Isn’t all that difficult to stack a second resistor or a piece of semi-thick copper wire on top of the one that’s there.
ToyKeeper, I guess your level of expertise would be the determining factor as to whether or not the 2 boards can be separated. I’ve never messed with anything like that, do better work with a hammer than a soldering iron but that doesn’t help me much here…
i’ve separated some driver boards that used pins that were soldered where they pass through the top board
sucking and wicking all the solder away worked best for me, but it was still not easy.
The pins that tie the two together are on one side, like 4 in a row or something, it lets the sandwich appear a bit squashed to one side instead of keeping the 2 boards parallel. I’ve worked with 4 Terminator’s and they were all like that.
I really like the light, the carry handle is very handy and comfortable as is the switch position. On the 4 I’ve worked on the heads were all super tight and took some doing to get off. The reflector floats in the individual head, easily allowing it to center on the centering ring. Wasn’t too big a deal to put new emitters in it and get everything lined back up. I just desoldered the leads coming from the driver and popped in new stars, not much of a chore at all…10-15 minutes to do that and remove the resistors and solder a wire in for the bridge.
Swapping the de-domed 1A’s out for standard 1D’s took me from 106Kcd to 80Kcd so the gained lumens really made the throw take a hit. Lumens though went from 2726 with a second set of resistors (4 stacked, 1 for each channel) to 4371 with the 1D’s and resistors bridged/removed. The tint is very nice, the light works brilliantly outdoors in the country, still illuminating a small white barn at 610 yds in spite of horrid air conditions. We’ve got road construction on the major roadways all around us and the air is terrible, filled with dust all the time.
BTW, I looked over the specs for the attiny13 last night, and if I understood it correctly, I think it will be quite suitable as a controller for a variable-speed true strobe light. I think its PWM unit can be used to generate strobes as slow as 1.95Hz, and it has an 8-bit custom timer and clock divider which should allow me to generate a fairly smooth progression of different speeds. (1.95 Hz == 128 kHz base clock / clock divider of 256 / counter limit of 256) Each level should easily be able to handle a duty cycle of 2% or less to make it freeze objects, adjusted after I can actually test it to see what works.
The attiny84 should work even better, since it has a 16-bit timer so I can do slower strobes, and it has several times as much space to work with for more interesting modes. It also should be able to drive each of the four LEDs individually, if I decide to go seriously disco and make colored flashing modes. For practical sake though, I’m planning to stick with four tints of white instead of four radically different colors.
The parts are all here; I just need to practice soldering on some sacrificial old circuit boards before I feel comfortable touching the actual light. (well, I haven’t completely solved the issue about which driver hardware to use, but the rest is ready) So, a trip down to the crawl space for an old NIC or video card or two, some evenings spent getting to a minimum level of competency, and I’ll be ready to start. 
My initial thought is that I should be able to fit 64 different strobe speeds in a static table on an attiny13 and still have most of its flash space available for code. (2 bytes per table entry, 64 entries == 128 bytes, leaving 896 bytes for code) If I start at the slowest speed and increase in 64 logarithmic steps up to about 100 Hz, I get the following strobe speeds:
1.95 Hz (128 kHz / 256 / 256)
2.08 Hz (128 kHz / 256 / 240)
2.22 Hz (128 kHz / 256 / 225)
2.37 Hz (128 kHz / 256 / 211)
2.53 Hz (128 kHz / 256 / 198)
2.69 Hz (128 kHz / 256 / 186)
2.87 Hz (128 kHz / 256 / 174)
3.07 Hz (128 kHz / 256 / 163)
3.27 Hz (128 kHz / 256 / 153)
3.50 Hz (128 kHz / 256 / 143)
3.73 Hz (128 kHz / 256 / 134)
3.91 Hz (128 kHz / 128 / 256)
4.17 Hz (128 kHz / 128 / 240)
4.44 Hz (128 kHz / 128 / 225)
4.74 Hz (128 kHz / 128 / 211)
5.05 Hz (128 kHz / 128 / 198)
5.38 Hz (128 kHz / 128 / 186)
5.75 Hz (128 kHz / 128 / 174)
6.13 Hz (128 kHz / 128 / 163)
6.54 Hz (128 kHz / 128 / 153)
6.99 Hz (128 kHz / 128 / 143)
7.46 Hz (128 kHz / 128 / 134)
7.81 Hz (128 kHz / 64 / 256)
8.33 Hz (128 kHz / 64 / 240)
8.89 Hz (128 kHz / 64 / 225)
9.48 Hz (128 kHz / 64 / 211)
10.10 Hz (128 kHz / 64 / 198)
10.75 Hz (128 kHz / 64 / 186)
11.49 Hz (128 kHz / 64 / 174)
12.27 Hz (128 kHz / 64 / 163)
13.07 Hz (128 kHz / 64 / 153)
13.99 Hz (128 kHz / 64 / 143)
14.93 Hz (128 kHz / 64 / 134)
15.62 Hz (128 kHz / 32 / 256)
16.67 Hz (128 kHz / 32 / 240)
17.78 Hz (128 kHz / 32 / 225)
18.96 Hz (128 kHz / 32 / 211)
20.20 Hz (128 kHz / 32 / 198)
21.51 Hz (128 kHz / 32 / 186)
22.99 Hz (128 kHz / 32 / 174)
24.54 Hz (128 kHz / 32 / 163)
26.14 Hz (128 kHz / 32 / 153)
27.97 Hz (128 kHz / 32 / 143)
29.85 Hz (128 kHz / 32 / 134)
31.25 Hz (128 kHz / 16 / 256)
33.33 Hz (128 kHz / 16 / 240)
35.56 Hz (128 kHz / 16 / 225)
37.91 Hz (128 kHz / 16 / 211)
40.40 Hz (128 kHz / 16 / 198)
43.01 Hz (128 kHz / 16 / 186)
45.98 Hz (128 kHz / 16 / 174)
49.08 Hz (128 kHz / 16 / 163)
52.29 Hz (128 kHz / 16 / 153)
55.94 Hz (128 kHz / 16 / 143)
59.70 Hz (128 kHz / 16 / 134)
62.50 Hz (128 kHz / 8 / 256)
66.67 Hz (128 kHz / 8 / 240)
71.11 Hz (128 kHz / 8 / 225)
75.83 Hz (128 kHz / 8 / 211)
80.81 Hz (128 kHz / 8 / 198)
86.02 Hz (128 kHz / 8 / 186)
91.95 Hz (128 kHz / 8 / 174)
98.16 Hz (128 kHz / 8 / 163)
104.58 Hz (128 kHz / 8 / 153)
These would be cycled simply by holding the button down, probably at a rate of like 8 mode switches per second (8 seconds total from one end to the other). But I’ll have to try it to see what really works best.
