Zoomed in – nice big round hotspot, minimal spill.
Zoomed out – ugly hotspot+spill, overall shape between a hexagon and a star.
Though as far as I understand, zooming out the way they recommend rotates the lens. The TIR has 7 tiny lenses. They are in front of emitters when zoomed in, between emitters when zoomed out. Except for the central one. I guess this is the reason for ugly beam when zoomed out. Moving the lens linearly should be better, no? ADDED: Though their way has the benefit of compactness. Only 30 degree turn moving the lens 3.75 mm to change between zoomed in and out.
Frankly, I feel similar. This LED Lenser has 7 emitters too. It may be an indication of how a zoomed-in beam looks. But we know this already. Other than this it’s quite different.
Actually the ramping UI is the shizz, a lot of people seems to really like it for many reasons but one thing that I don’t like is that it makes a flashlight way less predictable concerning runtime.
An OLED displaying remaining capacity in % would be a nice addition and it would be very useful to have a calculation of the remaining capacity in hour / minute, particulary for the DBSAR, even without ramping UI.
I don’t know if it would be better to calculate it based on the voltage or by entering (somewhere in a configutation menu) the total capacity of the battery(ies).
Or could it be possible to have this with a flashing feature without OLED screen to stay more budget friendly ?
I’ve been thinking about it last evening. I think this may be the only major use for modes instead of ramping.
Yes, it’s important for the user to know runtime.
Yes, ramping firmware makes it harder.
The problem has 2 parts.
Learn the runtime
Communicate it to the user
Let’s start with 1).
For real accuracy you need to know:
current amps drawn from battery
current battery voltage
battery discharge curves
cutoff voltage
If you’re a flashlight manufacturer who supplies battery together with firmware, you can have all these variables.
If you’re a driver developer things are much harder.
Several approaches:
A) Don’t worry about runtime. You know amps, your user knows capacity and can figure out runtime by themselves
B) Track voltage drop, it can give semi-accurate predictions, but shortly after inserting the battery it just won’t be able to tell
C) Let user enter capacity in configuration
D) Use a smart battery that can tell you its capacity
E) Remember the capacity of the previously inserted battery
F) When user changes modes, amps change. So does voltage sag. You can use it to make more accurate prediction of what will be faster, low voltage cutoff or drop-down from near-full discharge
G) Remember voltage sag of the previously inserted battery, so you can better recognise that it was a different one
Communication is hard too. You can:
A) Blink it out
B) Bink it out with the indicator LED
C) Make blinks as the voltage drops, so user can judge the discharge rate by themselves
D) Have a set of several colours that are distinctive enough and light the indicator diode to such colour (for several seconds?)
E) Use a LCD
F) Send it over bluetooth, so the user can read this info from their smartwatch
My Uniquefire 1401 has a display
9 means long runtime and 1 short
On high it can read 4, switch to med changes it to 9
It annoys me, like Narsil and Bistro, just check the actual voltage does it for me.
I fear a display greatly adds complexity and costs for something one can estimate nicely with actual voltage readout.
Done right, it could tell you how many minutes you have left. It’s way more accurate and way more noob-friendly.
Of the solutions that I see, the last two seem like the only sensible ones. Yes, they add cost, but they add a lot of value. You can display other things too. I’ve seen lumen output somewhere. Personally I consider it to be useless nonsense, but some will like to use it to show off. You can show battery voltage. You can show charging status, with nicely indicated current amps. You can turn the flashlight to an analyzing charger, though accuracy will probably be too low for usefulness. In highly-configurable lights you can make configuration easier. It’s easy to get lost in a multi-layer menu. As well as a flat one with 24-clicks. With TK’s alarm clock you can show how much time is left. I believe there are way more possibilities.
May not be a good choice for each and every light, but I think there’s place for them.
Ah for us small time peeps the added costs are ~$8.50
Software needs to be able to deal with it.
How do I know?
heheh knew this was done actually: http://budgetlightforum.com/node/51125
Good info.
For a factory, probably a third of that. Someone who buys a $100+ BLF light might be able to accept this extra expense.
I wonder if bluetooth wouldn’t be cheaper… ADDED:
I can buy a BT dongle for $1.31 shipped. So probably a manufacturer could make a flashlight BT-capable for <$1.
Those are completely different as far as I can tell.
It;s obviously not the same optic, led lenser makes waaaay better TIRs than any other company.
The point is that it’s a 7-LED tir focusing system that actually works well, unlike the one linked above.
Good info.
For a factory, probably a third of that. Someone who buys a $100+ BLF light might be able to accept this extra expense.
