A Different Kind of Modification -Stripping the UI - Special Modes

Hello all,

Looking at modding an Emisar D18 for the guts of a film prop. Modification has two distinct asks: one firmware and one hardware-related.

Firmware: Can the UI be stripped down to a single function?

I want to strip the UI down to a simple ramping routine with set timing. A single button press and the torch ramps from full darkness to full brightness, in a 2 or 3 second time span. Another press goes back to full darkness. Wiping away all other functionality.

Is anyone down in the Anduril code? I imagine some lines/routines can be struck to reduce functionality, but I haven’t seen a great deal of the modding section yet. The User Manual was for programming the UI through button codes. Looking for a basic breakdown of the machine code. I’m still looking over the repository, so any code writers out there - I’d love a push in the right direction.

Alternatively, if someone has a solve that does the same thing through hardware - bypassing the control chipset, timers, etc? - I’d love to hear about your wizard ways.

Which brings us to the other ask: Can the control unit be ported to a remote, or tethered button? (Don’t worry about the casing - we will be Frankensteining this thing and ultimate enclosure will be custom.) Looking at something like Adafruit’s 2-button remote here:

It probably sounds strange, but integrity of the unit isn’t an issue. The end product is a self-contained “practical” (meaning it reads as a light or lamp in the action.) Room for any additional electronics, including a Raspberry Pi or similar. We are trying to achieve autonomy without running a wire, and a remote that the DP can trigger would be best case scenario.

So, let me know if you need any more details, but for this discussion the throwing and flood of the light are dialed in - Emisar D-18 will do just fine for the light’s physical aspects.

Thanks!

Bump.

No coders out there? Nobody writing their own scripts in the firmware? Where the hardcore modders at??

well, your best bet is writting your own Firmware from scratch, your requirement is very simple, less than 100 lines code will do.

i’m not familar with Attiny mcu, but you can hook up a normal Arduino to the driver, coding with Arduino is very easy.

obviously someone will have more brilliant idea than mine

Do you write firmware? Because I’d say a better bet is to hack up someone else’s code rather than try to write from scratch in a language I’m not familiar with. Is there a glossary for the firmware? What actual code language does it use?

do a search for ToyKeeper, she wrote the firmware. In her signature is a link to where she keeps the firmware she writes. You can modify it to your hearts content.

Yeah, I know about TK. But I’m not sure how cool it is if I just waltz in and say “can you write my code?”

Does TK have a donations page? Hourly rate? I want to be respectful of her time and efforts.

And thanks for responding, by the way.

She has a donations page:

TK provides far more than code! She has an entire flashlight firmware toolkit called FSM. The UI is anduril, the parts of code that actually run the light are what the toolkit contains.
You should be able to easily use her toolkit to write your simple UI. It’s written in C.

She’s really already done all the work for you, no need to pay or anything, just scribble together a few lines of code to actually turn the light on / off how you describe, inject it into her toolkit and build.

This is gold, thanks so much. Just needed a heads up like this. I’ll take a look right now.

Do you know of any tutorial or breakdown threads?

Are you looking for advice to do this yourself or trying to hire someone to build it? The radio-controlled function will be overly difficult as a modification of a flashlight but if you want to just build custom hardware to accomplish this feature it is fairly straightforward.

I’ve engineered a solution through a remote button pusher = a wifi receiver chip, a keyfob, a tiny push-pull solenoid, and a Trinket 5V control chip from adafruit. Going to run it from a 5 AA battery array. I can use either process or possibly CircuitPython to write in some timing dynamics, or a series of button presses.

But I am very interested in your suggestion for a hardware solution.

My preference would be something like - separate out power source, button, and LED array and wire in some kind of dimming control unit that’s wifi remote. Frankenstein’ing is what we do a lot - dismantle tech and brute force a solution. ALWAYS looking for more elegance, more control, deeper engineering. It’s just that every job is different and calls for various expertise, so often I am scrambling through murky understanding, feeling around for a solution I know should be there.

You mentioned hiring someone. I would gladly donate to someone to write a diagram and component list. It’s faster if I build the actual circuit, and that I can handle with relative ease. But the deep knowledge is precisely what I lack - electrical engineering above the most basic instinctual grasp.