This has nothing to do with Lumintop, who I understand have done good work with the BLF GT, and I expect will do a good job on this one.
The Cometa fiasco was the fault of Manker, and the CPF Italia project leader, in cahoots with a Banggood product manager, who mislead everyone into thinking that they would be getting a custom Jaxman Z1.
Whereas it turned out to be a badly made fake, the CPF-I man disappeared, and eventually BangGood tried to make things right, with refunds. But not before months of annoyance, anxiety, and evidence of shoddy, even dangerous, design and construction had been exposed on the forums, requiring owners to make DIY modifications and add retrofit parts to have any chance of having a safe functional torch.
There was a big falling-out between Banggood and Manker after that, and ISTR the Banggood product manager was dismissed.
The Miller and I then contacted Jaxman, and they cautiously agreed to supply a limited quantity of Z1 hosts to experienced modders to make their own versions of what the Cometa should have been, which were favourably received here.
And Jaxman continues to support experienced knowledgeable BLF modders with great hosts, by individual request.
Which was the start of The Millerās management of group buys, building the development teams, and the full scale engineering development of the Q8, GT etc. And kicking this project off as well.
If I have miss remembered any of this history, please feel free to set the record straight.
The dark days of BLF group buys have become much brighter, with the Q8 as an example. I hope it continues soon, in the (b)right direction with the FW3A.
This really isnāt the thread to discuss this stuff, but, whilst the tumble-weed continues to blow around, why not ?
There are many levels of commercialism here, obviously starting with those who have made a business from ādiscount codesā. Which I use, if I have any desire for the product. Just because it is x% off, flash sale, affiliate linked, 9/11 sale (some did that). or whatever, doesnāt usually inspire me to click on PayPal. I think very hard before doing that, and whether I really want to do that.
Then there are purveyors of (self declared) BLF specials meaning thinly disguised commercial products with little added value, except perhaps a different choice of LEDs.
Then newcomers to the business, for whom, typically, a driver from a ānameā together with firmware from our loveliest and best, adds cachet.
I do hope that your efforts are properly rewarded, you really deserve it. Sincerely.
But, I have to say, generally they just get things wrong.
Properly developed BLF torches, where every aspect of the design has been considered, analysed, prototyped, perhaps not quite perfected, by various discipline experts and OKed by a tight team behind the scenes, but at least considered, and made produce-able bearing in mind the typical BLF budgets, are always great.
I donāt think I see much of this happening nowadays.
About proto3, Iām not really sure what changed. If I understand correctly, Fritz sent an updated CAD model and it was built, but Iām not sure what the differences were.
Cawi did some testing and took pictures, but it doesnāt look like anything obvious changed between proto2 and proto3. From the pictures, at least, I donāt think I could tell proto2 and proto3 apart.
So for now I think itās up to Fritz to check if the changes were made correctly, and otherwise get things moving.