Should Sofirn make an IF25A Pro with a buck+FET driver instead of the current 7135+FET driver?

You can see the archived poll results on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20221220093741/https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/72950

The reason I’m actually asking this to the community is that I’m honestly annoyed by so many otherwise great lights having poor regulation at sustainable levels of brightness, which makes a lot of lights a bit difficult to use as general lights, since your options for output are either low innefficient regulated brightness or high unregulated brightness.

Adding a mid power buck converter to a light like the IF25A(~2.5-3A) would allow it to perform a lot better in scenarios where a constant amount of light is needed, wjocj would increase efficiency a lot since you don’t have to burn off a lot of that voltage through the linear regulator, and you still get access to a FET channel for absolute maximum brightness, so the buck driver circuit part doesn’t have to be very expensive :slight_smile:

I’d say get rid of all turbo/unregulated output levels. What is the point? When I switch to turbo on the IF25A I immediately switch back down, it’s overkill and only gives a “wow it’s bright” moment, that I can live without.

Agreed. I’d honestly prefer a 6A buck driver with Anduril myself, but I know that there are a lot of hot-heads who want maximum output at all cost, so 3A buck+FET driver would be our best bet.

This could also be an opportunity to improve the IF25A design substantially.

Fantastic idea, best of both worlds. Buck drivers aren’t that efficient at high currents so this sounds ideal

Yeah.

Heck, maybe we could start a groupbuy if demand is deemed high enough.

The IF25A uses a 25mm driver with plenty of space for a large inductor if we ever want to go the high current buck route(although I doubt we’ll go above 3A at best), and being a 25mm driver, this should be plenty of space for a buck+FET driver design.

Preach it.

I’ve gotten into another hobby that has been sucking up my fun money, but even if that wasn’t the case, my enthusiasm for cheap lights with cheap direct drivers has been waning, since I’ve covered most of my use cases, and the familiar manufacturers have mostly been rehashing familiar themes in different forms, and not shown much interest in improving the fundamentals like the drivers, not counting the minimal efforts made to adopt open-source UIs.

I’d even be willing to pay more for a well-regulated light, but that’s probably a minority view in a market where big numbers and showoff models are most popular.

Why Sofirn? Why buck? I don’t think that Sofirn host can sustain 10W output. Convoy already have cheap&good hosts and boost drivers.

would a buck help at lower output levels for efficiency? if i could get better battery life than i already have, that would be great. constant output per level regardless of battery voltage would also be nice.

for normal close range stuff i like the IF25A form factor/interface, floody beam, tint etc. lumens, range, and hot-rodding are not this light’s forte that is for sure.

And do not forget about WW semiconductor crisis. To build quality electronics those days is quite challenging if possible at all.

It would be good if Sofirn then sells driver PCB to let existing users do an upgrade on their lights.

This is the same as with the SC31T tail cap, that could be used to upgrade SC31Pro to avoid battery from draining, or with a simple firmware mod to give that extra functionality of tail switch activation.

I really refuse to buy a complete new light and waste resources doing so, just to get a new feature.

as in design a new integrated chip, or just the supply of existing ICs?

agreed 100% about swapping the driver PCB. i probbably wouldn’t replace my IF25A. a driver swap, sure.
don’t know anything about the tail-cap. i use the LED in the button all the time, so small drain isn’t an consideration for me.

I’ve finally decided.

Since the SP10 Pro is now a thing, a buck+FET driver IF25A can also become a thing :slight_smile: