ok weird… what usually took 10-12 days from banggood is now over 1 month so for me ican def say things have slowed down over double shipping time now if not more…. so sorry im not so interested buy this light at the moment and wait up to 3 months i guess to sweden the route goes very strange for some reason then stuff from china……usually priority direct mail shipping with postnl is very fast… but now just as slow as normal china shipping….
Ok, I got it. Rarely had 10 to 12 days. But the goods spent most of the shipping time in the german customs, at least with tracked shipping (otherwise I wouldn’t know). PostNL got my last order 2020/06/06, six days later it was in Germany.
The item has arrived in the country of destination 2020-06-12 18:25
The item is on transport to the country of destination 2020-06-09 15:25
The item is processed at the PostNL sorting center 2020-06-07 11:38
Consignment received at the PostNL Acceptance Centre 2020-06-06 17:20
Not very unusual from my experience - even in times without nasty viruses. Most items I ordered from China were kept/processed longer by customs than actually shipped from Asia to Europe. With less goods inbound, I guess the ratio of checked items is higher than before.
Sofirn will soon start selling C01S in new colorful anodizations. There are some delays but production is about to commence next week. These new lights will also be offered on Amazon. OP is updated and cleaned up a bit.
Yes, as far as I am informed it still uses the 2-mode driver/UI. I don't know if they can put the new dual-modegroup 3-mode UI of C01R onto the MCU of C01S. The driver of C01R cannot be used "as is" for C01S as it is developed for LEDs with a very low forward voltage, e.g. XP-E2 photo red or maybe Osram Whiteflat 1mm². I wish they were able to source some Nichia E21A with 1.800K - 2.200K 98CRI to test a mule version of C01S but the odds look rather bad.
I think in a mid-term perspective the odds look good to see the 3-mode UI in C01S, too. Most probably Sofirn still has quite some 2-mode UI drivers left on stock and retrofitting these with the 3-mode UI will not be reasonable in terms of costs. I talked to Barry about Nichia in general some months ago when discussing UV LEDs and he mentioned that it's very difficult for them to get Nichia LEDs. However, I'm confident that with enough demand there would be some way to get these. Hank Wang also got them for his KR4 lights. The question is: What demand would be necessary to achieve at least a breakeven with these special emitters. Maybe I should create a new "interest check"? ;-)
Seems these colors are on the Sofirnlight website! Green and no-ano don’t seem to have images up yet, unless my browsers are both acting up.
These colors (desert tan, orange) just got put up on amazon, as well as a “no-anodization” version. The no-ano one shows the BLF-C01S style polished/machined no-ano finish. I wonder if this version of the no-ano is making a comeback, or if this is just misrepresented bead blasted stock?
UPDATE: Sofirn has messaged me on amazon to state the no-ano is out of stock
Edit: Maybe Lux-Perpetua or Barry can confirm, but I talked to Zoe from Sofirn and was told that “the warehouse” doesn’t have the no-ano version. It has been taken of amazon so I’m pretty sure the correspondence I’ve had has been solely in reference to what is available via amazon, despite my more general request for information about getting these colors elsewhere. I’ve ordered off Sofirnlight instead since it’s cheaper anyway.
I also noticed the sofirnlight website has been updated with new product images for all colors. including a raw, no-ano version which quite noticeably doesn’t show “BLF C01S” but the standard “Sofirn C01S”. They also updated the missing green ano image.
It seems 2.000K and 3.500K are highly requested by BLF members. You are right about the TIR optic. It will probably require to use a frosted wide angle lens to reduce tint shift. I don’t know if the new C01R boost driver (approx. 1.2A at max with XP-E2 PR using a Vf of 2.4V) would work best with E21A but it looks very promising.
Good to hear, thanks for getting us a final word! I already ordered 2 off the Sofirnlight web store, so I’m glad to hear the product images shown were accurate.