Yeah, having two independent types of LED is not a recipe for small. To optimize for size, the question isn’t what can be added, but what can be removed.
I had a headlamp with red LEDs… a Nitecore HC50. It used “click for white, or hold for red”. And while on, half-press the button to change modes or brightness levels. Pretty simple. But I often forgot it had a red mode since I never had a use for it. I mostly remembered when I tried to “hold for moon”, and got bright or flashing red instead. Then to reach moon, I had to turn it off, click for white, then half-press several times to rotate brightness through turbo and back to moon.
The dual-stage button was kind of neat, but in practice I found it mostly got in the way. Quite frequently, it would register a half-press on the way to making a full press… and then activate both functions. Like, click for on/off with memory was nice… but it’d often register a half press for “rotate brightness up” while turning the light off. So it’d often come on next time at the next mode, like having next-mode memory except less predictable. Same with the red mode group… was never sure which red mode it would use next time I turned it on.
It was simple, but it wasn’t intuitive or convenient. The fancy extras were neat, but they came at the cost of some basics like predictability and direct access to low modes without cycling through high modes.
Anyway, I think a single e-switch UI with two different independent LED types could be done well… but it would need to be a complete from-scratch new design built for that purpose. Anduril is not designed for that, and would not be a good choice for this type of light.
Can we have a SP31v3, with single frequency strobe (10Hz) instead of the alternating frequency strobe, and mode memory for strobe mode (as per the original SP31) so that strobe can be accessed by the forward clicky switch?
That would create the best budget light for light painting!
I’d like to put in a bid for making C01 lights with a variety of colored emitters —- blue, aqua, green, yellow, amber, and orange— like the lights Arc AAAs used to offer.
for extra collectible goodness, anodize the light tubes in matching colors, as was done with the C01R far red model.
This would be great, but since they already stated they are only doing a single run with all the same emitter, I’m sure it won’t happen.
However, if they do offer a host version like djozz has asked of them, I’m tempted to do this. Pulling a few hundred out of the production run before the LED’s are installed should be more straightforward than running multiple batches with different LED’s. LED Supply has a good selection of colored 5mm emitters.
Also, check out the Convoy rainbow somebody shared on the flashlight reddit today. It’s glorious:
I also know there are a couple folks around here who have done sets of S2+ illuminated tailswitches that match the body colors.
….but Sofirn aren’t just going to make something just for that small percentage, they attract most sales from the general public who only care about high lumens.
You need to get into modding or installing your own the way you like it
Sorfirn entered where Convoy already was. Both do super work, but Convoy (Simon) seems to be more the “custom” guy. That said… Sofirn did bring out the C8F, Q8, SP-36, LT1, SP25a, and the latest rave now… the SC31 Pro.
Sofirn also brought us more tint and led type selections this last year— all selling at an “affordable” price. Then… they have migrated a lot of designs to give us Anduril lights in MUCH of their line. While Convoy moves along in newer customized designs lately, Sofirn is selling a heck of a lot of “production” lights that are really great (solid) builds that aren’t always “leading edge”, but they are very reliable. Oh… and the LT1 really was a super new thing actually (I own FOUR)
I love Convoy equally, but in my case it just turns out that more than a few of my first Anduril lights happened to come from Sofirn.
And Funtastic… as a dealer you are always watching the market- I get it. But I’ve read you say more than once that people want, “… an EASY to use light without problems.” I’d guess BOTH Sofirn and Convoy are standard shelf “stockers” for you on the retail side to this point. I’d also guess customers are getting smarter with time as the Millennials start coming up to be prime consumers (where you can hand them anything electronic and they get of figured out in 10 seconds- NOT my generation)
Interesting. Barry was talking about having SP33/Q8 “Pro” (XHP50.2 and built-ing USB-C charging) versions in the pipeline. It would be cool if Anduril 2 landed on them, but the timing will be tight.
The highest sustainable output is mostly determined by the host itself, not the LEDs used. There is some variation with different LED types, but the differences are small. So the sustainable level would probably be very close to the current versions.
Here’s what I measured in a turbo runtime test:
The direct-drive-style power circuit makes output sag over time so, to maintain temperature, the driver keeps bumping the output up. As the battery voltage gets closer to the LED forward voltage, it becomes more efficient and can sustain higher brightness levels at the same temperature. It’s not the prettiest runtime graph, but it’s normal for this type of light.
The HK04 is a host with quad XHP50.2 3V's, only 3 cells instead of 4, overall slightly smaller than a Q8 but similar form factor.
My HK04 w/spring bypasses does 14,500 at start, 12,000 and 30 secs (maukka calibrated), and with raising the the temp threshold to 85C or so, it's hot to hold at 30 secs.
No idea. Really there's no such thing as constant lumens with a driver like this. The HK04 uses a FET + 1, but the "+ 1" is actually not a 7135 but what I suspect is another FET with resistors in the circuit. This is similar in design to TA's high amp drivers.
Unfortunately I have no loomen toob to test with, but my M6 (4x18650, 3xXHP50.2) holds full ramp (16x AMC7135) until the voltage drops too low if I set the thermal limit to 65C. The entire head gradually heats until it’s somewhat painful to hold, though. But that takes a while - for 20 minutes of “bright” it’s just a decent handwarmer.
