thefreeman’s HDR Anduril 2 high efficiency drivers - update : FWxA boost driver

That’s great, E3 is easily moddable and has good thermal dissipation for its size. Will it work with B35AM in 3P configuration if someone makes a 20mm triple MCPCB for it? Its R9080 version should be as efficient as LH351D CRI90 at ~1000 lumens, but with much higher turbo power.

Why are Anduril lights with constant current drivers so hard to find? Cost?

A “slowed down” 5ms on time for party strobe will still reach the desired effect of freezing motion. I use the Anduril party strobe and 5ms strobe on a non-Anduril flashlight for light painting photography.

First of all I'll say that while Andúril may sound cool to some, the name of a phantasy sword is not exactly a common way to name flashlight firmwares. This is just the way I see it, of course. Then…

Average Joe or average chinese seller or manufacturer's answer: What is Andúril?

(link from: ▶ Flashlights with BLF User Interfaces - Master List ◀)

After checking it out: Whoa! That software is fairly sophisticated/complicated. We'll pass…

Andúril is meant for ATtiny MCU's and “FET” drivers. ATtiny MCU's are not really that common for the aforementioned fellows. Then, “FET” drivers are unregulated, their brightness is adjusted using a PWM signal from the MCU. Regulated drivers adjust brightness changing a MOSFET gate drive voltage (for variable load regulated linear drivers, like the SST40 types from Convoy), or by adjusting a buck/boost or boost-buck switching engine output voltage somehow… from a sense voltage signal (in both cases).

What does this mean? Software porting and conversions. This costs money, particularly if whoever does the software screws up (like someone from the driver manufacturing company to which Convoy entrusts and makes requests, long ago with the 12-groups Biscotti clone firmware and the SST40 drivers which couldn't save the software settings). This lack of care in the software meant lots of losses due to recalled products. When you write software for devices which can't be upgraded easily (and even in this case if you ask me), it pays off to do it carefully, taking whatever required time, and ensuring perfection.

So cost is one factor, but also interest (or lack of thereof).

Thanks Barkuti. So I shouldn’t hold my breath waiting for these to hit the market.

Only premium components cost about 15$, no soft, no pcb design , no hand soldering … To sell cheap you have to order in factory like 1000 pcs or more. ;))

OK, so just no interest in regulated output designs?

I think you didn't formulated this question correctly, and so you may want to reformulate it.

In my opinion there's interest in regulated output designs. All regulated output designs ensure constant current output (and so PWM-less standard modes), for as long as the input requirements are met. A regulated output design ensures an led cannot receive overcurrent, even if emitter is low Vf, all current paths are optimized and battery resistance is low (high discharge batteries).

Current limits can also be raised for regulated drivers, particularly for linears or variable load drivers, by the way. This is done by modifying the sense resistor or sense resistor stack.

I was inferring from Quadrupel’s post that cost wasn’t the main hinderance thus leaving demand as the limiting factor.

It doesn’t have to be, some of Sofirn’s lights have it, and they don’t exactly break the bank.

But if you’ll recall this thread, when the SP32 evolved with a more usable, regulated driver, it lost some lumen bragging rights, and that’s a turn off for some, if not a lot, of people.

I don’t think Sofirn has any regulated Anduril models.

They don’t; was speaking of regulated lights in general.

And as explained above, Anduril isn’t really congruent with regulated drivers, at least without some work, and I don’t think what it brings necessarily justifies that sacrifice.

I don’t count myself among those calling for Anduril any and everywhere, because I do value regulation, and the two are at odds, at least in the marketplace.

Anduril doesn’t care about the type of driver as long as it accepts PWM or analog input.

Count me in as interested in regulation, and also in using a CPU with more code space than the small AVR’s, even if it adds some cost.

While not exactly related to this, I'll post here a message I submitted to ToyKeeper recently (≈2 days ago):

This passiveness could mean lack of interes, although I'll keep listening. :-)

I wanted to say this because among other things ToyKeeper created Andúril and many of these sophisticated firmwares. ;-)

Concerning moonlight modes, I'll share with you a nice idea.

