Why not? I do it on mine. Yes I understand that it only disconnects the switch and not the actual power; but it prevents accidental activation, which is the goal yes?
Mine needed nearly a full turn to disconnect the switch signal which wasn’t practical when I actually needed to use it. Considering they have been known to randomly turn on at full power when things go wrong, even that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me either TBH.
Off topic but running it without the metal switch cover was 1000x better for me personally. No lockout needed, switch was recessed and took more force to press (but not so much that rapid clicks or holds were difficult) and felt very satisfying and responsive. Once Lume1 is out I’m definitely getting an FW1A and running it like that.
Ahhh gotcha. Are you turning the tailcap or the head? I did the head and don’t recall having to turn it that much, but I traded away my FW’s.
The head. Mine is from the first GB and doesn’t have the tailcap retaining ring.
The FW3A (and presumably other related models) has a lot of variability from one light to the next. One of the things which differs is how it responds to having the front half loosened. On some, it’ll cut power in a quarter turn… while on others, it must be unscrewed completely off. I have examples of both in my collection.
So… yeah, sometimes soft lockout is the only option.
I’ve pondered whether lockout should be on 3 clicks instead of 4, to make it faster to enter/exit. Then I guess battcheck would be on 4 clicks. Not sure if that’s how it should be though, or if the current setup is better. However, it would definitely be one of the more difficult changes to get accustomed to. I know we’re breaking backward compatibility here, but swapping those two seems like it would be particularly annoying for anyone who has lights of both the old and new versions. We’d trip over it constantly.
my FW3A takes about .03 turns of the head to disable the signal path [lockout - or lockin, if the light is on when you do it]
it also depends on the cell dimensions
wle
This definitely sounds like a good idea, hoping that I can flash my D4V2 flashlights with this new Anduril.
I can also vouch for a more subtle candle mode, it’s a bit too violent at times.
It can also be a bit repetitive, but that’s probably a memory limitation.
Although it’s a lot better than many flickering LED candles I’ve seen.
No doubt Anduril is the best flashlight UI made so far, I rarely justify buying a light without it. If so, the light should be pretty special (like Nitecore TUP with the OLED display).
It could be called Anduril 2.0
I wish my Sofirn Q8 would just have Low , Medium , High and Off .
Candle mode could definitely benefit from higher resolution in the brightness ramp… and more frames per second… and some adjustments to the overall algorithm. It also varies from one light to another, since the underlying ramp is different. I try to adjust it to be fairly consistent, but it doesn’t always come out quite right.
About low/med/high/off, that’s possible by using the stepped ramp. Set it to 3 steps. It’ll still have the blinkies and other modes available though…
… so there’s also a simple UI, and it inherits the ramp style (smooth/stepped) of the full UI. It just has safer limits and most of the other modes and functions are blocked. The code for that isn’t published yet though; I’m still working on it.
+1
I would also like a very robust simple mode where 1C and 1H dont make any difference. Nothing else, no ramping, no lockout or any click sequence that may make the flashlight behave strange. Simple enough that you understand it after just a few clicks.
An option to set the UI just on/off to a safe but useful level - like good old lights, would be just enough in some instances.
PS: and if it was possible to make the light flicker when you shake it it would be perfect! 
…couldn’t you just set it to stepped ramp with 3 steps?
Depends on whether he has the Narsil or Anduril-equipped version.
If Narsil, there’s the discrete mode option but it’s not that great unless someone was really used to it IMO.
That sounds about right for some of them. Fortunately, all of mine work pretty well without issues.
For a ‘simple’ mode that is easy for muggles, a lockout mode presents the possibility of accidental lockout. And a muggle might never figure out what went wrong, and assume the light has died.
That’s why I’m not sure if lockout should be included in the simple UI.
However, I don’t think they’ll assume it died, because the LED turns on while the button is pressed. It just doesn’t stay on. And if they loosen / tighten the tailcap, it exits back to the regular non-locked “off” mode.
I may try to rework the ramping code a bit to allow for a single-brightness ramp. It might be a bit of a pain to configure, but afterward it should be able to do just on/off without changing brightness.
It’ll probably still have the battery check available though, and maybe lockout… so it’s not quite a 1-function light… but at least sort of similar.
I would support that change, despite the potential for confusion. (And I think a lot of us will upgrade most or all of our lights once the new version is out, which will help.)
For reasons I cannot adequately explain, I can do a very fast triple-click every time, but four clicks is either much slower or a lot less consistent. I asked a couple of other people to try it too and they had similar results. Doubles and triples seem to be built into the human nervous system, at least for some people, while anything beyond that requires counting. Does anyone else have a similar experience?
So moving lockout from 4C to 3C would actually make a big difference, at least to some of us.
I realize this is crazy talk, but my ideal version of Anduril would have configuration options to enable or disable access to almost every feature from “simple mode” individually. It would let people create the interface they want to use while eliminating anything that might cause confusion. (Note: I would still limit all configuration options, including these, to the advanced mode.)
Features I would make selectable include:
Moonlight Shortcut
Turbo Shortcut
Ramp vs Step Toggle
Lockout
Momentary Mode
Blinky Group
Strobe Group
It would be even cooler to have control over individual options within the groups, but that is probably going too far.
I have no idea how hard it would be to implement something like that, but it would sure be fun to have.
I’ve heard from a couple people that they can’t reliably get 4 clicks or anything above. Like, there’s a difficulty with counting the clicks at the same time as actually doing them. That’s part of the reason for removing extra functions, so it’ll be harder to hit the wrong function by accident.
I haven’t really had difficulty with it, but I don’t really count… I treat it more like a musical instrument than like a counter. This makes it fairly easy to count pretty high without really paying attention, as long as the desired end number lines up with a musical phrase or a song. Like, if something needs a count of 96, that’s easy… just play a song in my head which has 96 total beats (usually 3 sets of 4x8 beats), and at the end of the song I’ll have the correct count. Need to count to 400? Same thing… just go through the song 4 times, and then add 2 extra 8-beat measures.
For a flashlight-specific example, there’s the factory reset function on 13H. For that, counting is hard but rhythm is easy. It lines up perfectly with the beginning of a song from DOOM:
Or another easy way to count it is more like 1234 1234 1234 5… or a rhythmic version of the same:
TICK tick tick tick
TICK tick tick tick
TICK tick tick tick
POW
In the config modes, if I need to enter a large number and it doesn’t line up with a song, I’ll usually just break it into groups of 10. Like, a count of 31 is easy since it’s 1 less than a song pattern so I can just stop one note short of the end. But if I wanted 52 or something else that doesn’t line up easily… so I’d count it out in a more traditional way:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 50
1 2
I’m not sure what methods other people use though. It seems like actually counting would be difficult, but there are usually easy ways to count short sequences without explicitly thinking the numbers.
I love the idea of using music to achieve higher click options. I’ll have to experiment with that!