I wonder if bluetooth wouldn’t be cheaper… ADDED:
I can buy a BT dongle for $1.31 shipped. So probably a manufacturer could make a flashlight BT-capable for <$1.
It’s kind of frustrating to see how far they went with regulated vaping boxes in a couple of years compared to flashlights.
So probably a manufacturer could make a flashlight BT-capable for <$1.
Manker Godmes from a few years ago had bluetooth. You could do all kinds of things with it using your smart phone, but it’s app has to stay updated for all that fancy stuff to keep working.
—
Texas Ace Lumen Tube and JoshK Sphere calibrated with Maukka lights
I would love to get a couple of these into the hands of Tom E and ToyKeeper:
At around $40 they are expensive compared to typical flashlights, but they have plenty of pins and memory. Going to production with one of these may not make sense. It probably would be more cost effective to have discrete components.
I would love to get a couple of these into the hands of Tom E and ToyKeeper: At around $40 they are expensive compared to typical flashlights, but they have plenty of pins and memory. Going to production with one of these may not make sense. It probably would be more cost effective to have discrete components.
Yeah, sure does look interesting... Sparkfun is a great source for stuff and ideas as well.
Those are completely different as far as I can tell.
It;s obviously not the same optic, led lenser makes waaaay better TIRs than any other company.
The point is that it’s a 7-LED tir focusing system that actually works well, unlike the one linked above.
By any chance, do you happen to have one? I would be interested in beamshots…
As to working well…
I don’t have the polymer optics one. Does it work well? The way they de-focus it make the beam ugly, plain and simple. It may have nice benefits, but I agree it’s not working well, though I think that for some users it may actually be fine.
What if there was no rotation? The hotspot in the middle would disappear. As to other changes to the beam shape, I am unable to predict. So as far as I’m concerned, it may or may not work well.
Does the led-lenser work well?
You say they make great lenses, I believe you. So it should have a nice beam shape regardless of whether it’s zoomed in or out.
But they lose a huge part of frontal area and therefore just can’t be even semi-efficient when it comes to throw/size.
And personally, I don’t agree that something very inefficient is “working well”. Though I certainly think there are people with different priorities.
Yes MRsDNF, I’m well aware you made some of those P60 with screw in pill in some of your projects (I think that one in picture is taken from your customized P60 that belong to djozz now).
Iirc, last one that looks going to materialized is this project (he’s going to use screw in pill too, but sinner looks like already drop this project.
Location: A light beam away from the missus in the land of Aus.
Looks like its dropped as it was 3.5 years ago.
I was going to get the above light built in quantity and sell as a host but it was going to cost to much and I didn’t think I’d sell any.
—
djozz quotes, "it came with chinese lettering that is chinese to me".
"My man mousehole needs one too"
old4570 said "I'm not an expert , so don't suffer from any such technical restrictions".
Old-Lumens. Highly admired and cherished member of Budget Light Forum. 11.5.2011 - 20.12.16. RIP.
Yes the BLF lantern of DBSAR ideally should be ready before summer 2018 right
It is done when it is done
How my BLF Specials generally work, please read before asking Qs
The Q8, Exciting a groupbuy for a Premium BLF special high lumens soda can light!
The GT, A BLF special GIGA thrower
The FW3A, a TLF BLF special small, elegant, powerful triple
Lithium Ion safety 101 important read
Sorry grammarlovers, I am a real King Typo.
Has anyone made drawings of what the lantern might look like?
There is a whole topic about it, DBSAR made one based on an SRK.
Pics in OP
And a general idea here
http://budgetlightforum.com/comment/1188635#comment-1188635
It is done when it is done
How my BLF Specials generally work, please read before asking Qs
The Q8, Exciting a groupbuy for a Premium BLF special high lumens soda can light!
The GT, A BLF special GIGA thrower
The FW3A, a TLF BLF special small, elegant, powerful triple
Lithium Ion safety 101 important read
Sorry grammarlovers, I am a real King Typo.
It would be interesting to see a zoomie built around this optic:
http://www.polymer-optics.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/130_Zoom_7Cel...
and some small, powerful LED. Oslon black maybe? Not very efficient, but I see nothing better…
Please can you show something about it without my phone getting very unhappy for being bounced to a doc?
It is done when it is done
How my BLF Specials generally work, please read before asking Qs
The Q8, Exciting a groupbuy for a Premium BLF special high lumens soda can light!
The GT, A BLF special GIGA thrower
The FW3A, a TLF BLF special small, elegant, powerful triple
Lithium Ion safety 101 important read
Sorry grammarlovers, I am a real King Typo.
A zoom lens that is:
aha, does that give a hexagonal or even round(ish) effect when zoomed in?
