FW3A mod thread. Post yours!

the glow gasket is pointless with the lexel board cause the lexel board is either 1) Always on or 2) on when the light is off so no need for a glow board

dragon driver uses the XR-E leds as secondaries so much brighter and they do not come on when the light is off like aux boards do with low power

JC’s are set up as secondaries not low power AUX

You need to decide what you really want first

I know exactly what I want and I thought I had made it clear:

1 I want secondary green LEDs, that work in a way similar to the Dragon driver.

2 I have a Dragon MCPCB with the primaries and secondaries I prefer and would like to be able to use it in the FW3A, either with a dragon driver (which sadly is small for the light and will not fit), or a modified FW3A driver, which I do not know how to modify to do what I want and have not found any instructions for that.

3 Using the Dragon MCPCB will allow me to use the turboglow gasket I have. I do not want low power LEDs that are always on or on when the primaries are off.

4 I tried contacting JC through FB as I saw he was selling FW3A lights with what seemed to me to be secondaries. I asked if I could buy a driver and he replied he does not have any drivers for sale but I could send him mine to modify. I then asked him how much it would cost and where he is located and never heard back. He has received, read and ignored my subsequent messages. So, I am not thrilled with the way he has treated me and I am in no way with (or against) him on the subject you are raising. It could be argued he is not profiting off free code but just charging for his service of modifying the driver and the code, but this is not something I would like to get into, as this is not what I am after.

I hope my goals are now clear enough and also hope there is a solution. I do not want to run thin wires on top of the PCB, as I find that too fragile a solution to be reliable. I would prefer to keep Anduril, with all its extra functions and have secondaries as an added funtion, but it his is not possible, I would welcome a solution that uses the dragon driver (a way to fit it into the FW3A, reliably).

Many thanks for all the help, comments and suggestions!

Dragon seems unlikely to be made to work.

My point I was making was if JC followed the rules you could have what you want with new firmware and a few wires like the above posters did without having to send it to him. Since he is not sharing his code changes you are out of luck unless someone else knows how or you pay him.

He’s only required to share the changes with people who buy his light. Has someone who bought a custom light asked for the firmware source code?

Is the issue simply inverting the output of the optical nerve pin? Seems like that’s the only other possibility for an aux LED mod…and shouldn’t be difficult to implement.

Well, if someone figures out how to use dragon MCPCBs with the FW3A and shares it, I am usre it will be a very popular mod!

So as I understand it someone can buy it and just make it public themselves. Might as well post it publicly to begin with since it isn’t likely to effect his customer base much if any. (I don’t think they are going to do the mod themselves in other words)

IDK I guess i’m just salty since people are generally pretty good about contributing here.

Totally agree.

I may be wrong, I’m not a open source license expert but I don’t believe that’s correct. I’m under the impression the moment he uses open source code for commercial reasons he must publicly release the code. It’s a share alike license.

In short, don’t do business with him.

I believe this would work with MCPCB 2- wired to the optic nerve pin (see Lexel’s instructions for removing the resistor and using the pad). Some caveats: high/low won’t work, and the aux LEDs will come on with the light until you modify the firmware. Ensure the MCPCB aux LED resistor is populated before trying this.

Someone please check my work:

In anduril/cfg-fw3a.h, add:

#define USE_INDICATOR_LED
#define INDICATOR_LED_SKIP_LOW

(and maybe some other stuff depending on desired behavior)

Then in fsm-misc.c, look for the indicator_led function. Change the “case 0:” to “case 2:”

That will invert the aux LED control, so Anduril will drive the output low to turn on the LEDs and high to turn them off.

What am I missing?

I do not know, I am good at hardware modding and following instructions but I have no idea what should be changed in the hardware and software. If anyone figures it out, I will be obliged.

I re-read your post and I don’t think this will do what you want anyway. It will just turn the aux LEDs on the way Anduril usually does, when the primaries are off.

I have seen what you mean, on the Fireflies F07. Is this what JC is doing with the colored LEDs? In the pictures I thought they were secondaries like on Dragons…

Maybe I should just scrap the project of using a Dragon MCPCB with secondaries in an FW3A and look for a host that will take a dragon driver.

Reading the description of the JC FW3A it looks like the secondaries work like on the Dragon: it will ramp up the secondaries, then switch to the primaries. I think that’s possible with a different hardware modification (it will involve cutting the trace to the Nx7135s, jumpering them to ground to disable them, then attaching the aux LEDs to pin 6), and some Anduril modifications (new brightness ramps). The aux LED brightness would not be regulated, so they would dim as the battery drains. Likewise, you’ll need to sacrifice the Nx7135 channel, which means mid-to-high modes will be less efficient, and drain as the battery drains. If you’re OK with that, I think what you want is possible with the FW3A driver and Anduril. I can help but I don’t have the time to try it myself to verify it before you jump in.

treellama, it looks like you know your way around the driver board and thank you very much for taking an interest. I do not pretend to understand everything you have written, but it looks to me that getting the FW3A driver to work with secondaries will come at a significant cost against the normal functionality of the light. Since that seems to be the choice, I believe I will choose to leave the light as is.

If another option arises in the future, such as a different mod, an updated driver, a spacer-pill device that will allow the use of a dragon driver in the FW3A host, I will definitely be interested. But crippling the light (by lowering its efficiency and having no regulation) to add fancy secondaries is not something I would prefer.

Google’s Android is a good example.
Android was, is and will be open source.
But Google built many ‘hooks’ in Android that link to propetary software.

But my guess is that’s not the case with the driver software. Making a change to open source software doesn’t make it yours or give you some sort of control over it. It may become a fork, but stays public.

TK would be one of the best ones to ask about this subject. I think it depends on which license was used.

In this case GPL v3.

Here is a summary:

To me, it seems that this JC guy isn’t following the license.

The Dragon driver doesn’t have a Nx7135 channel either; I’m not aware of a light with secondaries or aux LEDs that does. The D4v2 doesn’t, for instance. So, you may be holding out for a unicorn!

Dragon driver is for mechanical switch too right?

It’s GPLv3, not share-alike. Here are a couple relevant FAQs:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#CanIDemandACopy

Now, it gets more complicated if he’s complying by providing source through a written offer. You can read the other FAQs there, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that he’s providing source code along with his lights.

That’s a good point, he might be providing the source code with his lights. Something something “innocent until proven guilty” comes to mind.