ASTROLUX MF01 Mini - common issues thread

Did you turn them on in the software?
With the light off, do 7 fast clicks. ( I think that is the correct procedure. Someone correct me if I’m wrong)

Yes they have multi colored aux leds under the optic. As said, 7 clicks from off will set them low, high or off. They should be active by default though. You should not have to touch the small pots unless you want to increase or decrease some color brightness. This is fine tuning only.

Yes, that is the correct procedure. I clicked 7 times for multiple cycles and the only thing that changed was the light in the switch.

It’s possible that one of the three small wires going to the auxiliary LEDs may have came loose during shipping. If you have a digital multimeter you can verify that there is voltage across the small red wire and small black wire. That should be battery voltage. If you’re not getting a reading then one of those two may be disconnected. If you get battery voltage then there’s a small chance the blue wire is disconnected. You could probably pull on it with tweezers very lightly to see if it feels completely loose or if it’s connected.

Anything beyond a loose wire my indicate that there’s something defective with your auxiliary LED board.

I’ll have to check if my multimeter still works. If it does happen to be a loose wire would soldering be the next course of action?

Yeah. Assuming you can solder. If a wire needs to be reattached to the driver, you’ll have to unsolder all 5 wires on the mcpcb to get the driver out. Fix the wire on the driver, then reattach all 5 wires on top. If your not good at soldering or the problem is not a lose wire you would contact Banggood or who you bought it from and complain the aux leds are broken.

Never soldered a thing in my life sadly. Can’t seem to find my multimeter but I’ve contacted Banggood and awaiting their reply. Thank you for all your help

I am very interested in buying a copper or aluminum heat sink. I would like to but 2 but I’ll take one if that is all that can be had. Only problem is it seems no one is making them anymore. So if anyone would be willing and able to make me one or two I will make it worth your while. As I understand that with the heat sink it’s like a whole new light. Keeps it’s high output for far longer. So please if you can help or know anyone that can help me please message me. I hope to hear from somebody soon. I love my MF01 but it’s so annoying how it keeps stepping down.

The only way I know of stopping it from stepping down without the heatsink is turn on the light put it on high not turbo and let it sit for about a minute and a half. Once the light is warmed up it will stop stepping down at random within only seconds. But to me that is not something I should have to do in order to get proper function.

Checking back again today, to see if anyone is going to be able to help me. I never thought it would be so hard to find someone to make me the heatsink especially since I will be paying well. If anyone can help or if anyone can find a way to get me the OEM heat sink that my light never came with, that would be great. I'm super weird about this kind of thing and it makes me want to throw the light out. I wish there was an easy fix that I could do myself but it seems there is none and sadly I do not own a CNC machine.

Thank you!

Info needed-

is there a optic available to make this light a flooder (more flooding)?

Not really a fan of the stock optic’s beam profile and I could use a small flood light in my arsenal.

Thanks all.

A question please:

Hi CRI 95+ is promised only for the 4000k version, right? 5000k / 6500k versions output the same CRI ~70?

Did anyone measure lumen output for 4000k version and can share some numbers?

So, I bought an MF01 Mini about a month back.

It has the brass heatsink in it. I’ve been testing it and it runs ok in Turbo, but ramps down very quickly when just in High. Like within 20 secs it is half the output. I hadn’t used it much in High, so didn’t really notice it until I read about it being an issue and decided to test with a Lux meter.

On Turbo it seems to maintain output quite well, gets f’ing hot to hold. On high it never even warmed up.

Today I have dropped the brass heatsink out. Firstly it was fitted the wrong way round, with the recessed cutout in the wrong place. Easy fix to rotate 180 degrees. But a shame QC is lacking from Astrolux :frowning:

I applied some thermal grease to the surfaces of the heat sink and re-fitted it the correct way round.

I then also checked the temp sensor. I’m pretty sure I read and followed the instructions correctly for this.

It was giving me a reading of 38-39 (100) degree C in a room that is only about 20-21 (68f) degree C. Which is a HUGE difference. I believe I also set the max temp to 50 instead of the default 45.

A quick test shows it is now holding High output and not instantly ramping down and the head starts to warm up, which it never did in High before.

I’ve not tested fully or for extended time periods. But it has markedly changed its behaviour.

Nice that you got it working properly. :+1:

I do want to make a note to everyone out there that in order to set the ambient temperature accurately you want to make sure it’s not used for at least several hours. You need a long time for all of the heat to dissipate out of it. Some people think it’s completely cooled down after 15 or 20 minutes, but the interior takes much longer to cool down.

Agree it needs to be at ambient. In my case, apart from turning it on to get to the Temp config modes, it have been sat for about 12hrs prior.

I was about to post something similar as I bought an MF01 mini and it was delivered over the weekend. Yes, it has the brass heatsink. I’ll have a look at whether it was fitted in the wrong way round when I get back home.

I have yet to set the temp on mine, but a quick test last night I did find it ramped down (quite visibly) from Turbo within 5 seconds. It was holding high (100%) much longer than Turbo and it even made the head hot compared to Turbo as well.

Overall, I do like the light. Got the copper head and XPL-HI in neutral white.

The Atmel 1-series solves these temp issues - factory calibrated temperature offset and scaling (btw, we only calibrate the offset). Wish we could get there, other advantages:

  • cheaper
  • smaller footprint (3mm x 3mm with 20 pins!)
  • 3 pins for flash programming, not 6
  • double or 4X the code space for the firmware (16 KB or 32 KB instead of the ATtiny 85 at 8 KB)
  • more I/O pins

Can you imagine temperature is factory calibrated? We could default Anduril(2) to a more aggressive higher temp, but still do temp management specific to the flashlight. I would probably go with 50-55C as a default, knowing it will be accurate.

Hi all. New member of the site and was thinking of buying the mf01 I noticed a few comments about more recent ones coming with this heatsink already installed - anyone know if this is standard now or just on the copper/chrome one?
Thanks for any input.

I got an unanodised MF01 Mini after reports that they now shipped with brass heatsink plates, and can confirm that this was the case. It might be worth removing the heatsink and applying heatsink paste to the contact areas.

Thanks for the reply.
That’s good news that your gamble paid off.
When you say the contact area - do you mean to put paste on top of the AMC chips, or between the plate and the torch(flashlight) body?

The manufacturer of the copper plate (see thread) wrote installation instructions, I probably won’t bother dismantling my MF01 mini if I don’t need to, I haven’t had a chance to use it much yet.