Battery check for me is pretty useless, but I guess it’s the new thing for advanced UI’s. Hopefully it works better than it does on an Armytek! I like the double click from off or double click from any mode hidden turbo personally. It’s harder to accidentally engage, and if you loan it to someone it’s harder for them to find. And in all honestly- if you’re loaning a light or letting someone use it- those people don’t need a flashaholic sort of turbo anyway. 400 or 500 lumens is usually enough to impress the general public.
FWIW. I want batt check first. Mode memory will always be on and starting on turbo anyway. So that would make how many clicks to check the battery before I head out?
In the case of this particular light it’s a reasonable assumption to block the turbo and strobe outputs with the thigh for that brief duration and assuming 1500 lumens.
At 4500 lumens you really don’t want to have it pressed against your leg when it fires up. I’m, of course, thinking bigger picture, not just this light.
A multiple click direct access would indeed be nice, skipping over everything else for a guaranteed instant turbo. The batt check feature is new enough that it’s difficult to imagine how much you’d be prone to use it, but it’s very helpful. I suppose most of us would do a battery check when loading up with our EDC items in the first place, so skipping a couple of modes to get there is really not a big deal. If the light has been in use in the field and it’s desired to know how much is left, it’s not likely to be a tactical situation anyway so flashing turbo and strobe and bicycle mode shouldn’t really matter, probably be a rare case where it’d be necessary to cover it for that.
So I’m all for leaving the UI as is, the addition of the bicycle strobe is pretty neat and will make a great walking light as well. 
I use a DMM instead. Works much better IMO.
On high output lights, it’s really easy to tell that the high modes aren’t as bright once the cell is partly depleted. You really don’t need a batt check to tell you this. And lets face it, batteries are pretty cheap. So if you “need” to use the torch, you’d run it until it didn’t work any more and sod the battery. If you don’t then of course you choose to not use it until you swap the battery out. Have a batt check function would not influence my decision in any circumstance.
Not saying it isn’t maybe a ‘cool’ function. But it’s one of those things that sounds so useful on first glance, but in reality serves almost no practical purpose what so ever.
I’m trying hard to justify it because it IS cool, but CD, I tend to agree with you.
I try to be in the habit of keeping all my cells topped off, so any light I grab for the day is ready to go. Maybe a batt check could be like a fuel gauge in a car? Seeing what’s left in the tank can give you an idea if you need to be frugal or you can get away with flooring it…
I guess we shall have to agree to disagree with your statement that battery check has no real purpose. I use the battery check on my zebralight quite often. Yes, my DMM is way more accurate but who cares about the exact voltage. It is way easier to click a few buttons than to hump it to the room with the meter and pull the cell out to check it. In the end I don't care which way TK does it as I've got the programming board on order. I'll just change the driver to my liking with it. Now if I could find a decent price on the Pomona 5250 test clip ...
This is exactly my thinking on batt check. I have it on a light, after messing with it, I dont use it real world, I just get a new battery.
But also, after thinking about actually using it, its not even a fast shift to turbo to go back one, so maybe complete elimination of a semi useless “fast shift” to turbo could make way for an inaccurate “I thought I wanted this but never use it” batt check, neither one is really that important. Such silly things us flashoholics argue about 
Dale I completely disagree about 4500lumens vs thigh though, as I will frequently turn on my 8,000 lumen J18 against my bare thigh for a while to feel the heat for fun, or put it against my hand for a nice fun “xray” to show a kid, its neat how the light penetrates and makes a thin bodypart internals visible. Its not a problem in the least, not sure why you think it would be, try it out.
I would vote for the turbo before battery check option. Battery check is just a secondary function in a light, and there should be no hurry getting to it. Turbo on the other hand should be easily accessible, and not behind any blinky modes.
Is this ever going to be finalized?
Are we shooting for the xmas of next year?
Anybody want side switch?
It’s getting close.
10 more minutes…
Plus or Minus…
Okay, I stand corrected. Battcheck is not impressive. But it is cool! 
