The distress beacon things (Personal Locator Beacon) doesn’t have the bandwidth for voice calls. It only sends your GPS coordinates. I don’t know why they didn’t make it also able to include some text from you: maybe to stop people from using it for chatting. But it looks like the rumor was false and the iphone 13 won’t have any sort of satellite comms. The last msg of this thread has a link with details:
Ming chi later clarified that the satellite use would be only for emergencies and only when there was no cell signal. It would not be a satellite phone.
Its all still rumors as there has been no official reports on the feature.
I’ve seen a lot of folks on BLF discussing LED and driver design, implementation, measurements, etc…. and it has me wondering how many of them are professionals like engineers or tradesmen who are in the industry and how many are just hobbyists/enthusiasts who have just learned via DIY. Anyone here have a feel for that?
Ok, this sounds like a PLB and I guess it makes some sense. Too bad they can no longer use the headphone cord as an antenna, since they got rid of the headphone jack…
Some like Barkuti and Tom E used to work as engineers for big electronics companies and Lexel trained as an electronics engineer. Toykeeper was a software coder.
I think the flashlight specific field is too small and specific so you get these knowledgeable people from larger adjacent fields who like flashlights that find it easy to learn driver design and firmware coding. I’m pretty sure 99% of the forum members just pick up things here and there and get a good feel for it. The number of people that can design their own driver is quite small. Maybe 10 or 15 people? Maybe 20?
Anyway, thats my guess.
Thanks, Jason! I was hoping you might reveal some good stuff. I’m psyched to know that we’ve got some real domain experts in our midst, even if they’re retired. Their knowledge is really impressive. It does seem like a wonderful hobby born of professional experience for such folks. Using your trade know-how and wisdom for a personal passion… nothing much else quite like it! These people and the diehard hobbyists who are learning and sharing are making this hobby so fascinating. And the small time flashlight makers keeping an eye out are learning from all this. Real “test subjects” taking their product, running it through paces using professional insight & discretion… it’s basically free QA for just the cost of a flashlight. Not a bad deal!
20mm plain glass? I got a bunch from AX in various sizes, just gotta look.
Eg, for my LuxPro lights, I measured the plastic “glass” in front, say, 43mm. Then just search on AX and see what’s out there, whether 2mm or 3mm thick, coated or not, etc., and just grab it.
For these, 20mm should fit, but you might wanna confirm that it’s not, say, 21mm or so.
Is it difficult to transplant the electronics from one d4v2 into another, if I don’t want to mess with the wiring, i.e. don’t need to separate the driver board from the MCPCB? That does leave the matter of the pushbutton.
Reason for doing this: I am sort of wanting a d4v2 with cyan main leds, so obviously it should be in a cyan tube. But my white led one is already in a cyan tube. So I’d want to get the cyan-led light in another color, then switch the tubes around.