Hey so. Background info is I work as an electrical engineer in lighting control systems, think large dynamically illuminated art features. I love light, always have; I’m also big into free and open software and hardware. Some time ago I’ve decided to upgrade my torch, a cheap chinese USB thing, which led to a rabbit hole of me finding cool dimmable torches with OLEDs (Nitecore) that bothered me by running closed source firmware. So I started researching open source firmwares for torches and shortly I’ve stumbled upon Andúril and it opened a new world to me.
Currently Emisar D4V2 (cyan, amber switch bklight, 95 CRI 4000K ch. 1, 95 CRI 2700K), a fireflies PL47 g2 (4000K 95 CRI) as a head torch, one Sofirn BLF LT1 followed immediately by a second one, and as soon as it dropped, a 4000K 95 CRI Noctigon DM11.
To clarify, only the one LT1 has arrived yet, the rest is being shipped. And the LT1 is awesome, like, a new class of good light. I’ve checked it with a spectrophotometer at work and it really has Ra of 95, zero flicker, it’s an amazing light.
Lately, I’ve just been using a bench power supply and cell holders. I thought there was a blf-edition charger in the works years ago, but I think it fell flat
Lots of nice lithium ion chargers to choose from. Not sure why you would want an open source one unless you want to more control how your batteries charge. I’m perfectly happy with my Opus BT-C3100 charger.
Welcome to BLF m03da
I believe you’ll feel right at home here. You’re not alone in your passion and here you can share it with like-minded brothers and sisters.
About the charger, Sorry but I don’t know enough to help
Hold on to your wallet! Always put a limit to your budget spent on lights. Ask me how I learned that. Oh boy…
Glad you’re with us m03da …a really great group of folks here. I’ve found that being on BLF is like being in one of those old cartoons where you have an angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil sitting on the other. As appealing as the angel my be, the devil has all the cool lights. Buy to you heart’s content.
This is gonna be a ride. Thank you all for the warm welcome.
It’s part principle, I don’t like things with firmware that’s not under my control; part the fact that chargers are by their nature two-quadrant power sources with very fine control over the output and precise metering, yet I don’t know of any chargers that can act as programmable DC power supply/ programmable load. That feels like a pure SW limitation even though the feature would triple the device’s value.
I have just bought an iSDT Q6 Nano for my RC stuff. The firmware isn’t open source (as far as I know) but it is firmware upgradeable, so you could probably create your own firmware for it if you knew what you were doing. It’s not a typical li-ion charger (eg: no charging cradles) - it does support li-ion though, shows internal resistance and can be used as a bench power supply. Everything is customisable as well. Pretty good value for $30 USD.
I’ve coincidentally been given a Q6 Pro by my friend who doesn’t use it anymore. I’ve searched around and unfortunately the device is encumbered with encryption/ other modification prevention scheme so development of an alternative isn’t too easy. My other charger is a Turnigy Accucell 6 that I got apparently mere days after they changed MCU architectures so that Cheali (alternative charger FW) isn’t supported anymore. Bad luck.