It is done when it is done
How my BLF Specials generally work, please read before asking Qs
The Q8, Exciting a groupbuy for a Premium BLF special high lumens soda can light!
The GT, A BLF special GIGA thrower
The FW3A, a TLF BLF special small, elegant, powerful triple
Lithium Ion safety 101 important read
Sorry grammarlovers, I am a real King Typo.
Zoomed in – nice big round hotspot, minimal spill.
Zoomed out – ugly hotspot+spill, overall shape between a hexagon and a star.
Though as far as I understand, zooming out the way they recommend rotates the lens. The TIR has 7 tiny lenses. They are in front of emitters when zoomed in, between emitters when zoomed out. Except for the central one. I guess this is the reason for ugly beam when zoomed out. Moving the lens linearly should be better, no?
ADDED: Though their way has the benefit of compactness. Only 30 degree turn moving the lens 3.75 mm to change between zoomed in and out.
http://www.ledlenserusa.com/x21-2-351.html
The OPTOFIRE - 4.63Mcd aspheric LED flashlight The SYNIOSBEAM - 10Mcd recoil LED flashlight List of the farthest throwing flashlights
Those are completely different as far as I can tell.
Texas Ace Lumen Tube and JoshK Sphere calibrated with Maukka lights
Click this to go to signature links. I'm still around, just not reading many new threads.
Frankly, I feel similar. This LED Lenser has 7 emitters too. It may be an indication of how a zoomed-in beam looks. But we know this already. Other than this it’s quite different.
Actually the ramping UI is the shizz, a lot of people seems to really like it for many reasons but one thing that I don’t like is that it makes a flashlight way less predictable concerning runtime.
An OLED displaying remaining capacity in % would be a nice addition and it would be very useful to have a calculation of the remaining capacity in hour / minute, particulary for the DBSAR, even without ramping UI.
I don’t know if it would be better to calculate it based on the voltage or by entering (somewhere in a configutation menu) the total capacity of the battery(ies).
Or could it be possible to have this with a flashing feature without OLED screen to stay more budget friendly ?
I’ve been thinking about it last evening. I think this may be the only major use for modes instead of ramping.
Yes, it’s important for the user to know runtime.
Yes, ramping firmware makes it harder.
The problem has 2 parts.
Let’s start with 1).
For real accuracy you need to know:
If you’re a flashlight manufacturer who supplies battery together with firmware, you can have all these variables.
If you’re a driver developer things are much harder.
Several approaches:
A) Don’t worry about runtime. You know amps, your user knows capacity and can figure out runtime by themselves
B) Track voltage drop, it can give semi-accurate predictions, but shortly after inserting the battery it just won’t be able to tell
C) Let user enter capacity in configuration
D) Use a smart battery that can tell you its capacity
E) Remember the capacity of the previously inserted battery
F) When user changes modes, amps change. So does voltage sag. You can use it to make more accurate prediction of what will be faster, low voltage cutoff or drop-down from near-full discharge
G) Remember voltage sag of the previously inserted battery, so you can better recognise that it was a different one
Communication is hard too. You can:
A) Blink it out
B) Bink it out with the indicator LED
C) Make blinks as the voltage drops, so user can judge the discharge rate by themselves
D) Have a set of several colours that are distinctive enough and light the indicator diode to such colour (for several seconds?)
E) Use a LCD
F) Send it over bluetooth, so the user can read this info from their smartwatch
My Uniquefire 1401 has a display
9 means long runtime and 1 short
On high it can read 4, switch to med changes it to 9
It annoys me, like Narsil and Bistro, just check the actual voltage does it for me.
I fear a display greatly adds complexity and costs for something one can estimate nicely with actual voltage readout.
It is done when it is done
How my BLF Specials generally work, please read before asking Qs
The Q8, Exciting a groupbuy for a Premium BLF special high lumens soda can light!
The GT, A BLF special GIGA thrower
The FW3A, a TLF BLF special small, elegant, powerful triple
Lithium Ion safety 101 important read
Sorry grammarlovers, I am a real King Typo.
Done right, it could tell you how many minutes you have left. It’s way more accurate and way more noob-friendly.
In highly-configurable lights you can make configuration easier. It’s easy to get lost in a multi-layer menu. As well as a flat one with 24-clicks. With TK’s alarm clock you can show how much time is left. I believe there are way more possibilities.
Of the solutions that I see, the last two seem like the only sensible ones. Yes, they add cost, but they add a lot of value. You can display other things too. I’ve seen lumen output somewhere. Personally I consider it to be useless nonsense, but some will like to use it to show off. You can show battery voltage. You can show charging status, with nicely indicated current amps. You can turn the flashlight to an analyzing charger, though accuracy will probably be too low for usefulness.
