Also, yes I can see the traces now in mcpcbs, and by the looks of your pictures above, the traces are very specific for this one, and how they avoid all of the post holes and cutouts., still haven’t tried to drill post holes on a standard mcpcb, but I will report back with pictures when I do. I’m still thinking about putting a CULPM1 into one of these.
I also use a Uni-T UT210E clamp meter, from reading BLF posts. :-)
However, I don't have many wires lying around. I used to use a slimmer copper wire (I think around 8 inches), which is ok for measuring around 6 Amps, but 10-12 Amps, that piece of wire gets hot.
The "thin copper wire" shown in the following:
I then 'upgraded' to a bit thicker copper wire (which is what I now use for measuring, about 6 inches long maybe), this works ok for measuring around 15 Amps or so, but higher than about 20 Amps, that piece of wire gets hot. Probably means I'm not using an adequate sized wire.
The "thicker wire" shown here:
I'm not sure what's the gauge of the wires I'm using though... What size can work for measuring more than 20+ Amps without the wire getting quite hot?
Can't check now, but I use 14 or 16 AWG, think it's 16 AWG:
As you can see, the clamp meter can work as a regular multi-meter, measuring not just amps, but voltage and resistance. I've measured up to about 30 amps. The meter comes with the black and red leads.
My EA01 killed a good Liitokala 5000mAh. It was sitting with the battery and the switch-leds on for I assume more than a month unattended and now the Liitokala reads 0 V. I’m not trying to recover that.
It appears that the light in standby consumes 5.7 mA (still after a few minutes), which is IMO too much for those two blue leds and in any case 50 times the by Astrolux claimed 0.1 mA.
So another light that always needs mechanical lockout, and I’m not good in consistently doing that 
Think someone mentioned this earlier? I recall reading it somewhere and struck me odd. Ugh - makes you wonder about the how and who configured Anduril for this light. Anduril doesn't do that high standby drain so suspect it's been altered. Also the driver design of the 7135 on pin#3 and FET on pin#5 is an odd one, and pretty sure wasn't supported with any TK config files.
My blue EA01 XHP50.2 and MT01 SST-40 are now running Anduril 2. I'll check the standby draw but pretty sure it's fine.
I don’t have a clamp meter yet. Are DMM readings worthless for these small numbers? I found the UT210 E for $39. Recommended?
Ok, I'm a bit confused. By small #'s, guess you mean the standby drain? I haven't tried my UT210E on measuring standby drain - I use another meter (another UNI-T model actually), but not sure if the UT210E can do it or not. $39 sounds like a good price - typically it's $50. Can't recall what our group buy price was on it, think about $40.
I know one guy complained the UT210E was crap, and would die on him after a couple months - more than once. For me, I've had mine for years (~4??) and no problems.
Yeah, I want to measure standby current in the EA01 since some seem to drain batteries but all I have is a DMM. It reads 1.2 ma.
Edit: I checked all my other e switch lights and none are in the ma range of parasitic drain. I would consider 1.2 ma high based on that. My only question, shouldn’t I see 2 different values when measuring drain? A higher value and a sleep value? I’m only seeing one steady 1.2 ma drain.
Got my multi meter today! No idea how to even plug the wires in the right spot! Looks like to YouTube I go… Matt smith has a video I think about it…
Which made me think…
Tom E- you should start a YouTube channel. I’d be your first Patron (patreon? the app support thing) I personally think your a top valued member here, and I greedily want you to make videos on YouTube to show us how to learn things lol. (Ok, I’ll stop a kissing). But really, you should. You know, with all the free time you probably don’t have.
Who else rips open their perfectly working brand new flashlights for testing? I second it.
Interesting - I found my post of when I got the UT210E and it was in Jan 2016! https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/37314/93
Over 5 years and still works and looks like new. HKJ review here: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/47288
That’s good to hear. For some reason I thought the clamp method was preferred to using test leads of a multimeter for measuring parasitic drain.
Nice! Thanks Tom! I’ll check it out. Once I learn about mine.
From the review and specs I read, the clamp meters at these costs can't do low amps. I use a UT139C for standby drain measurement and it works great. I measure under 10 mA. Actually just did a whole bunch of standby drain measurements:
My regular DMM meters:
I use the UT139C for low amp measurements, non-stock probes with fine points:
Here's the "small" subset of lights I tested:
Just fyi, my lumens measurement setup, with a couple of jumper wires I'll use on occasion and different size foam cutouts:
The bottom line is there's got to be something wrong with the EA01/MT01's driver. With no switch LED's on, those #'s are way too high.
20-40 uA should be about right. Didn't note it but the E3S is a custom FET+1 driver running Anduril2. The MT01's charging seems to work but the EA01 I got doesn't seem to charge. I measure it's drawing ~0.5 amps, but the cell doesn't seem to gain voltage even after hours.
The EA01 and MT01 seem like they have a bleed resistor somewhere. I suspect the charging circuitry because the main MCU circuitry looked pretty normal. I didn't get good clear pics of the driver because I left the wires connected. The EC01 and EC03 tested pretty good.
Ohhh - it's a 14 AWG wire I use with the UT210E, and you do have to hold it tight to the battery tube edge and batt- contact for those high amp readings.
Thanks for your testing. Do you think Banggood would consider high parasitic drain a defect worthy of a replacement or not?
Nope, no way. Can't even talk to anyone there who would have a slight inkling of understanding what we are talk'n about.
I'd hope there would be a better chance of them listening to freeme, and freem may have better contacts, but dunno if freeme is following this. Past experience of mine says nothing will happen - it's probably not a big enough issue. Things like the MF01 Mini plastic heat sync ended up getting fixed in future batches but I don't think anything was done for early buyers.
djozz's measured 5.7 mA which is way higher than my worse (the MT01), but my 2 pieces were also different from each other - weird it's so inconsistent.
Hhhmmm - I do have more mods to do on my blue EA01 - want to changed the blue switch LED's to another color, and change the switch LED resistor on the driver. If I get to that, I can better review the driver board and maybe find the "leak". Suspect though it's in the charging circuitry - might eliminate it and see if the leak goes away - those built-in charging circuits are usually poor quality. Think Hank's K1's though are pretty darn good.
Cheaper than repairing the defect is lie about it on their website 
, but maybe some day?
Last night left work late and the parking lot lights were out. We are out in the sticks here, at the fringes of the burbs, so it was pretty dark. My car was the only one left in the lot, far away, and couldn't even see it. I first tried the EDC18 in my pocket which is great for close range but useless to spot my car. So broke out the MT01 SST-40 and lit it up like daylight. It's quite impressive with a nice big spot and having a good working distance, and this was just on hi at top of the ramp, not turbo. It stayed cool enough the entire walk to the car. These are great lights for the money, but still room for improvements. Seems like the parasitic drain problem is specific to this EA01 model, and not rampant in Matemincos with my spot checking of what I got.
The list of issues I see/know of are:
- excessive parasitic drain of various degree, varied unit by unit
- sharp edges on the SS bezel, some worse than others
- weird writing on the back of the copper MCPCB - why? Doesn't seem like a good idea on such a critical temp junction
- where's the Anduril source code being used on this light? It should be publicly posted/accessible. Please!
- still QC/QA issues piece by piece - are basic tests done on each light before shipped?
Overall not so bad, not great.
Yes, i have been following since first reported case.I will remind BG again this week.