I am not sure how, but I missed this thread from day one. I had to take a break from lights, modding lights and building drivers. But, now I am back and ready to roll.
I realize I am way to late to jump into this GAW, that is fine as I just hope that these drivers come to be. As much as I love the concept of the OMG FET+x 7135 drivers and as much as I love the latest firmwares from TK… there are many times that I fall back on fully regulated drivers for efficiency or because I do not want to cook a single led.
A 3 amp driver is great for a long running EDC, but the 4.5 or 5 amp driver is something that I really like the sounds of. I still use a bunch of 219b R9080 leds in my builds and mods for others and from time to time I still build P60 modules. In either case a full on FET is not a good idea, and I am not a fan of PWM as it finds the strangest times to be ever so slightly visible even though PWM frequencies have gone up to levels that are very hard to detect.
Moonlight? You are a man after my own heart! Maybe I am odd, but I think every light that may be carried must have a good moonlight mode. I like a moonlight mode that is so low that you can look at the die and not feel any eye strain, not leave any spots in your vision in total darkness and will not fully wake you at any time. New lights of any quality and value claim to have “moonlight” modes. Somewhere along the way that term has had subtle changes in translation. The new crop of truly wonderful lights like the FW3A, D4V2 and such have a low mode, not a moonlight mode! When I think moonligh, I think of lights like the ReyLight Pineapple, the triple 219b’s that I build with the H17f driver and Zebralight’s ultra low modes where the leds are on but are at such a low level that they really do only push light out 4 or 5 feet when your eyes are dark adjusted. Many of the new lights make me whence when I turn them on a 2:30am to get up.
Firmware… I really love a ramping driver! But, I think that there should be direct access to lowest and highest output modes from a single switch and I think that the light needs to have a memory mode as well. Again, if it is an EDC, I should be able to set it to the lowest or nearly lowest mode, place it on the nightstand and not have to think about how to get to the lowest mode at 2:30am. Thus the memory with a full range of output as it provides a single click to turn on the lowest mode as it would have been memorize at turnoff before bed. I do like set modes from time to time. The problem I find with set modes is that they are not always the best values for the build. So, one ends up building the driver, flashing the driver, building the light only to find that they need to take it apart again to reflash the driver because the mode spacing is not optimal for that build.
Odd modes… I think that every light should have 1 special mode… something like a bike flasher as in low/high levels with a duty cycle that favors the low level output. Why… I live in a tiny rural town with few street lights and it gets really dark. When I walk, I like to clip one on a pocket somewhere so I do not get run over! I really like the H17f for this, it has a level of output variability to it’s flasher mode. Meaning… the top does not have to be 100% and the bottom is variable with the top. It does not take full power. There is a process among drivers called target fixation. This is a bad thing, if you draw to much attention to yourself visually, a driver will work so hard in their mind to avoid you that they actually fixate on you and drive toward you. This more often than not results in motorcycle drives being hit. This is were the variable output is nice.
Mike, I hope that this makes sense… I also hope that there is some value in something I have said.
Matt
