Anduril ... 2?

…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.

:smiley: 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!

Would it be possible to have a “version check” similar to “battery check” ? There seems to be no simple way to determine what version of Anduril is on the flashlight.

A version check function was added in September 2019. It’s not included on the FW3A because Lumintop rejected the firmware updates I sent.

You probably have something from mid-2019.

I don’t think that will fit on most attiny85 hosts, but it could be done on chips with more space.

The way it works now is, in a few of the modes (like “off” and “ramp”), it checks for button presses which are supported in simple mode… then if simple mode is enabled, it returns. If simple mode is not active, it then checks for button presses which are only allowed in advanced mode.

This could be changed to instead check for simple mode and the specific feature’s simple-mode toggle, on each button press. It would increase the code size though, and require several extra vars stored in eeprom, and a much longer config mode of some sort to let the user set each option.

So it’s doable, but a bit messy and probably won’t fit at the same time as other stuff I’m hoping to add.

I think you should be able to set the max temp by holding the light until it gets too hot, then turning it off, like some other firmwares. I found the temp settings difficult to calibrate for some lights. Also, yea the framerate for candle mode needs to be higher. You might also adjust the range so it doesn’t flicker quite as high when its turned down. At higher brightness this is not as much of an issue.

The reason why it uses a numeric entry for the temperature limit is because “hold until hot” didn’t work very well in the past. So I’m not planning to go back to the older method.

However, it has an auto-calibrate thing built into the factory reset function, and it usually works pretty well. It’s quick and easy and sets the limit to 24 C hotter than whatever temperature the light is during the reset.

If I may make a suggestion, I would like some way to set the brightness of the auxiliary and the switch LEDs on my D4V2 Ti. The dimmer option for these is way too bright for nightstand duty but turning them off does not help with locating the light in the dark.

‘Hold until hot’ is very hit & miss. Sometimes you specifically want the limit to go up or down slightly, that is very difficult with the ‘hold until hot’ method. On one attempt the limit goes up, on another it goes down, sometimes by far too much. There is a lot of trial and error to achieve the desired result.

To be able to just go in and accurately + or - the limit is so much better.

Please make LITE mode such way that after randomly sequence of clicks and holds made by kid or not flashaholic friend you don’t need to think “aaaa! what he did with my flashlight!!11”

Haven't read up on all the ideas, but here is 1 of mine.

  • All configuration modes only reachable from OFF with a special combination. (10 clicks for example)

It will be the first combination that kid press))