How about naming it with ‘Ringil’ since it doesnt backward compatibility.
Cant hardly wait to buy FL with this new firmware.
Anduril LITE for my kids sounds great!
I like it, it’s similar to how the ex11 is but worth a few extras. Ramping with battery check and lockout. Perfect. You could hide the ramping vs step in the advanced menu and save in eeprom. I think most here want just ramping or stepped ramp, not both. So in theory you would set that, the temp limits and calibration, and never be required to go to the advanced menu again.
My suggestion would be to make 2H from lockout activate memory mode of current ramp option. I can see how that could pose problems if manual memory isn’t enabled but maybe have it only do so if enabled, or have a toggle in the settings if there’s space?
The one thing that’s tough for me is deciding whether to set stepped ramping to a level low enough for regular use, or have it higher so my second lockout level is bright enough for what I want.
Every other change is fantastic, including making lockout always use the lower of the two settings for 1H.
The battery voltage readout on some of my lights is off by over 0.1 volts.
A voltage calibration function similar to the existing temperature calibration function would be a welcome addition to Anduril.
I am prepared to unlearn and relearn ….
ToyKeeper, I like your plans to improve/upgrade Andúril.
Here are some of my thoughts:
Thermal configuration
Accessing pre-selectable, user-defined step down temperatures would make it easier to toggle between a safe, conservative and a high performance setting. At least two temperature thresholds to choose of and that the user can define by the known click series would be fantastic. It would enable the user to operate the light with all features but also with the option to easily switch between something like 45°C and 65°C as the stepdown threshold. As an alternative you could also wipe the entire thermal configuration click series and only offer selectable, fixed thresholds to choose like 40°C, 45°C, 50°C, 55°C, ... up to something like 'no stepdown at all' or maybe 80°C.
I also agree that aggressive throttling on repeated Turbo runs might be a good idea. But it should go in line with user-defined step down temperatures, i.e. with safe settings in place it should not step down as aggressively.
IntelliBeam® feature
I like the idea that Surefire pursued with their IntelliBeam® feature ("IntelliBeam® automatically and seamlessly adjusts output to the optimal setting"), i.e. the driver will immediately step down when placing something in front of the flashlight, like a hand or if you put it onto a table. This will add some extra safety to new flashlights but it will require some hardware add ons in new flashlights. With the aid of a sensor (black rod) in the reflector the back-reflected light is measured. If it exceeds a certain value the driver automatically reduces the light intensity in a fraction of a second. Maybe it's worth to have something similar in more flashlights other than Surefire.
Submenu for manufacturer custom modes
With many new flashlights coming, maybe it's worth to leave some room for a submenu that each manufacturer can fill with their own customizations, e.g. for operating multi-emitter lights with different LEDs, colors etc.. I have lots of ideas on my mind like an auxiliary red LED in addition to white light that the user can operate separately.
Concerning new names for this firmware...
Well, if we stick to the Tolkien universe it might become difficult to find another sword that is as glorious as Narsil or its successor Andúril. ;-)
With that said, maybe we can name this one Galadriel (a.k.a. the Lady of Light). Galad is a derived word for "light" in Sindarin (one of the most important languages in Middle-Earth). Galadriel was one of the greatest of the Elves in Middle-Earth, surpassing nearly all others in beauty, knowledge, and power.
I think this is a fantastic idea. I agree that the name should be distinct with this many changes, but am ambivalent on whether it should be “Andúril 2”/”Andúril One X”/”Andúril Infinite”/”Andúril 12 Pro Max” (if the ‘brand recognition’ of Andúril is significant enough), or if it should have a different Tolkienian name.
Would like to see support for second e-swtich.
+1 :+1:
I like all the suggested improvements.
Making config mode less easy to get into would be appreciated by me.
IMO going from lockout straight to on/ramp really stands out as an excellent idea.
Re naming the two modes I think Andruil 2 Basic and Andruil 2 Advanced sounds best.
If you changed the name entirely Andruil would surely have to have distinct advantages of its own over ‘Andruil 2’ for it to remain a viable option next to the second UI, for people buying flashlights. And if your improvements work out well - it won’t. Then in my reasoning Andruil (as a brand) would sadly become obsolete. Hence I like Andruil 2 instead of name change.
May be wrong but those are my thoughts.
Thank you for all your hard work Toykeeper, your thoughts on improving the ui sound very promising.
Firstly, thanks ToyKeeoer for all your work on this. Anduril is brilliant.
Would you consider moving development from bzr to git for version 2? Obviously it’s your baby and your workflow us most important. My guess is that switching to git would remove a barrier to entry to help encourage more contributions. Personally I’ve only used bzr a tiny bit and don’t grok it like I do git.
Splitting into multiple files sounds like a sensible move too. I find it much easier working with object oriented languages, so a monolithic C file is a challenge.
Thanks again.
I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on this, but the first thing that comes to mind is to remove the blink at different stages in the ramp. They’re useful dev features, but they don’t add much to the usability, and people who don’t know what they are always think it’s a glitch.
For anduril LITE make the key combination harder to exit. Maybe 5 presses and hold for 3 seconds on the last press. Also add an option on the normal UI to make double click from off go directly to turbo like Narsil. It would be nice to also have a shortcut which always goes to strobe at max.
For the UI name, Anduril Basic and Anduril Pro sounds good IMO. I feel like in the future Anduril LITE could be a whole separate firmware for brands that want something less complicated.
One thing I would really love to see in Andúril is the ability to explicitly set stepped levels. Rather than trying to work out what high and low steps would place the fully related level bang in the middle, it would be awesome to be able to define “step 1: level 25, step 2: level 50, step 3: level 100”. That way, you can set it up to have levels at precisely the output or estimated runtime that you require (assuming a table of rough outputs per level is available like with the Emisar D4). Maybe a way to define output by lumens would be better, but I don’t know how this would work considering each flashlight has a different output at a given ramp level.
I see a fair few people say the current candle mode is a bit too flickery, and I think I agree. That’s a minor thing though.
Lastly, I love the tint ramping on my LT1, but the shortcut isn’t as convenient as the brightness ramp. Not sure if this can realistically be improved much, but it’s worth considering that we might start seeing tint ramping as a staple feature of enthusiast lights within the next year or two now that the option is available within the firmware.
Yh candle mode could be improved. Usually I find the flicker a bit too much, sometimes it’s ok and other times it’s pretty much ramping up and down.
Overall, I think they are all great improvements.
One thing that in my opinion would be interesting, is the ability to change the ramp settings of the simple UI from the advanced UI, maybe even changing it from smooth to stepped, in a way that when you revert to simple it remains locked. Being able to calibrate thermal sensors from advanced would be nice.
Another interesting thing IMHO, would be to have a “reserved” spot in simple UI (like click-click-hold) where you can put one blinky mode of choice, such as beacon or strobe.
From all the new features, as said by others, I would put emphasis on making it more difficult to change settings, especially thermal settings, but also ramp. Maybe having an option to lock and unlock that kind of settings.
As always, thank you for doing this for the community.
Well, since this would be a complete rework, would it be possible to add one more feature?
Voltage measurement adjustement. Similarly as there is temperature fine-tuning.
Currently the only option to fine-tune the flashlight is to recompile and flash the firmware.
This would make correcting any manufacturing defects much easier.
Oh yes, some of my FW3As are way out with their voltage measurements. 4.4V on a freshly charged cell in one, and 4.1V when I put the cell in another. Voltage measurement tuning would be great.