Regarding stepdowns and Sofirn's ATR this is what I have suggested to Sofirn in general...
Please remove timer-triggered stepdowns from future drivers/flashlights. There is hardly any reason to have
both thermal and timed stepdowns at the same time. Customers on TLF and BLF would greatly appreciate to
have thermal regulation only.
Please allow a user defined choice of ATR thresholds (e.g. 45°C, 55°C, 65°C) just like HaikeLite did with their
SC26…
Thermal protection setting can be accessed by 10 clicks:
The light flashes once => turn it off to select 50 degree step-down temperature
The light flashes twice => turn it off to select 60 degree step-down temperature
The light flashed 3 times => turn it off to select 70 degree step-down temperature
Important: Please set 50°C to default by factory to make sure that customer complaints about too much heat are as
low as possible. Barry recently talked about it on TLF. With 50°C as default this problem should be solved. More
experienced flashlight users or people who want to unleash the full potential can raise the threshold to 60°C or 70°C.
There is no disadvantage with this new feature but Sofirn will make their flashlights even more powerful and more
successful.
Work and production cost are often not the issue, convincing a manufacturer that a change is an improvement and profitable is the big hurdle. And Sofirn, and also Simon from Convoy Flashlights, get loads of suggestions coming from BLF-members, and that is a mixture of good ideas and mediocre to bad ideas, so they have to sift through the lot as well to find the good ones that are an improvement and/or will increase the profit.
No, you are right, some changes seem 100% a good idea. But it so appears that what we flashoholics as a group see as reasonable changes is not just as obvious for the chinese manufacturers, 1) because they sometimes have less insight in how a flashlight should be, 2) because they know things about manufacturing that we do not know, and 3) because their audience and profit comes from a wider group than just flashlight enthousiasts from BLF, and for muggles some changes are rightout a bad idea.
I agree with you Jos. This recognition might be the result we now see with Sofirn's SP36S which basically is a simplified SP36 BLF Andúril edition, coming with a less complex user interface and a more conservative thermal management (2min timer, 55°C ATR). And that is also the reason why I have proposed a thermal regulation to Sofirn that is fair to all sides and addresses both requirements for enthusiasts and apprehensions of muggles. Being more flexible with user-defined thresholds flashoholics will be able to unleash the full power whereas - on default - muggles can safely operate the light with moderate settings.
Ordered a SD05 and put my trusty protected Trustfire 18650 battery in. I really like the form factor, the build and the magnetic ring, but i’ve got a problem:
It does work on low mode and middle mode, but as soon as I turn on high the lamp turns most of the time (not always!) almost immediately off. I have to anscrew the tailcap and screw it back on and then it starts over again.
Is my battery showing it’s age (5 years now), do 18650 not fit properly or is it a problem with the torch?
Battery, especially if it’s protected and high-mode just draws too much current. That, or it’s just old and its too-high internal resistance causes too much voltage-sag and the light cuts out under lvp.
Some lights you can get away with laptop-pulls and other rejects, others nope.
There may be a problem with the protected battery. The high current consumption is 5.7 amps. Protection disconnects the battery. I also have SD05 and I measured the current draw.
Get a 21700 battery from https://eu.nkon.nl/ or at least an 18650 with a 10A continuous discharge rating. The 5.7A load is tripping the protection and the cell probably can’t handle the load either, Trustfire always overstated their cells capabilities one way or another (at least they are not Ultrafire).
Yep, just the light. Delivering to Germany you have to pay tax and customs for everything over round-a-about 26 EUR so as a kit the torch was a lot more expensive. I already ordered a Sofirn 21700 battery separately but it hasn’t arrived yet.
But it seems to be the old trustfire battery, so i can calm down.
This is an awesome light the perfect size and i think its dang near as bright as both of my Sofirn C8F’s and my sp33 , by the way my ring does not rattle at all.
^THIS The most important feature of a dive light. The Sofirn is inexpensive, so it it works for quite some time before the stuff rusts out……I don’t think you get high quality from China at that price. Jus sayin…mines inbound as we speak.
Hi gchart! I got my SD05 a couple of days ago, and decided to piggy-back on your topic a bit. I bought it mainly as a diving light (I scuba dive every now and then), and while I'm very impressed with build quality and light output, the timer + temperature is a major flaw IMHO. Thermal throttling thankfully is almost a non issue underwater, but the timer makes it super annoying to reset the light every 3 minutes, which tends to be quite difficult in drysuit gloves. I decided to tear the light down (driver board comes off easily once you unsolder the wires from the front) to see if re-programming the driver would be possible, as that would also give me a chance to adjust the levels (I find the difference between Low and Medium to be too subtle, and it's a shame it's missing a strobe mode). Unfortunately it's not a simple ATTiny based driver, but something a lot more complex. Haven't seen any driver pictures on the forums yet, so here they are:
As far as I can tell, the main MCU is Microchip F1824, and clearly visible there's a boost converter, namely TPS61088. The modes are selected thanks to Hall effect sensors (3 of them) that respond to the magnetic ring.
Have you seen anyone writing firmware for such MCUs here? I can reverse engineer the schematics for the driver board, but I'm lost as far as programming is concerned. I feel like building a new driver based on an ATTiny would be much easier, although I'm not sure how to implement the Hall effect sensors in the firmware.
Would you be interested in helping to improve this light a bit? I've seen your designs (2 of my Convoys are running your tailswitch light boards) and I feel like you're the right person to ask.
Interesting… I wanted to take over apart (the first one I received appears to have a defective driver, it doesn’t turn on), but it seems like the battery tube is glued to the head. Was yours not glued?
There’s a couple people here that write firmware for PIC, but not many (tterev3 comes to mind). I could probably pick up the skills, but it’s not going to happen at the moment.
The best I could probably do at the moment would be to create an adapter board and piggyback a attiny816 in place of the PIC. Would take some probing around to confirm the function of each pin.
