Ooops, yep. SC31 Pro. Recently got 5 green ones to gift, but did minor checks/updates. All 5 had a 0402 1K resistor for the switch LED's, and even my older black SC31 Pro had the same 1K resistor. Swapped them out for 6.8K - much better, low and hi still good visibility.
Hi went from about 1400 uA down to 271 uA. So Yes, stock SC31 Pro has high parasitic drain for switch LED on Hi, way too high.
With 6.8K resistor: OFF: 34 uA, LO: 75 uA, HI: 271 uA
Probably could even use a bigger resistor like a 10-12K and still get good LO/HI output.
There she is, had a pic, to the left of pin #1. Easy to remove with a wet iron tip, I used very light amt of solder paste on the 2 pads then used the iron on one end to simply get it in place, then hot air - worked well.
I’ll probably leave it stock and just use low level. My soldering skills suck lately. I checked my SC31 Pro. 1.4 ma on high, 90 microA on low and 41micro A on off. I can see the low pretty well so not so bad.
Does the built-in Anduril and/or Anduril-2 "Low Voltage Protection" which activates at ~2.8 VDC eliminate all parasitic drain on the battery, so that the battery cannot be discharged any further whether the processor was "in-active-use" or while it is "idle-and-sleeping"?
I have no experience with the micro processors used for Anduril, but I understand how they would be able to stop power from being supplied to the main or aux LEDs (including the switch LEDs).
What I am wondering is, does the processor still need to have a parasitic drain on the battery in order to determine if or when the battery's voltage is above the low voltage cutout or is there some other type of circuitry that totally eliminates all current when the battery voltage is below the low voltage cutoff and if there is a parasitic drain after the low voltage cutoff, how large is it?
I think it does turn off the switch LED's in LVP - it wakes up periodically when the MCU is asleep. I believe in the wakeup period, it draws about 3-4 mA, but again it's only for a short duration at a periodic scheduled time slice. I don't know all the specifics though, but of course it can't do anything about the charging circuits - those are independent.
I think at the final moment of reaching the bottom level, it shuts everything down.
Of the TS21? Hhmm, probably not a full tear down but if I open it up to fix the high drain, I'll probably take and post pics. I'm not sure I can get low mode to be viewable though because of the design - type of switch, position of LED, etc. Funny, I've found the low mode hold it's own when upping the resistor value, but the amp draw in Hi mode really drops.
Well, I did pull the glued driver and do see low is super low, barely lit looking straight at it. Also noticed there's 2 double LED's and one was just about fully covered with that red liquid electrical tape stuff, so pulled it all off the LED. tracked the resistor from pin #3 of the MCU - it's a 0402 100 ohm :FACEPALM: , figures. Should probably be 6 - 10K or so. The pin #3 output does go through aa 3 legged part as if the LED is being shared - not sure if it is or not, maybe the USB-C controlle,r and maybe it puts out lower voltage or something, dunno.
The LED wires are tight, so to remove the driver, first thing you need to do is un-solder the LED wires, then I used a solder pick through the center hole and gave it a few taps, being sure to keep the pick over to one side at the edge - important so no IC's are damaged. Came out easy them. The driver glue is a wet glue, weird, usually it's dried hard but this was still soft/sticky.
I don’t think Sofirn ever intended their metal switch hardware with the small portal to serve as anything but a brief indicator like it has been employed in the past.
It’s certainly not as well suited to the more sophisticated ways it can be employed with more complex firmware like Anduril.
There have been two basic choices in their parts bin, the metal switches with the small portal, and the larger rubber switches with multiple LEDs.
Puzzling why the TS21 is the black sheep in the family, when the rest of the clan all have the other type. Subjectively, I think the other is superior not only in function, but aesthetically. The metal switch is a weak point of the SP35 as well, loose and mushy. But at least that light was clearly a design clone, inspired by a “F”-branded light, and the lighting only serves spot duty.
The TS21 isn’t trying to mimic some other design, and had more design freedom.
Yeah, TS21 v2 with the blue LED bug is a bit annoying. I really like this light and luckily I don’t care too much because the blue light will go away rather quickly, but still - what a mistake!
The big difference between v1 and v2 outside of Anduril 2 is the USB powerbank function they added, so that’s most likely the culprit. The v1 version did not have that bug.
Not sure what you mean by this - the blinking?. If so, I just tested it - didn't realize A2 uses the low mode to flash for voltage and temp readings -- that's bad with this light, so no, not very practical, least not in room light.
I did swap the 100 ohm 0402 for a 8.2K resistor and now I'd say the amber switch LED on hi is somewhat less bright than I'd like. The parasitic drain did go down from 13.5 mA to 1.3 mA, so knocked it down, but still not in what I would consider an acceptable range. Weird, not what I was expecting... Was hoping to get the drain down further, but bright enough to be useful. Also the low setting is maybe slightly lower than it was before, and that's not noticeable in room light, but can be seen in the dark.
So at 1.3 mA, it will completely drain a 4000 mAh cell in 128 days - better but again, not acceptable.
They sent me a 5000k when I ordered a 4000k. I also have the random charge light issue. Despite the flaws I quite like the light, but I do hope they’ll respond to my support email.