For regular output modes, I’d have far fewer of them… I prefer to have a small number of well-spaced brightnesses instead of infinitely-variable output. So, probably something like 30 lumens, 90, 330, 1000, and 3000. ish. Similar UI for changing modes, but slower.
I’m thinking hold the button (while on or off) to advance forward (low to high, slow to fast), short-click then press-and-hold (while on or off) to advance backward (high to low, fast to slow), triple-click to switch between regular output and strobe output modes, single click to turn it off, single click while off to turn it back on to the last-used mode. Double click could … advance it to the next mode, just one at a time? Not sure. These are still just ideas.
Okay, I’ve got the first round of BST mods completed:
For now, I made it wide-spectrum and floody. I’ll start on driver mods later, after I’ve had a chance to try some smaller projects. Got a couple of nanjg drivers here waiting for me to use them, and I’m debating whether to do custom firmware on a 1x18650 e-switch light before attempting the BST firmware.
BTW, I noticed that I could hear the PWM on my light sometimes. Specifically, when I aim it at fabric from point-blank range. I don’t know why. It doesn’t do this when I aim it at skin or wood or metal or electronics or paper… just fabric.
In any case, the humming was loud enough for my phone to hear… and I have a nice guitar-tuning app called PitchLab.
According to PitchLab, the BST flashes at precisely 187.8 Hz on low and medium. It has a different timbre on medium though.
In any case, if you were wondering what its PWM rate is… there you have it.
Using my, uh, standard and thoroughly rigorous test procedure (wildly waving a Zenni measuring sheet through the beam as fast as I can), it looks like this on low:
Well, okay, maybe it’s not rigorous. But at least it’s vigorous.
I did some quick measurements on the image in gimp, and gimp tells me this is approximately a 11.4% duty cycle… just based on the width of the narrowest frame (30 pixels) divided by the distance between frames (263 pixels). At 187.8 Hz, that means each frame is about 5.3 ms and the on-time is about 0.6 ms per frame. And if the rated output is 3500 lumens, 11.4% of that is 399 lumens. Rather surprisingly close to the rated 400 lumen spec, considering it was based off a rough and imprecise strobe measurement.
If I turn it up to medium each frame is on for a longer time, but I didn’t take a picture of it. My arm is tired.
My brain is tired trying to keep up with all your calculations!
Nicely done. And the rigorous, albeit vigorous, testing is exemplary of LAB work at it’s finest. (Laughable Authoritative Bullshit) 
Is the Terminator rated at 3500 lumens? It doesn’t do that. With a resistor mod it makes 2800 out the front. Pull the resistors and bridge the pads, wild difference in output! Like 4300 out the front on good cells. But since you put T4’s and T5’s in it, the output will be lower.
Oh, I don’t expect it to actually get 3500 lumens without further mods. That’s just what it’s rated at. What surprised me was how closely the ad-hoc PWM measurement matched what I’d expect from its official specs. The maximum output is probably well under 3500, but the spec’d ratio between different levels is apparently spot-on.
Either that, or I threw a dart blindfolded and got a bulls-eye. It happens sometimes.
I’ll find out more as soon as I manage to build and calibrate an integrating sphere. I’m hoping to devote a day soon to papier-mache-ing a big toy ball, though it might not happen until after I take care of a work trip.
I saw a write up where a guy had his kids help him, they did it with the funny paper and just had a grand morning slapping papier mache on the big kids ball. Then he cut it and made the holes, put the blocks inside and all that and had an excellent sphere!
Been wanting to do one myself since seeing that, ended up having friends that made me a lightbox and calibrated it for me so…no papier mache fun and games lol
It’s great to be able to see the changes a mod make, measured and documented. Love that part of it. Makes modding a solid event instead of speculation based.
Enjoy! Have a great weekend…
Hi people
Bringing a thread back from the past LOL
I just found my old blackshadow terminator in my shed covered in dust forgot I owned one.
They still look good after all these years. Tested it and its still working fine. I was thinking of upgrading the LEDs for a quick mod as my skill level can only deal with off the shelve items. Any recommendations for a LED swap?
Do you think it would be possible to add a new UI to this light as mine only has LOW, MED, HI.
thx