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

I don’t want one from the first batch, so I don’t care if there are “line jumpers”. I’m above #500 for all my LT1’s anyhow. Mostly because I don’t want the terrible and inaccurate manual that’s included in the first batch for lanterns I’m giving as gifts.

Why the manual didn’t get sorted out before the first batch is beyond me. I guess there just wasn’t enough time in the 3.5 years of development. Even after myself and others took to correcting it still had fundamentally wrong information about the operation of the LT1 because the people who knew how it worked and wrote the software or had samples didn’t bother to review the manual for basic correctness while we were tuning it for readability, grammar, and English.

I also don’t understand why the firmware is still changing. Why couldn’t it get sorted out before the light went into production? Did Sofirn put the light into production without telling anyone as a big surprise?

It will keep changing too. Do not stress about it. With the flashing key possibilities there is no reason to not keep developing it. The version that’s shipped should suffice either way!

There is a very long answer to explain the exact details of that Stereodude, but without being involved in the lantern the summary would be: it has to do with how little control we have over what happens in China, difficult communication over language and cultural barriers, and with launching a new product in general. Maybe also with group pressure getting the thing done before every last little detail was sorted out , which may or may not be a bad thing.

That said, it seems to me that this lantern still is the most thoroughly done BLF project to date.

It’s the nature of software to evolve over time. People request improvements which get rolled into future releases. In this case the changes are minor and I suspect that the vast majority of people will never know or care about the 2 versions.

Sofirn did not spring a surprise and put the light into production without the team knowing and approving it.

The LT team did bother to read it and saying that they didn’t is a big disservice to them. Rather than wait another month or 2 to have the manual catch up with all the corrections it was felt that it was ok to release batch 1 earlier so that people could start getting the LT.

I bet if the buy was delayed just for the manual changes that people would be complaining about the delay.

None of the LT team, other than Sofirn, is making any money off the lantern or is doing this as a job so the development time is largely due to that.

Besides, the updated manual can be download as noted somewhere in this thread. And it’s just a lantern, how complicated can it be to read the on-line instructions a few times and then configure it for what one needs? My guess is that for many users after it’s been configured it’s going to stay that way for a long time.

Just my thoughts:)

Please put me down for 2 more.

So, for example, why did the manual say the default mode was the smooth ramping mode when it is actually the stepped one? How did such a basic error not get fixed until after sbslider, myself, and others spent hours working on the manual?

Not everyone who is going to get one of these lanterns to use has been following this thread from the beginning. Someone who I give one of these lanterns to as a gift isn’t expecting to have to go online to read a corrected manual or flash the firmware in their lantern because the shipping product wasn’t quite done.

Reading it and having Sofirn make corrections are not one and the same. Also my career was in programming and I’ve seen many cases where manuals were wrong even when they were worked on by paid professional technical writers.

So your claim is it was right before and that Sofirn changed the manual introducing errors into it after the LT1 team reviewed it? :person_facepalming:

If Sofirn is to blame for all these things maybe the LT1 picked the wrong manufacturing partner.

Pretty sure that’s not what he is saying.

You seem like you’re almost looking for crap to be unhappy about.

This is basically a volunteer project for everyone except Sofirn. You’ve got a bunch of people volunteering their time and efforts to design and produce this thing and dealing with people in another country who may or may not speak the same language super proficiently who need to actually make the final product.

And the you have all of us providing pressure to get it out as quickly as possible.

And you’re somehow shocked and dismayed that there’s been some changes or minor issues in that process?

There have been only 3 manufacturers prepared to work with BLF over the last 5 years, Manker (stopped doing that), Lumintop and Sofirn, of which only Sofirn trusted BLF enough to make almost exactly what the BLF team wanted, and that trust took more than a year to develop during the Q8 project (via Thorfire). This is now their third project, and the most risky one for them because it is a relatively expensive product and about everything was completely newly developed which is costly for a small flashlight manufacturer. I think that it worked very succesfully for BLF and hopefully for Sofirn too.

Thanks for the additional clarifications. To be sure:

  • Right now in the manual we have a "TURBO" referenced. Is it normal? And should we get rid of that and maybe just call it "MAX" then?
  • The default FLOOR for SMOOTH is currently described as level 1, is it right?

RTFM anyone ? 70x19mm

+1

What he said

Has there been any confirmation on this? I would really like to purchase at least two of my three in non-black

I love automation! I think there are plenty out there that don’t trust a computer for some reason. I see it in my work all the time. We were migrating 100+ email accounts and the powers that be decided a manual process (Office 365 web interface, point & click for hours utilizing several staff) was safer than a powershell script with testing and logging (seconds to execute the script and utilizing 1 staff member).

Another possibility is that maybe the process for getting the codes from Amazon is not super friendly/portable. I haven’t sold anything through Amazon, so I’m not sure.

Please add me to the list for one (1) more - total of two (2) - Thanks!

I like that color too for a lantern. (also if only camo was not so difficult to do as anodizing.

Please put me down for 2 lanterns. Thanks

Please add me for one more – total of two (#1106)

Colors are supposed to be available after batch 1. :laughing:

Getting the codes is easy, it’s just that Sofirn elected to do it manually.