That’s pretty incredible. I would be extatic to have Anduril on my 4X18A, even if it meant losing built in charging.
There ya go with the piggyback again!
I'm working on another one now for someone. Added a 3rd 20 AWG ground, and on mine I used two pair of 18 AWG wires, but for the new one, I'm using 1 pair of 16 AWG's. Every time I do a mod again, always make some improvements.
Yea I do think the 5A driver is more reliable, I only had one of them fail, I had my 5000k LH351D on mode 3 (10% brightness) and the beam started to turn angry blue and it got super hot so I had turn it off, not sure what went wrong but the lower brightness modes stopped working completely. I replaced driver and Led and it’s fine now though.
I just like the mode spacing and runtime of the 4*7135 drivers but I’d pick the 5A driver for reliability and nice output.
Well I think it’s probably good if the light always comes on in moonlight, just need to find a good balance between the mode spacing and having too many modes to tap through. Most of the groups are too similar in terms of mode spacing. Adding a toggleable option to be able to choose whether you want ascending or descending mode order would further reduce the amount of groups needed, pretty much like the Reylight driver.
I like the idea of being able to disable/enable a true low moonlight, like the way you can disable it in Reylights or the way you can disable mode memory in the current convoy drivers.
So for example an S2+ with 5A driver and SST40 (take these number with a large grain of salt)
Mode 1 (0.1%) 1.8 Lumens
Mode 2 (1%) 18 Lumens
Mode 3 (10%) 180 Lumens
Mode 4 (35%) 630 Lumens
Mode 5 (100%) 1800 Lumens
Modes 1 and 2 are fine.
There’s a big difference between 2 and 3.
Most of the time Mode 5 will look very similar to mode 4 because it will step down due to heat.
So I think adding a mode with 5% would give a nice brightness of around 90 lumens maybe in this example. And 20% could give around 360 lumens maybe.
I don’t like how the current drivers have 20% separate from any of the groups that have moonlight or 10% so all of my convoys just have the default group 1 selected, the other groups are just too similar with minor differences.
Also for your suggestion of 10 taps for battery indicator, I think that would be good as long as you don’t accidently go into config mode and yea i’d love too see accurate voltage read outs rather than the current indicator.
Agreed. I think having several groups starting at moonlight and ending with 100% would be good. Probably five total, ranging from two to 6 modes, with an even multiplier between the modes so the spacing looks consistent. For example, the 4-mode group would look like 1 - 10 - 100 - 1000 lumens, where the multiplier is 10x.
Being able to reverse the mode order is a great idea. That would eliminate a few duplicate mode groups and it would also allow for more total configurations.
That strikes me as crossing the line from adding complexity for the sake of improvement, to adding complexity for the sake of complexity. I don’t see a need for moonlight mode to be toggle-able because I think most users who would not want moonlight would be served just fine by a mode group that doesn’t have it.
Keep in mine we perceive brightness logarithmically. Jumping from 1.8lm to 18lm is visually the same increase as jumping from 18lm to 180lm. Out of those particular lumen numbers you provided as an example, mode 4 seems out of place to me because it breaks the otherwise consistent 10x lumen increase multiplier between modes.
Yeah, I would not want the 20 taps for programming to be changed, so 10 taps for battery check should not get anywhere near the programming mode.
It is not accurate to say “we perceive brightness linearly.” We perceive it logarithmically. 2 lumens does not appear twice as bright as 1 lumen. But you are comparing relative increases in terms of percentage and saying equal % increases will be perceived equally.
You are absolutely right. That was a typo and has been corrected.
That’s great if the number of groups can be reduced and added more variation for users. Like if you preferred a different multiplier for the mode spacing. I don’t know if it’s possible to make the brightness of the mode groups this specific (I have rounded up and down some of the numbers) but it would allow for a lot more customization of brightness and personally I think the x3 multiplier could be really nice.
0.1, 0.4, 3, 17, 100% (x6 multiplier)
0.1, 0.8, 4, 20, 100% (x5 multiplier)
0.4, 1.5, 6, 25, 100% (x4 multiplier)
1.2, 4, 11, 33, 100% (x3 multiplier)
0.4, 1.2, 4, 11, 33% (x3 multiplier)
There needs to be a 35% mode as that is where the S2+ tends to thermo-regulate.
That depends heavily on the emitter used. A super efficient emitter like SST40 is going to sustain a higher drive current than a lower efficiency emitter like an SST20 4000K. Since sustained output varies based on emitter efficiency, I don’t think that should be a deciding factor when determining output levels.
Actually they both regulate at approx. 35% in the S2+ but have different drivers suited for the emitter’s max output - 5A and 2.8A respectively.
That’s true that there are two different drivers. I believe it’s just a matter of older versions coming with the older 2.8A driver though, as all of the newer releases (except for 219B which can’t handle 5A) come with the newer 5A driver and newer 12 group firmware.
The efficiency of the emitters doesn’t appear to correlate with the drivers either, as the 2.8A driver comes with a few high efficiency emitters (xpl-hi, SST20 5000K+, XPG2) and a few low efficiency emitters (219C, LH351D, SST20 4000K-), so the stable outputs don’t appear to correlate with the driver choice as you’re suggesting.
Regardless, in my proposed UI changes, you could simply choose a mode group that includes a level near 35% like you prefer. Or, you could adjust the thermal limit up or down to achieve the stable output you want.
Use ATTiny microcontrollers
Not really big fan of Convoy’s 12 mode group UI here but I mostly use custom UI anyway but since Simon changed MCU those drivers become totally worthless for me which is a huge hassle because now I have to find them from other suppliers so you have a big YES from me for returning Tiny13a MCU.
I would like to see a way back to last used level from turbo in the 4 mode UI.
That’s super easy to do already. You just have to know what mode you were in, then it’s a quick 1-3 taps to return to that mode. I can’t think of a simpler way to do it than that.
Anduril has spoiled me. Also some UIs double tap to turbo, single tap back to last used level. You can sort of do this double tap back if you do it slowly but you are turning the light off first then the second tap turns it back on to memorized level. After going to turbo with the Convoy, you have to cycle through L, M, H to get back. Low seems like off practically after turbo.
Oh yeah I get that. It’s just dependent on the switch type. For e-switches I want Anduril 2 of course. But, most of their lights use mechanical switches and I can’t think of a great way to do a “return to last used mode from turbo” function on a mechanical switch.
Sorry, I should have said with their side switch lights.
Oh yeah totally. As I said in the first post, rather than improving Convoy’s existing e-switch UI, I think it would be better to go ahead and adopt Anduril 2.
I wish so too. As long as he keeps his boost driver with it.