Hi, please put me on the list for one.
Thank you.

@DBSAR, 12-15ft is 4-5m, which is still extremely long, and you will be getting high power losses.

A max of 2-3m, or a max of 9ft, would be the best bet.

Please put me on the list for one.
Thank You.

I have done a quick test of the charging port

also 2. measurement I have overwritten the automatic protocol to charge at 12V to test the plug in to a 12V source as 1:1 car adapter or diretly on a 12V solar panel

Can this work with a 1× 18650?

Of cause, why not.
It has the same battery-tube as the Q8 and it do not need many amps from the battery, because it should have a long runtime.

agent80 wrote:

Can this work with a 1× 18650?

Please put me on the list for one.

Ooooh, I completely missed the part about the charging circuit.
So it accepts up to 15V. Is it the TP5100 BlueSwordM mentioned earlier or something like it?
That would mean there’s no QC or USB PD or anything fancy like that?
If I understood correctly you can plug it in to a 5V USB power and it will take that but if you hook it up to a 12V solar panel it will happily accept that as well?

Hmm.. How is the charging circuit integrated to the rest of the flashlight?
I’m just wondering if the lantern is moddable in that regard?
With previous talk about configurable charging rate my guess is it wouldn’t be?

——

DBSAR, regarding the cable. 12-15 feet is ~3.65-4.57m. Not that far off from 5m

24AWG is pretty standard with decent quality charging cables.
But 20AWG is certainly doable with Type C and legacy Type C cables. I think I’ve even seen 18AWG at some point.
These just won’t be cheap so I’m not sure it would be worth it.
As if I did the math correctly, there’s 2.5x more copper in 20AWG than there is in 24AWG.
That’s a bit of a jump in terms of cost. And copper is expensive these days.

I’ll just dump some voltage drop values here for 5 meter cables with one pair of copper conductors
20AWG and 5V1.0A = 6.66% drop or 4.67V at the end
20AWG and 5V1.5A = 9.99% drop or 4.5V at the end
24AWG and 5V1.0A = 16.84% drop or 4.16V at the end
24AWG and 5V1.5A = 25.27% drop or 3.74V at the end

Even if we drop the length down to 3.5 meters it would still perform rather poorly in my opinion with
24AWG and 5V1.0A = 11.79% drop or 4.41V at the end
24AWG and 5V1.5A = 17.69% drop or 4.12V at the end

I’d say a 2 meter cable would be a good compromise
24AWG and 5V1.0A = 6.74% drop or 4.66V at the end
24AWG and 5V1.5A = 10.11% drop or 4.49V at the end

Or 2.5m. Something in that ball park.

Please add me for another 1 please

The LT1 is about the same size as a Q8 with a diffuser cap on top, but it looks a lot nicer and it doesn’t emit most of its light out the top like the Q8 does. Also, it lets me adjust the color temperature, but in this pic I have it set as warm as possible to try to match the Q8.

I think the lantern is going to be getting a lot of use here. I’ll probably retire the Q8 from lantern duty, add some DC-Fix to the lens, and use it only for photo fill lighting. Because the lantern is better at, er, being a lantern.

Wow, great comparison shot TK! I’m looking forward to getting mine when the time comes. If I can scrape up enough money at the time, I might go for a second one!

DBSAR wrote:

how deep is that 1/4-20 threaded mount hole?

It’s hard to measure the depth of the hole precisely, but it looks like it’s about 5mm or 6mm deep.

ToyKeeper wrote:

DBSAR wrote:

how deep is that 1/4-20 threaded mount hole?

It’s hard to measure the depth of the hole precisely, but it looks like it’s about 5mm or 6mm deep.

DavidEF wrote:

What? No calipers?

I have some, but it doesn’t have the extruding stick on the bottom like your picture. So it’s tricky to measure the depth of a narrow hole.

ToyKeeper wrote:

DavidEF wrote:

What? No calipers?

I have some, but it doesn’t have the extruding stick on the bottom like your picture. So it’s tricky to measure the depth of a narrow hole.

My summary of the lantern will be in this post

I have done a quick test of the charging port

also 2. measurement I have overwritten the automatic protocol to charge at 12V to test the plug in to a 12V source as 1:1 car adapter or diretly on a 12V solar panel

I will start now with precise measurements on the BLF lantern

first was that I could see visible brightness changes when doing tint ramping
now also the measurement shows me clearly that ithere is less brightness when between the tints

so there is some work for toykeeper to adjust the tint ramping code,
this was to be expected that some fine tuning is needed

some sort of switch breathing?

.

Thermal test

Setup

.

room Temperature about 20°C

Maximum current with 7 AMCs

this is a 15min test in timelapse reduced to one minute
the upper part heated up to 41.6°C

.

30min thermal images
temperature stays on absolutely safe level

.

permanent LED trimmer added and changed to my 2×2 LKED board with WW LEDs

.

Things that need to be changed on hardware side

- Programming key viases 0.05mm smaller diameter

- electrical reverse polarity protection of charging circuit and/or mechanical

- switch with warm white LEDs

- added permanent LEDs to switch

- switch wire colors changed to logical colors
black GND (atm LED)
white switch (atm GND)
red Ind. LED (atm switch)
another color for the permanent LEDs

Lexel wrote:

there is less brightness when between the tints

Yep, it’s on the todo list.

I saw the same thing with the early tests a few months ago, but that was using old XM-L emitters… and those are known to have a slow response curve. So I was waiting for the real prototype before I try to adjust it.

Interested

Put me down for 2, please.

I do not want a breathing switch. Not too worried, though. I’m sure there will be a way to disable it.

Lexel wrote:

result

This makes me happy.

The stair-step pattern is the button’s blinking mode in standby. It loops through a 16-step pattern which looks a bit like a slow heartbeat.

FWIW, the button has 4 modes:

• off
• low
• high
• blinking

But what makes me happy is that there are no spikes in the flat zone in the middle of the graph. That means the power use is too low to show up on the scope. It wakes up 8 times per second, so it theoretically could have six spikes in that flat zone, but it doesn’t. So the cost of waking up is indistinguishable from zero.

What it actually does during those brief wakeups is send a “EV_sleep_tick” event through the UI code, which the UI can handle however it wants. In this case, it just updates the button brightness level. Then it goes back to sleep. But this could also be used to implement a timer for a sunrise or alarm clock mode, or to otherwise do things while it’s “off”.

Please put me on the list for two.

BillyBobJoe wrote:

I do not want a breathing switch. Not too worried, though. I’m sure there will be a way to disable it.

Interested in one.

Thermal test

Setup

.

room Temperature about 20°C

Maximum current with 7 AMCs

this is a 15min test in timelapse reduced to one minute
the upper part heated up to 41.6°C

30min thermal images
temperature stays on absolutely safe level