As the technically inclined among you already now, the very low current required for moonlight modes usually causes some trouble with the either the low resolution of MCUs (mainly), sense amplifiers, low or super low sense voltages (which are a must for high power and efficient designs), switching noise… or a combination of any of these.

There's a cheap way to solve this despite using low resolution MCUs, at least for linear or variable load regulated drivers. This is to use an alternative output path, a resistor in parallel with the standard driver output, for a moonlight mode. This way, fully closing the MOSFET gate in regulated linear or variable load drivers would only allow the very low current of the resistor in parallel from input to output to go through. Since a “3V” led has ≈2.5V of Vf at super-low currents, it is easy to calculate a resistor for a regulated linear driver presuming ≈3.6V of input voltage. R = V / I, and so a moonlight mode resistor for, let's say, 100µA moonlight, would be Rmoon = (3.6V - 2.5V) / 0.0001A = 1.1V / 10−4 = 1.1V × 104 = 11kΩ. This moon mode would not be constant current, with moon current varying from 154.5̅4̅µA with 4.2V at the input, the no-load voltage of a fully charged li-ion battery, to 45.4̅5̅µA with 3V at the input, the no-load voltage of a technically depleted li-ion battery. But this is a minor complaint, imho. The moon current would be flowing at all times into the emitter.

Hope this is of service. O:)

Like you said it would be always on so I don’t like this idea, with a small FET an resistor you can add another low power channel on a linear/FET driver, dimmable with PWM but the output will vary with the input voltage, I don’t really like this either as you can’t make a smooth ramp all the way up this way, which is kind of the main feature of Anduril is it not ? Plus I’m more interested in DC-DC converters.

The dual sense resistor solution only needs a <50$c NFET (if there is full Anduril support, otherwise an hardware delay is needed adding some components).

Converting Convoy drivers to community firmware should be possible, for those that use uncompatible MCU (most of them), they could be replaced by a small 1616 on an adapter like Gchart has done for the SP10S, the drivers take a PWM signal in so no problem on that side. A e-switch solder pad could be added on this adapter to use Anduril. Though there might be some quirks there and there. Like on the XHP35 driver the Vbatt voltage divider is after the LDO so it can’t read the whole batt voltage range. Probably other weird stuff too that one might see by reverse engineering them.

Emisar (Linear+FET) and FF (buck+ FET) lights use CC drivers with Anduril firmware.
Cost ? Sure, especially for DC-DC converters, also 7135+ FET design are super cheap, super simple, barely any knowledge needed, hence why they are also popular within the community where Anduril originates from.
Power density : a FET driver can achieve ludicrous power in small size and lumens sell.

You’re underestimating the impact 15$ parts has on the manufacturer’s margins.
Also I want to point out that a buck driver doesn’t mean efficiency. I measured the efficiency of the Skillhunt H04 driver and got arround 80% in high (less than 1A), that’s bad, linear (in average) driver bad, it uses an asynchronous buck converter and probably cheapens out on components.

True, but sometimes there might be some quirks that needs some actions from the MCU in order to mitigate them, which are not supported in Anduril, more on that later.

(sorry for the lack of updates)

Oh! Well, concerning simple regulated linear drivers you could feed the moon resistor from an onboard LDO (3kΩ for a 2.8V LDO presuming a Vf of 2.5V), and switch it on/off with a tiny MOSFET. ;-)

For switching drivers the dual sense resistor is great, but there's a need to switch off the bigger conductance sense resistor efficiently.

You would be connecting the output of the LDO to the batt+. This would require some isolation like how the output of the buck is disconnected with a FET whent the DD FET is ON in the Lume1 driver.

There is no efficiency cost in my dual sense resistor circuit, since the FET resistance is part of the sense resistor. I changed the FET for one that gives me a more realiable Rdson (~2mΩ), it’s also significantly less expensive.

Ok, your right, I should handle the criticisms more gracefully, I apologize for that. It's over.

I must correct myself here, the resistor channel being in parallel the linear channel just adds up on top of it so no issue for making a smooth ramp, not sure why I said that especially since I started designing a linear+resistor driver a while ago (never finished it).