*BLF LT1 Lantern Project) (updated Nov,17,2020)

Please put me on the list for one.
Thank You.

I have done a quick test of the charging port

also 2. measurement I have overwritten the automatic protocol to charge at 12V to test the plug in to a 12V source as 1:1 car adapter or diretly on a 12V solar panel

Can this work with a 1x 18650?

Of cause, why not.
It has the same battery-tube as the Q8 and it do not need many amps from the battery, because it should have a long runtime.

yes, just expect 1/4 the run time compared to 4x18650

Please put me on the list for one.

Ooooh, I completely missed the part about the charging circuit.
So it accepts up to 15V. Is it the TP5100 BlueSwordM mentioned earlier or something like it?
That would mean there’s no QC or USB PD or anything fancy like that?
If I understood correctly you can plug it in to a 5V USB power and it will take that but if you hook it up to a 12V solar panel it will happily accept that as well?

Hmm… How is the charging circuit integrated to the rest of the flashlight?
I’m just wondering if the lantern is moddable in that regard?
With previous talk about configurable charging rate my guess is it wouldn’t be?


DBSAR, regarding the cable. 12-15 feet is ~3.65-4.57m. Not that far off from 5m :innocent:

24AWG is pretty standard with decent quality charging cables.
But 20AWG is certainly doable with Type C and legacy Type C cables. I think I’ve even seen 18AWG at some point.
These just won’t be cheap so I’m not sure it would be worth it.
As if I did the math correctly, there’s 2.5x more copper in 20AWG than there is in 24AWG.
That’s a bit of a jump in terms of cost. And copper is expensive these days.

I’ll just dump some voltage drop values here for 5 meter cables with one pair of copper conductors
20AWG and 5V1.0A = 6.66% drop or 4.67V at the end
20AWG and 5V1.5A = 9.99% drop or 4.5V at the end
24AWG and 5V1.0A = 16.84% drop or 4.16V at the end
24AWG and 5V1.5A = 25.27% drop or 3.74V at the end

Even if we drop the length down to 3.5 meters it would still perform rather poorly in my opinion with
24AWG and 5V1.0A = 11.79% drop or 4.41V at the end
24AWG and 5V1.5A = 17.69% drop or 4.12V at the end

I’d say a 2 meter cable would be a good compromise
24AWG and 5V1.0A = 6.74% drop or 4.66V at the end
24AWG and 5V1.5A = 10.11% drop or 4.49V at the end

Or 2.5m. Something in that ball park.

good points. maybe shorten a good HD cable to 8 or 10 feet then.

Please add me for another 1 please :+1:

The LT1 is about the same size as a Q8 with a diffuser cap on top, but it looks a lot nicer and it doesn’t emit most of its light out the top like the Q8 does. Also, it lets me adjust the color temperature, but in this pic I have it set as warm as possible to try to match the Q8.

I think the lantern is going to be getting a lot of use here. I’ll probably retire the Q8 from lantern duty, add some DC-Fix to the lens, and use it only for photo fill lighting. Because the lantern is better at, er, being a lantern.

Nice photo TK :+1: i do notice the slightly thicker base due to the tripod mount hole. Just curious, how deep is that 1/4-20 threaded mount hole?

Wow, great comparison shot TK! I’m looking forward to getting mine when the time comes. If I can scrape up enough money at the time, I might go for a second one!

It’s hard to measure the depth of the hole precisely, but it looks like it’s about 5mm or 6mm deep.

What? No calipers?

I have some, but it doesn’t have the extruding stick on the bottom like your picture. So it’s tricky to measure the depth of a narrow hole.

Ah, gotcha.

My summary of the lantern will be in this post

I have done a quick test of the charging port

also 2. measurement I have overwritten the automatic protocol to charge at 12V to test the plug in to a 12V source as 1:1 car adapter or diretly on a 12V solar panel

I will start now with precise measurements on the BLF lantern

first was that I could see visible brightness changes when doing tint ramping
now also the measurement shows me clearly that ithere is less brightness when between the tints

so there is some work for toykeeper to adjust the tint ramping code,
this was to be expected that some fine tuning is needed

some sort of switch breathing?

current through switch LED shows “heartbeat” pulsing

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Thermal test

Setup

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room Temperature about 20°C

Maximum current with 7 AMCs

this is a 15min test in timelapse reduced to one minute
the upper part heated up to 41.6°C

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30min thermal images
temperature stays on absolutely safe level

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permanent LED trimmer added and changed to my 2x2 LKED board with WW LEDs

.

Things that need to be changed on hardware side

- Programming key viases 0.05mm smaller diameter

- electrical reverse polarity protection of charging circuit and/or mechanical

- switch with warm white LEDs

- added permanent LEDs to switch

- switch wire colors changed to logical colors
black GND (atm LED)
white switch (atm GND)
red Ind. LED (atm switch)
another color for the permanent LEDs

5 millimeters is plenty of depth for most tripods and attachments i know of, sounds good.

Yep, it’s on the todo list.

I saw the same thing with the early tests a few months ago, but that was using old XM-L emitters… and those are known to have a slow response curve. So I was waiting for the real prototype before I try to adjust it.

Interested