May not be a good choice for each and every light, but I think there’s place for them.
Ah for us small time peeps the added costs are ~$8.50
Software needs to be able to deal with it.
How do I know?
heheh knew this was done actually:
http://budgetlightforum.com/node/51125
It is done when it is done
How my BLF Specials generally work, please read before asking Qs
The Q8, Exciting a groupbuy for a Premium BLF special high lumens soda can light!
The GT, A BLF special GIGA thrower
The FW3A, a TLF BLF special small, elegant, powerful triple
Lithium Ion safety 101 important read
Sorry grammarlovers, I am a real King Typo.
Good info.
For a factory, probably a third of that. Someone who buys a $100+ BLF light might be able to accept this extra expense.
I wonder if bluetooth wouldn’t be cheaper…
ADDED:
I can buy a BT dongle for $1.31 shipped. So probably a manufacturer could make a flashlight BT-capable for <$1.
It;s obviously not the same optic, led lenser makes waaaay better TIRs than any other company.
The point is that it’s a 7-LED tir focusing system that actually works well, unlike the one linked above.
The OPTOFIRE - 4.63Mcd aspheric LED flashlight The SYNIOSBEAM - 10Mcd recoil LED flashlight List of the farthest throwing flashlights
It’s kind of frustrating to see how far they went with regulated vaping boxes in a couple of years compared to flashlights.
Manker Godmes from a few years ago had bluetooth. You could do all kinds of things with it using your smart phone, but it’s app has to stay updated for all that fancy stuff to keep working.
Texas Ace Lumen Tube and JoshK Sphere calibrated with Maukka lights
Click this to go to signature links. I'm still around, just not reading many new threads.
I would love to get a couple of these into the hands of Tom E and ToyKeeper:
At around $40 they are expensive compared to typical flashlights, but they have plenty of pins and memory. Going to production with one of these may not make sense. It probably would be more cost effective to have discrete components.
Lazy-R-us
Do you have a link?
(Phone so can’t watch video ATM)
Toykeeper can you see use in this?
It is done when it is done
How my BLF Specials generally work, please read before asking Qs
The Q8, Exciting a groupbuy for a Premium BLF special high lumens soda can light!
The GT, A BLF special GIGA thrower
The FW3A, a TLF BLF special small, elegant, powerful triple
Lithium Ion safety 101 important read
Sorry grammarlovers, I am a real King Typo.
Sorry Miller, I’m also on a phone, is called the MicroView. Is on sparkfun
Lazy-R-us
May be not as popular as it used to be…. BLF standard P60 host with screw in pill.
Screw in pill for the P60.
djozz quotes, "it came with chinese lettering that is chinese to me".
"My man mousehole needs one too"
old4570 said "I'm not an expert , so don't suffer from any such technical restrictions".
Old-Lumens. Highly admired and cherished member of Budget Light Forum. 11.5.2011 - 20.12.16. RIP.
Yeah, sure does look interesting... Sparkfun is a great source for stuff and ideas as well.
By any chance, do you happen to have one? I would be interested in beamshots…
As to working well…
I don’t have the polymer optics one. Does it work well? The way they de-focus it make the beam ugly, plain and simple. It may have nice benefits, but I agree it’s not working well, though I think that for some users it may actually be fine.
What if there was no rotation? The hotspot in the middle would disappear. As to other changes to the beam shape, I am unable to predict. So as far as I’m concerned, it may or may not work well.
Does the led-lenser work well?
You say they make great lenses, I believe you. So it should have a nice beam shape regardless of whether it’s zoomed in or out.
But they lose a huge part of frontal area and therefore just can’t be even semi-efficient when it comes to throw/size.
And personally, I don’t agree that something very inefficient is “working well”. Though I certainly think there are people with different priorities.
Hey, it’s not just new people who missed this thread (which was just mentioned in the Q8 thread)
I had no idea it was here all this time. I’ll chip in, with pleasure, and catch up eventually.
Yes MRsDNF, I’m well aware you made some of those P60 with screw in pill in some of your projects
(I think that one in picture is taken from your customized P60 that belong to djozz now).
Iirc, last one that looks going to materialized is this project (he’s going to use screw in pill too, but sinner looks like already drop this project.
Looks like its dropped as it was 3.5 years ago.
I was going to get the above light built in quantity and sell as a host but it was going to cost to much and I didn’t think I’d sell any.
djozz quotes, "it came with chinese lettering that is chinese to me".
"My man mousehole needs one too"
old4570 said "I'm not an expert , so don't suffer from any such technical restrictions".
Old-Lumens. Highly admired and cherished member of Budget Light Forum. 11.5.2011 - 20.12.16. RIP.
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