Yeah, just a bit…
I get the impression I may have made Inferion feel insulted by suggesting the idea of modifying the Meteor… but no offense is intended. It’s just kind of what we do on BLF, home of “Check out this cool shiny thing, I bet we can make it even better!”
And then double the excitement upon finding out the light was designed by someone on another enthusiast forum, since that opens up all sorts of possibilities for collaborating. It even has the MCU pins broken out as pads for reflashing.
But if people don’t want to share code, they don’t have to. That’s fine. Different people have different ways of thinking. I’m sad that cultural or personal differences might get in the way, but it’s not a big deal. It happens. There’s even a book on the topic, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”. I come from a free software background, the bazaar, where everyone is welcome to participate in building anything they want. Sounds like Inferion goes more with the cathedral approach, where only a select few are trusted to build and everyone else is a consumer. Both work, but in very different ways.
Opinions of the Meteor interface may also be influenced by cultural differences. I personally find it a bit odd to have 17 different actions on a single button which transition from the “off” state to some other state, yet not have the ability to quickly and easily go up or down one brightness step from any level while it’s on. Would be nice if I could change that, but it seems unlikely.
As for practical matters of modding… I found the indigo 5.2 build yesterday but it has only a .hex, no sources, and it’s 2 years old. If I translated the page correctly, it sounds like the source is all assembly code instead of C. That significantly increases the investment required to modify it, on top of having to solder wires between each flash and use more expensive high-voltage flashing tools. Apparently it’s also prone to “failing open” if the code doesn’t work, meaning it could easily damage itself. One more barrier to entry for modding it. Not an easy project to jump into, especially without existing code to show the safe ways of doing things.
The Meteor is an amazing light which pushes the boundary of what’s possible, and I’m glad it exists. It’s truly a step forward for the entire torch industry, bringing the innovations of custom mod communities into the commercial realm. In that sense, it’s much like what we’re trying to do with the BLF EE A6. But I’m no longer sure I should buy one, since my main interest was modding it. It sounds like it’s not the playground I was hoping for, and would end up as more of a cute stubby museum piece on my shelf.