That’s good to know, thanks. Hank said the driver has a diameter of 22 mm, and I gather it essentially runs the KR4 firmware. I’m guessing that means regulation is equal, there is a FET present (but probably disabled by default), and it can be reprogrammed using Hank’s kit?
That would be the most relevant things for me, hardware-wise.
XP-L HI can make about 4000 to 4500 lumens at about 15 to 20 Amps. E21A stops at 5 Amps and maukka measured it at about 1200 lm.
The main appeal of E21A is that it’s high-CRI with a nice tint and a variety of good color temperatures. The clear optic isn’t optimized for E21A though, so it uses a floodier frosted optic instead. It’s a close-range flooder for high-quality illumination.
XP-L HI is more throwy and makes a lot more lumens.
I would like to petition Hank to use retaining rings instead of glue to secure the drivers. I do not know about the other lights, as I only own 4 variants of the D4V2 Ti and a KR4 Ti, but I am sure mine do non have retaining rings.
That would enable enthusiasts to replace any faulty drivers and upgrade to new driver versions.
Don’t own a sst-20 . The top of the ramp is similar with a slight advantage for the the xpl-hi ; but of course you have the turbo for the xpl-hi witch is almost inexistant for the e21a .
The Cracked and Splash look amazing, remind me of Trapper Keeper designs around late 80s / early 90s. That’s a full compliment, they are bad @$$. Hope they are available around Christmas.
The D4 with any currently existing LEDs won’t come anywhere close to the beam profile of a dedicated thrower, or even a compact one like a D1/KR1.
A question of my own, does anyone know if the tailcap retaining rings in recent KR4s is glued or has locktite? I wanted to remove mine to try it without the metal switch cover but cant seem to get the ring to budge. I do vaguely remember Hank saying something about the first batches of KR4 having some easily remedied connection issue that is now fixed in production though too.
I just received KR4 with E21A/5000K in black. It is a very nice light. I like it very much.
There are some questions about the AUX LED’s. This is not my first light with Anduril with AUX LED’s, so I think I am navigating through the functions OK.
Everything works fine with the high mode. All the colors are nicely defined and beautiful.
The low mode is a different story. (I mean high/low mode = the brightness.)
When any mixed color with green is on, only the green is visible. So, the colors are supposed to be sequenced from red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet, while, rainbow, and volts when 7H. However, with the low mode, it goes from red, green, green, green, blue violet, green, partial rainbow, and partial volts. (partial = any mixed color with green = green).
So, when the AUX LED’s are on blinking, the colors are good through the high phase but not good with the same issues through the low phase (green only for the mix).
I am using the freshly charged battery.
Do you think there is something wrong with my new KR4? By the way, the light from the main LED’s are very nice.
It’s simply that at very low power levels those emitters have widely varying brightness depending on color. The several Emisar/Noctigon with aux lights I’ve had all had the same behavior - red is much dimmer than green and blue on the “low” setting.
If this situation is normal or common with Emisar/Noctigon with AUX lights, I am OK with it. I was just curious if my example was broken.
Probably, it can be fixed by changing the resistor for the AUX LED’s to match the forward voltage/current. I don’t think I will do it, though. They are very tiny. The wires to the AUX board are small and crowded.
I often use yellow in low mode with the other Anduril light with AUX LED’s. Maybe, I am in the minority for the preference to use low usually.
For the aux LEDs, the brightness on high mode is determined by the resistors on the aux board. There is one for each color. Hank balances these to keep brightness consistent and make color combinations work.
However, the low mode’s brightness is determined by the pull-up resistor built into the attiny chip. It can’t really be changed. Really, it probably shouldn’t work at all… but it does. So it’s added as an extra feature.
It switches between high and low mode by connecting and disconnecting the attiny’s internal resistor. So there isn’t much we can do about balancing the brightness of different colors in low mode.