Turbo for me is more important. I tend not to run my batteries down too low so often charge them again earlier than necessary.
Yeah dog piling on battery check. I promise even if a light had it you wouldn’t use it much.
I’m a little surprised there’s so much disagreement about battcheck and quick turbo. It seems different people want very different things.
For me, battcheck gets used often. It’s one of my favorite things about recent Zebralights, and I find it invaluable on budget / custom lights too. It’s far more convenient than going to get my DMM, pulling out the battery, checking, and putting it back in. It’s also easier to read for people who don’t know what the cell discharge curve looks like or how to convert a voltage to a charge percent.
A low battery is hard to see on low modes, especially with the 7135 chip, because it keeps a pretty flat output curve until the cell is basically dead. Even on turbo, it can be hard to estimate remaining charge because human eyes perceive light very differently at different times. But the direct drive discharge curve certainly helps since it’s a pretty direct correlation to battery charge.
Turbo-on-double-click-from-off is a nice feature on e-switch lights, and I use it on my Ferrero Rocher collection of drivers. However, it’s not as feasible on a clicky-switch light. I mean, it can be done… but it interferes with other functions like basic mode changing. Most of the time when I turn a clicky light on I do an immediate quick tap to go from moon to low, or maybe two quick taps to go to medium. This style of use wouldn’t be feasible with the double-click-turbo. Also, it might interfere with being able to access config mode (though that’s workaround-able).
…
So. It sounds like it should probably keep turbo first for a variety of reasons, with strobe right afterward. How about we make it do battcheck next, with the biking flasher last? This way it’s still useful for tactical or emergency purposes, and it’s also fairly easy to check remaining charge before going out for a ride. It seems like a fair balance between the different preferences people expressed.
And, of course, tools and info and code are available for anyone who wants to customize further. This is all intended to be very mod-friendly.
I’ll cast my vote for turbo first, I use a DMM to check cells nearly every time unless it’s brief. Multi cell lights this is essential anyway to spot an imbalance, single cells like this not so much but I still want fastest access to the turbo please.
That sounds like the way to do it. Thanks for making something so useful, all my other lights are experiencing some firmware envy.
[quote=ToyKeeper]
quote=ToyKeeper: I’m a little surprised there’s so much disagreement about battcheck and quick turbo. It seems different people want very different things.
Edit: The original post had a cartoon graph referencing “Design by Committee.” In retrospect I have come to the conclusion that the phrase “Design by Committee” is pejorative and totally inappropriate in the context of this thread.
I sincerely apologize to any member who was offended by my stupid misstep.
—- MG
I’m glad you made that decision, and very glad for you working on this project in any case whatever decision you made, you are appreciated!
Really, even if I completely disagreed with its use, since “fast turbo access” is really non functional in a non fast position, and battery check is still battery check if its 165 clicks deep, its the only rational decision here without eliminating it altogether. Even after I determined I probably don’t care as much as I thought since it is only accessible in moonlight and therefore probably wont be used much by me…but we shall see, it may widen up my usage of moon with a faster turbo access on the trails, one of the reasons I use higher modes is to access turbo fast if I need it.
I think your surprise has to do with your use, you are a low light moon kind of person, and I’d guess most are not really and like to use the max power. Once the battery cant keep up with turbo output, those that care for the power don’t really care what the battery is at, we need another battery!! If you use turbo on this light, unless you are in a cave rationing your power till the end of the cave and evaluating whether you have enough power left for a burst of turbo to see the roof of the cave, most wouldn’t really care about charge percent, you can tell if its dimming already.
Heck if I go out to blast turbo around, sometimes I change my batteries out, and they come back at 4.0-3.9V when I remeasure them. I even found myself even doing a funny thing on walks a few times for a flashoholic with a bright flashlight in hand: wanting to see how my new light lights up a distant target and not having a spare battery set on me, I used no light or moon for the entire hike till the testing ground.
As for batt check vs bike flasher, they both are the same wherever they are really, functionality doesn’t change by position.