I have a very limited stock of both models of the MTO9R lights.
All of the partners at Haikelite have agreed to use this final design from Texas Ace but, It will still be several weeks before even I can order to re-stock with these newly designed drivers.
This means at least for the next few weeks the stock I have left is the only totally new of each version of the light and I will be installing TA's drivers as soon as they are complete myself. It is a very limited stock.
The handful that I have in stock now will all have Texas Ace Drivers in them from his own shop built by him one component at a time.
I provided TA with several lights in order for him to complete and test the design of the new version 2 driver and naturally I placed a small order for the drivers that he will be building himself.
I have already listed the lights I had removed from inventory until this situation was resolved and they are currently for sale now.
Please remember they will not ship until I get the completed drivers from TA and install the driver. I will be shipping all of those orders the same day the drivers arrive. I will install the driver, test each light, then pack and ship them all myself.
This is an agreement that TA and I reached early on when I first asked him to take a look at the drivers and see if he could help with any issues.
You have all already seen TA's post explaining what the drivers will be capable of and you have all also seen that they will include original Narsil firmware.
These lights will be superior in almost every way.
Later lights shipped by the manufacturer will be as well.
By the way the price you will see for these limited number of lights is not my taking advantage of TA's work. That price also reflects my compensating TA for the drivers. As well as his endorsement of these few lights.
I am sure TA will be happy to verify this.
We have also discussed possibly offering both versions in the future. The factory made version 2 driver as well as a very limited number of all hand built drivers from TA.
As of now I want to just leave him to complete what work he still has in front of him (which is a lot) and we will discuss that more once he has had a chance to breathe.
TA... Thanks again for all of your hard work and for taking my call when all of this started.
You can find the listing here. https://hesaidshesaidsales.com/
Here also is a copy of Texas Ace's original post when all of this came to be. It also includes some of the specifications which seem to be getting better and better as he continues the completion of the driver. Also Here is the original thread listing for the now closed Group buy that also has a ton of information about the drivers. Most any question you can think if will be somewhere in the last 5 or 6 pages of the post. https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/49135?page=55
Yes, as several of you guessed, Terry and then Haikelite brought me in to look at the drivers issues with the MT09R.
After some diagnostic testing and a bit of luck I found that the extra capacitor that was for some reason stuck between the LED V+ and the LDO was the cause of the issues. Removing it seems to have solved the flickering and “tailcap” issues. Although it is not a perfect fix, it does seem to work thus far. I still want to know why that was put there.
Haikelite then asked me to start from scratch and design a driver for the MT09R. I have been working on it for the last 2 weeks. It will be a fairly simple TA FET based driver for simplicity and reliability. With a few tricks like dual FET’s for more current handling if needed (only one will be populated from the factory I think).
It will also have some extra voltage spike suppression control built in to handle the massive currents it will be dealing with.
I got the first prototype built Friday and have been tweaking the firmware and driver ever since. It will naturally be running REAL NarsilM 1.3 which is light years better then what the stock drivers had (only the S42 comes to mind as being worse in recent memory I am sad to say).
In testing so far it is working great, FAR FAR better UI and performance as well. I swapped out the xhp70.2 LED’s for some 80CRI 4000k emitters and I am getting 23k lumens peak out of it now. It is also pulling around ~40A of current at 6.6v, for over 250W of power!
Needless to say it gets silly hot so almost a full day was spent tweaking the thermal control settings to keep the heat in check. Sadly there is no way to do it “smooth” with this much power, it can go from 55c to 65c in under 15 seconds. So there is just no time for a nice ramp down. It just drops the power in a big hurry.
It works though, in testing even with my mega light it will reach about 55c and then start stepping down and usually the overshoot tem is still under 60c, which is “Safe” (aka, your reflexes should be plenty to keep you from burning yourself).
The driver will just be a single channel FET driver for production I think as the 7135’s have proved unreliable at 6V. It becomes a bit of a lottery, some work and some don’t. Only way to know is to try it which is not production friendly.
That said I talked with Del and I am making a V2 of the driver that could improve the 7135 reliability. It still needs to be tested though.
The 7135 will gain you a lower moon mode, smoother ramp in the low modes and better efficiency in the low modes. If you do not use the low modes much, then the 7135 will not do anything for you.
I will be selling some hand made and tested drivers with the 2 channel 7135 design if anyone is interested. I just need to figure out how many to build.
I have to say, I really like this light once it has a good driver. I can see it getting a LOT of use.
That said I naturally always see ways to make things better. I have been trying to talk Haikelite into making a “TA” version of the MT09R to my specs but they have not really acknowledged it yet.
I think they are worried it would cost more and people would not want to pay the extra for it….
