP calculation? It might be too risky though.

I’m interested:

Tint: NW (4000-5000k)
Emitter: CREE XHP70.2 P2

Iv'e done dozens of lights/drivers with NarsilM and never had to go negative - that would be wayyy off. With the fake MCU's from China, suppose anything is possible but the D1 diodes are typically dropping 0.2 to 0.3 volts going in to the MCU, worse ones from China maybe up to 0.4V.

I am not worried about the voltage sag personally, once the voltage is that low you are almost empty anyways and over-discharging the cell is the quickest and easiest way to damage them. Better safe then sorry in this case I think. I actually kind of like the voltage sag causing early step down, it warms me I am getting low on power and extends the runtime in the low modes after it steps down.

Yea, voltage sag I've seen, but mostly in 16340 lights where the battery is weak and the amps relatively high. It's real annoying when it happens though, but honestly, I don't think I see it now with the high performance cells, though I generally don't let my 18650 cells get that low.

Tom E, good to know that. Thanks.
Ya voltage sag is annoying. I think MT03 TA really needs better cells like 4*21700 for its Turbo mode.

TA, it is probably my addiction for Turbo mode and I notice I recharge my battery quite soon at about 3.7 to 3.8v for MT03 with TA driver. It could be contact issue too because I use magnets as button top, I should measure the resistance of the magnets. To squeeze more juice from the batteries so I kind of ignore LVP and put the light back to Turbo.

MT03 TA is such a fun light with so much output with such a small size. So I use it for fun only. :sunglasses:

Is the voltage measurement on the battery or on the LED forward voltage?
Since LVP kicks in, doesn’t it mean it see about 6V? And at 6V, XHP70.2 consumes about 4A current, total 12A current for 3 LED, so it should be about 6A per 18650 cell.
I looked at Sony VTC6 discharge graph by HKJ, it is almost empty when it reach 3V with let’s say 5A discharge current. But I found that my VTC6 are all about 3.7-3.8V and it only takes about 1400mAh to fully charge them. It has still 50% of charge in them.

I wonder what will be the voltage if the the driver is measuring with two wires directly connected to batteries, I mean not sharing any path with the LEDs.
My VTC6 all measure about 15-20 m ohm by charger. They are much lower than my other Samsung 30q which is about 50m ohm.

Again, measuring 6V could be the batteries are discharging let’s say 10A and voltage sag due to that. But LED is seeing more than 6V else it won’t draw 10A from battery.

:disappointed:

Neither. It’s measured at the MCU. So it goes from the battery, through the led and into the driver. wrong driver, I corrected in next post.

I think you’ve got this all mixed up. I’m not really following your logic here. Maybe someone else can understand.

I’ve found that there is a big difference between 3.7v and 3.8v. The batteries can run a long time a 3.8, but once it gets down to about 3.70 I think you’re well below the 50% mark. I would strongly suggest recharging at this point. Of course you can still run at low brightness levels for a lot longer, but you’re not going to be capable of using Turbo.

Ok, this is an MT03 using TA's MT03 driver. The MCU should be measuring voltage from the batteries thru the voltage divider resistors - the LED's are out of this loop. If the cells do sag under load, then yes - the MCU will see the sag. The MCU itself can't run on 2S batteries so there's an LDO on the driver to drop the voltage - it comes in regulated thru the LDO and therefore it's unreliable to measure that voltage source and that's why the voltage dividers must be used -- this is unlike our typcal 1S drivers like in a Q8 or Astrolux S43 or Emisar or Fireflies lights. So for example, with the cells at 3.5V, 7.0V comes into the voltage dividers and should be properly scaled to 3.5V for the MCU to do it's LVP thing...

Now TA's MT03 driver is kind of/sort of proprietary, at least as I understand it right now, and haven't traced it out but it should still be using a voltage divider circuit consisting of 2 resistors wired into an I/O pin of the MCU. This is how we always did our custom BLF 2S drivers like for the Convoy L6. 2S setups requires an extra I/O pin for battery voltage monitoring.

The MT03 driver is basically the same as the rest of the 2s+ TA series when it comes to pinout. It is mostly layout changes to handle the 40a+ currents I was seeing, the old designs had big issues with voltage ringing/spikes but the new one fixed those.

Also the change from using 7135’s which are very unreliable at 2S voltage to an FET + resistor bank.

It does indeed use a voltage divider, the same setup as the GT buck driver actually since it has lower parasitic drain.

Okay, I had to take a look at the driver layout. (I hope this is the correct driver DENGOH is refering to) Yep, the MCU is getting voltage from the battery before the led through R5. I was thinking of the other style of TA driver where the positive wire goes from the battery spring straight to the led.

So it looks like R5 (4.7 ohms) sends battery power to the LDO which sends regulated power to the mcu, not good for measuring voltage.

I assume R1 or R2 has to be part of the voltage divider network (Correct). I don’t know where that via is going. (Pin 7)

Question, once the led is turned on, don’t you get the voltage sag throughout the circuit? Does it matter if the voltage is sampled before or after the led?

It would really help me understand better if someone could label the mcu pins on this particular driver.

I see:
Power is top right
Ground is bottom left
Switch signal is labeled

4 other pins use vias so I have no clue.

Is the top left even connected? Doesn’t look like it.

Even when the spring is bypassed directly to the LED’s the voltage reading for the MCU is unchanged. The high current travles through the wire and not the spring which is what feeds the MCU. Technically bypassing the spring could see a bit lower voltage sag.

You are correct, it does not matter where the voltage is sampled in the big picture, the change is so small it really will not effect anything.

R1 is after the 4.7 ohm resistor - not sure if that makes much difference but might be a factor, but someone could do the math, but either way, it could be accounted for with the resistor values or by the firmware. The via off of R1 should go to pin #7 of the MCU. Usually we use pin #7 for the voltage divider.

Ohh - the top left pin is pin #1, counts up around CCW from there. In our designs pin #1 is left unconnected. If we used it as an I/O pin, our normal USB programmer dongle could not be used - we would need the better, more $$$, dev kit.

The 4.7ohm resistor has virtually no effect since the resistance of the divider is so very high.

Pin 1 is unconnected, you just can’t see it due to the silk screen.

I think this is correct so far.

You just have to watch out for the dot on the MCU because it does get rotated between different Driver Designs.

Pins 3, 5 and 6 have to control channels 1, 2 and the switch led. I bet 3 does the switch led.

From discharge graph by HKJ, it shows battery still have more than 50% of capacity at 3.7v. Let’s say at current 5A, it takes 35 minutes to fully discharge a 3000mAh. it reach 3.7v after about 12 minutes. It still can discharge at 5A for another 23 minutes. You can check the link below:

https://lygte-info.dk/review/batteries2012/Sony%20US18650VTC6%203000mAh%20(Green)%20UK.html

For my case, I still can use turbo mode, just that every 5 seconds or so it will step down due to LVP. So I keep putting it back to turbo mode when it step down. It is strong and bright turbo, not those weak turbo when batteries are flat.