Those strobes are calibrated to freeze motion, not to stun people… so yes, they’re not supposed to be terribly bright. The duty cycle is only 0.3 to 1.0 milliseconds per flash. I find it entertaining to see still frames of fast-moving water and such, so I built it into my EDC. It’s fairly easy to change though, just by editing a few numbers in the code.
The brass-edc firmware used to have short-cycle memory, but I changed it to use the memory retention trick described earlier in this thread. So, the end result is offtime no-memory. (also, I think there may be at least two different definitions of “short-cycle memory” floating around BLF)
The starry-offtime firmware requires an actual offtime capacitor in order to work, which the stock AK-47 driver doesn’t have. Also, it’s designed specifically for drivers with two independent PWM channels, which the AK-47 also doesn’t have. Probably not a good choice for this purpose. When I compile it locally, it works out to 1018 bytes, so it’s almost but not quite at the limit of 1024.
Not sure about the OP’s firmware. I took the flash out of mine to save space, but retained low-voltage step-down and eventual shutoff.
With a zener mod on the driver, almost any common attiny13a firmware should work. The only caveat there is that low-voltage detection might not function… and serial battery configs are significantly more risky than single-cell or parallel configs.
Beyond that, it mostly depends on what kind of switch you use (clicky or e-switch) and what you mean by ramping. I have a smooth-ramping e-switch firmware available (ToyKeeper/Ferrero_Rocher/Ramping_UI_table), DrJones has a clicky switch one (luxdrv), the OP of this thread implements ramping and the memory-retention trick for clicky switches, etc.
Personally, I like ramping with an e-switch and dislike ramping on a clicky switch. The e-switch means I can press-and-hold to ramp, then let go when it gets where I want. To ramp again, just press-and-hold again. Otherwise, you have to enter a specific ramping mode first, wait until it gets to the right level, then tap to select it as a steady mode. I’m not sure how you would enter ramp mode again after that, or how to quickly go to the highest or lowest mode without ramping.