I missed this thread, very nice work. I just made myself a small AA zoomie with the xml colour and the 17mm intl-outdoor driver. I am happy with that UI, but being able to mix colours is much nicer obviously. I would be interested in a board+components when you make a batch of these.
The led I bought from led-tech.de by the way, they have the xml colour on a nice thick 20mm board ( that I sanded down to 16mm).
I have played with rgbw lights for quite some time now and have thought about how a -for me- ideal UI would be. It would be operated with two switches; a reverse clicky (say: at the tail) and an electronic (side) switch. I do not have the knowledge how to implement it in an actual driver, and I guess it will not be possible with this particular driver without altering the hardware, it is a wish..
The clicky would cycle through WRGB (or whatever leds you connect this driver to, perhaps a quad board with leds in the four colours behind a TIR, that may solve overlap problems in the beam). When the next die is on, the last is off, like the intl-outdoor rgbw-driver without the blinkies. This way, if just the clicky is used, you can use the four dies/leds in a simple effective way separately.
But when one of the dies is activated by the clicky, you can use the electronic switch to ramp it down and up to set the brightness. As soon as you use the electronic switch for ramping, switching to the next die with the clicky leaves the last die at the set level, so it does not turn off anymore. This way you can adjust all four dies to a desired output.
I don't think I would want memory, I like this UI to be simple.
(grin..) that has become one weird and very complete driver, I think it is huge fun to build a flashlight around it. I'm in for a kit when it is ready :-)
great thinking outside the box!
A question about the pwm: if you move the light quickly in any of the colour-mixed modes, do you see a line of R/G/B dashes, or a solid colour line?
I would still love to see an alternate firmware for clicky switches, even with just the basic modes.
I honestly have no additional mode ideas for this. Sure someone will come around saying “can you change this timing to this timing?”, but you went above and beyond on this one.
how much code space did you use/how much was left?
Edit: nevermind, I have a mode question: how easy would it be to implement brightness ramping in the color cycle mode?
Brightness ramp in color cycle: not that easy, mainly due to the limited PWM resolution at low levels, i.e. at low levels there will be much less available colors. I may try anyway though.