So I measured the current draw of the auxillary LEDs in both high and low brightness. The D4V2 has 8 LEDs while the D4SV2 has 16 LEDs, current draw is the total from the battery. I hope someone find a need for this. This the result:
Thanx for the info! Can't believe no one responded here. I used pink on the DVSV2 I just got yesterday and it was ridiculous how bright it was on the nightstand. Still haven't figured out how to dim it down, assuming it was on the high setting. Red looks much better, least for being on the nightstand.
Yep, did that, like on my K1. Funny, I got the K1 first, now bought my first D4SV2.
Ok, got it! The difference between high and low is huge, so I didn't even realize the LED's were on on low brightness.
Now I see - high is way too high, and low is too low, and your measurements reflect that. RED is a dramatic difference: 2.47mA to 0.06mA, or 2.4%. Yikes!
Sorry for the request, but can you post some photos from far showing the one or two of the aux leds (maybe red and white, as they are on the extremes) on low and on high to compare how they look like?
The D4V2 is one my shopping list and I would like to see how it behaves.
Uhhh, maybe, not sure if Ill get time today. My camera has auto white balance so not sure it would show the difference from what I see. But you can imagine what 2.4% of the amps mean. I don't get it why they made it this way - I'm assuming this wasn't planned/designed like this. In somewhat darker room light, the red at 2.47 mA is still pretty bright. I would think in total black it's a good moon mode for walking around.
For drainage, the high green or cyan would probably be the best but I've been lik'n red as of late.
I know on a ATtiny85, there's limits of what you can do, but on the 1634, maybe it can be tweaked better. The high settings probably reflect full output based on the resistors used.
Thanks for the report on this TomE! I confess I don’t have many notions about draining, but I can figure how it can work based on your description.
I am more interested on the lowest than on the highest, depite this one can be useful as a standing light with difuser
It's a great light. Even though my prefs are 3500K-4000K, I got this one with SST-20 6500K's (max throw), and it's pretty nice for a 6500K light, as I was hoping. Tint shift in the beam are pretty mild and the ramping thru 3 channels is the smoothest I've seen. Didn't get a chance for measurements yet. Also was planning on adding spring bypasses and doing before/after on it.
Forgot to order the SS bezel though :FACEPALM:, so next order.
Wish it had Lexel style adjustments on the AUX LED's though, but probably no room.
Ohh, I got the cyan blue and it's one of the gripiest lights around - knurling on the batt tube, protruding lines on the end cap, and a rough surface all over.
Has anyone else measured the current drawn by the auxiliary leds on their D4Sv2? I measure up to 50% higher currents than the OP on the low setting of the leds, although I suppose some of that may be attributed to meter accuracy.
But even on the higher setting, where meter accuracy should be fine, I get much larger numbers. For blue and green, I am 40-50% higher, while for red I am an astonishing 170% higher.
The mixed colours follow the same pattern, depending whether the red is involved.
I note that on a D4v2 I get much closer readings to those reported by the OP. My numbers are in fact a bit smaller.
Do you guys actually see the theoretical "Red - Yellow - Green - Cyan - Blue - Pink (now violet) - White" color pattern when in Low mode?
As reported in this post I see "Red - Green - Green - Green - Blue - Pink (now violet) - sort-of-White" instead, whereas I have the correct above pattern in High mode.
Too bad because Yellow and Cyan are my favorites, but way too bright in High mode for a bedside table use.
I keep mine in Low and in Battery mode, but I always tail cap lock-out when I`m done because I was worried about it wasting the battery, but it looks like that could take years for that to happen!
Yes, but you do have a point. The brightness of the three coloured LEDs varies quite a lot. The design delivers different current levels to each colour in an effort to compensate (at least on average). But there is manufacturing variation, so the outcome is not perfect. The residual variation is much more noticeable on the low setting than on high.
So my D4V2 behaves somewhat like yours, because the green is bright compared with the other colours and tends to swamp them. Everything has a greenish cast. But on my D4SV2, the red is faint relative to the blue and green. In this case, the overall colour cast is cyan. I also find that using the red LEDs on low as my preferred night-time location device a bit problematic on this light because they are so faint. On high, however, all of the colours appear to be about equal strength on both lights.
Could anyone point me to the code which determines rainbow speed?
Currently have my KR4s flashed with a ‘slow rainbow’ .hex file which tamed them from a ~ 0.5 second cycle to ~ 3 second cycle. This is more inline with the rainbow mode on my recently received D4V2.
The relative brightness of the colours is controlled by two factors. One is the physical resistors on the board; the other is the technical characteristic of the LEDs themselves. Red needs a higher voltage to reach the same apparent brightness as the other colours, and you can see that in post #1 above in the higher current delivered to red (and mixtures with red). The proportional difference between high and low is determined by a voltage divider in the controller chip and is the same proportion for all colours. My guess is that the choice of resistors to give the balance of brightness between the colours is designed with the LEDs at the high level, and what happens at the low level is just the residual result of decisions made elsewhere.
So the only way to adjust the relative brightness of the colours is to change the resistors - possible but not something I have the skills for. There may be other voltage dividers in the chip that could be chosen by Anduril to make the LEDs brighter on the low setting. That would would make all colours brighter, but since subjective brightness is highly nonlinear, the increase in the other colours would be less noticeable than the boost given to red. That may be a reasonable solution, but I do not know if the controller chip has the necessary features.
Thanks for your quick response. I could have asked on Taschenlampenforum then as well … . I am trying to find out which AuxLED mode consumes the least power over long time. Blinking or low mode? Sorry I am not an electronic expert, so your curves don’t tell me that. Thanks for a short indication.