New Convoy C8 – Clearly better

Edit:
Hope Simon wants to stack a few 7138 chips for me.

Thanks J-Dub and George. It is a little convoluted but as you say it does work out in the end. The last thing I need is another C8 but this one looks interesting enough to get.

What does he charge for the 4 extra chips? I’ve tried many times to solder them onto a driver but my eyes and technique aren’t up to the task :frowning:

Not to brownnose, but I gotta confess that I’m a newcomer to Convoy goodies, and am suitably impressed. :smiley:

I’ve gotten generic Whateverfire clones (real and fake) just to use as cheap hosts, including my share of C8s. Some were actually pretty good, others a true race-to-the-bottom as far as cheap and shoddy. Finally got a Convoy host (type 2) from FT, and man, it’s like night and day.

By the time you replace the dinky featherweight Al pill, scratchy tailswitch, plastic(!!) reflector, etc., it’s just cheaper and less aggravating to get the genuine article.

I just have issues with the UI (most lights, not just the C8), else out-of-the-box would do me fine. But with the type 2, if I don’t have to actually solder/desolder anything, tweaking might be easy.

My personal druthers? For a true flexible EDC (’502, S2, etc.), I’d want F/L/M/H (roughly fractional-lumen/5%/10%/50), quick doubleclick to 100 from anywhere (“hidden turbo”; another doubleclick to revert). Say 5 fastclicks to toggle mem/nomem. For a nice throwy pencilbeam C8, 30%/100% with memory would suffice. Same 30%/100% with mem for a zoomie or mule.

I love the C8, don’t get me wrong, but for me it’s not an EDC kind of light. It’s my “What in Hell’s making noise in that tree?!?” light. One of my faves is a ~4500K XP-E2 driven pretty lightly at 1A (3x7135). The XM-L2 and even XP-L can belt out more lumens, but not as tightly as a smaller-chip XP-E2.

Got some XP-L HIs on order, that’s my next project. :smiley:

Copper…

That makes me want to cry inside… in my special Angry Place.

All my emitters are on Al MCPCBs, and I really want them on copper now. Feel like back when ceedees came out and I had to rebuy all my fave albums that I already had on vinyl… :stuck_out_tongue:

Are these the stars used in these C8 ?
Or these in the link are non-dtp ?

Free shipping 20mm*1.6mm copper plate for CREE XPE XPL XPG
http://s.aliexpress.com/73eMnEBz

This new driver already has 8 chips correct? I don’t think Simon offers chip stacking services, it takes a lot of time and patience…

I certainly think that a stock 12*7135 version would sell well. Approx 100k lux in a stock C8 would be impressive!

That works well on e-switch lights, but not so well on lights where the switch actually cuts power. Every time you touch the switch, it physically removes power then reboots the driver, so inputting multi-press button sequences is rather awkward.

For e-switch lights, I normally do the double-click-for-turbo thing, with a single click to turn off or simply holding the button to adjust brightness. But the hardware in this C8 can’t do that.

Anyway, I agree about the C8 not being an EDC. I’ve tried to carry one, but it’s a bit too large for that. I do sometimes carry a Kronos X6 though, when I expect to need something throwy. It’s just small enough to fit in my purse if I take out my sunglasses case (daytime, carry sunglasses… nighttime, carry a compact thrower :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: )

No. Those are the stars that were going to be used in the new C8 until a week ago.
They’re good copper stars I’m sure, but I asked Simon if he could source good DTP copper stars in time for the release of the clear C8. He did. :slight_smile:
As far as I know the DTP boards are not available for sale outside the new C8 yet but knowing Simon it’s quite likely that they will be available soon.

You answered all my possible questions.
Thanks

This is the funniest thing I’ve heard all day! Thank you for sharing your special Angry Place. :smiley: :+1:

Indeed. Not sure it’ll be feasible to stack chips at the factory though, since it’s a pain to do.

BTW, the numbers I posted earlier with 1000 lumens and 50 kcd lux… those were entirely made up. I don’t have a new C8 yet to actually measure. My XinTD C8 V4 (XM-L2) gets ~900 lm and ~33 kcd lux. I’m guessing the Convoy C8 (XP-L HI) will have similar lumens but significantly more lux.

With 5 extra 350mA 7135 chips to an XM-L2 U4 1A it does 4.53A for 1456 lumens in Turbo.
This means that on group 1 it does…

2.07 Lumens
28.64
198.32
661.71
1455.9

Or on level 4 it does…

27.26 Lumens
375.02
1407.6

Or on level 7 it does…

2.24 Lumens
27.53
190.79
693.45

Variations show the cell changing voltage levels during these tests. :wink:

Wow I go a day without being on here and get back to find a 220 post thread about this new version. I don’t own any Convoy lights yet but this right here is just the ticket. I love the upgrades and the UI. If this UI is incorporated into all of the lights I’m going to have to find new funding for my light budget.

I was thinking the same thing. It would be one of the first, and one of the best drivers and lights of that type. I am sure a lot of people will upgrade the driver in some way.

I’ve seen around 65k lux mentioned for a stock 8*7135 Convoy C8 HI in reviews. So theoretically 12*7135 would result in almost 100k.

That’s probably wishful thinking.

Amping up a fat XM-L2 will definitely improve lumens output, but it doesn’t make the beam narrower for more throw or higher lux. Sure, the lux numbers will go up some, but not like that. Drop in an XP-G2 and lux jumps. De-dome it and it nearly doubles again. But 147-150Kcd is fairly tough to get even in a C8. To go over that requires a Buck driver and 2 cells with the de-domed XP-G2. :wink:

EDITED ………

Yay !! yippie !! whee…

Like…… here’s a free Porsche motor …

Good thing RMM is studying to be an attorney …I don’t think it took him this long to figure out what open source meant . :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve always hated the 2 group driver …whoever thought that a driver that flashes made sense ….clearly wasn’t

Interesting, thanks. It looks like the actual lumen output on that is 0.14, 1.96, 13.6, 45, 100% instead of 0.1/1/10/35/100.

When I get a sample, I’m planning to test again and maybe send Simon an update with re-adjusted levels. The ones I used initially had weird response curves on the 7135 chips, but it was consistent across multiple drivers. So it’ll be interesting to see if the production units match the devel boards or if they’re closer to your results.

Worst case scenario, the first batch might be a little bit brighter than spec. Not exactly a terrible thing for a flashlight. :slight_smile: