Ya that’s what I’m worried about
Interesting.
Amazon didn’t want them back?
No clue. If they did they should’ve counted them better
Ah, living the dream. 
I wonder if dchomak still goes Home Depot surfing these days. He used to buy up everything they had in “remove these items from the shelves” status for 1 cent per item, and come home with entire truckloads of random stuff for less than the cost of gas to get there and back. I think he also had a big barn or something to store stuff in until he was able to sell it.
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I must be missing something - local 'Despots never discount anything that steeply from what I’ve seen.
The old thread is still up, so you can read all about it if you like:
The 1-cent price tag was an internal code the store’s inventory system used when items were no longer for sale. But after setting the status in the database, it took time for the employees to physically remove items from the shelves. So a bunch of stuff could be purchased for 1 cent.
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Damn I gotta look into that.
Not quite 1 cent but I went on the home depot website at like 3am the monday they started their “black Friday week” sales last year and they had a handful of brand new Milwaukee M12 Fuel tools with a battery for like ~$80 and I bought 3 of everything. They were all $250-$300 regular price. Resold the stuff I didn’t want for a profit.
Idk if somebody in IT there had some program written to put stuff on sale at midnight and they messed it up or what because at 9am everything was back to regular price. But they honored the price I paid. Now I always check the website at 3am the morning before a new sale lol.
Resurrecting an old thread. We still have driver / software improvements that are coming. We already have flashlights with flashing pads to update software. Remember the IoT fad? Soon every flashlight will be connected to the Internet and needs an account and annual subscription to activate. It’s called LAAS (Lumens As A Service) You will also need to keep updating its software whether you agree to or not, so it doesn’t get infected by virus or ransomware which asks you for Bitcoin payment everything you turn on your flashlight in the dark. Talk about exciting times ahead.
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I believe Toykeeper addressed all these questions in another post.
Imo the next big thing will be flashlights which you can not only charge, but also customize via the USB port. Similar to how the TS100 soldering iron can be flashed and some parameters customized without reflashing by connecting it to a PC.
I’d love that as a feature - hook it up and get a text file or even GUI in which you can set up the whole UI (which modes, how to toggle between them etc) - then just click save, and unplug. No compiling, no messing with source code.
Would love that.
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Yes, that would be nice.
About 30% of the power sent to LED’s is still wasted as heat energy. So there remains moderate room for improvement. Far more efficient emitters do exist in the labs but have yet to be mass produced where they can remain profitable in an extremely competitive market. But that is mostly academic, since human eyes are logarithmic in light sensitivity ( ie: it takes double the number of lumens to nice a 20% increase in brightness). Costs aside, the spec industry is most concerned with is “lumen maintenance” to minimize downtime and the labor costs associated in maintaining them.
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Same with an internal combustion engine. Lot of energy lost to heat.
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Over-hyped stuff on Kickstarter, perhaps.
But going on 2 decades into IoT we’ve yet to see much interest in this for flashlights. General lighting, sure - how many servers does it take to turn on a light bulb - even the most basic functions on the LAN probably hit data centers in London, Shenzhen, and Lower Piscataway Because Reasons™. Doubtless that motivated enterprising strangers can command your Philips Hue setup into disco strobe mode without your leave.
The original incarnation of Four Sevens did a bluetooth-interactive light once. I recall that getting it to work on Android was a pain due to the then state of the Android bluetooth stack, and it wasn’t much developed past the initial offering.
Otherwise, the present state of uC-controlled lights popular on BLF seems to have more in parallel with the computers of the 1970s and 1980s - sparse resources with extremely limited I/O leaving no room for interaction with The Great Link and its associated shenanigans.
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I think it’s likely that some flashlights will be able to connect to a computer over USB or maybe an optical dongle or something… but mostly just to get updated firmware and configuration. There’s basically no point in trying to build wifi and an entire internet stack into a flashlight, since it would have some pretty large drawbacks and virtually no benefit. I do feel that it might happen occasionally, with some particularly unusual models which do it as a gimmick… but I doubt it will ever become common.
I recall there was one which accepted audio over a bluetooth signal, and it would change the light intensity according to the volume of the sound… which then caused it to pulse along with the music. But it was expensive and not many people bought one, and I don’t think its creators ever tried to do anything like it again.
What I think will happen instead is that flashlights, for the most part, will continue to follow the same basic design as always… a stick with an emitter and a battery and a button (or similar control device), where pressing the button turns the light on and off.
Sure, there will often be extras, like the ability to change brightness or charge the battery or do some blinky modes… but at its core, a flashlight is a lot like a rocket – except instead of generating propulsion, it generates photons. It’s just a portable fuel tank with an emitter and a control mechanism. Everything else is gravy.
Maybe some day it’ll take different forms, like how many people use a phone as a flashlight. Or maybe it’ll become popular to get an implant, where one finger can shine light. Or maybe we’ll get personal drones which follow us around and perform a variety of functions including illumination. And at least two of those cases, phones and drones, will probably have a network connection and will be subject to constant software updates and the internet’s hellscape of malware, scams, and greed. But in those cases, the flashlight is kind of just a cherry on top of an extremely complex device designed primarily for other purposes.
If something is designed primarily to be a flashlight, it’s mostly just going to be a shiny fuel stick. Simple, effective, and timeless.
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My previous IoT comment was a tongue in cheek remark of current state of fair where everyone and everything is under surveillance of the big brother. I like flashlight because it’s simple. A packet of energy contained in the form of a removable battery, a driving circuit with good UI and an efficient, full spectrum emitter with a nicely matched optic is all I need. That being said, a good driver is still very hard to find unless you want to spend lots of money. So this aspect of flashlight still has some room for improvement. When every flashlight comes with buck/boost driver with 95% efficiency and a good UI then there might be nothing to ask anymore, at least from me.
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You forgot having good tint and high CRI, some manufacturers (Cree, Luminus) have yet to figure that out
FWIW, the AVR DD dev kit I got from thefreeman uses a very nice buck/boost circuit… and he’s working on getting his drivers into production lights. So I’m hopeful that these awesome drivers will soon be a reality, a thing people can easily buy inside of popular flashlight models.
The one I’m using runs on any power source from 0.5V to 4.4V, with full, stable, responsive dimming from about 0.01 lm up to around 6 Amps. Efficiency is even higher than a Zebralight. There’s no ripple or pre-flash, no warm-up or cool-down lag, and the ramp is very, very smooth. I configured the firmware to run as an AA/li-ion dual fuel light with two distinct voltage ranges, and it even makes the aux LEDs work on both battery types. The MCU has enough peripherals built in that it the driver circuits can fit into smaller lights than before. Plus, with only ~10K of 32K ROM used, and plenty of extra pins, there’s plenty of space to add features and support a wide variety of host designs.
Anyway, I’m really looking forward to getting these things onto the market so people can use it. It’s the best torch driver I’ve ever used, and I want other people to enjoy it too. I’m hoping it’ll set a new standard and become the baseline for what people can expect from a torch.
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That sounds really promising. However, companies like their own propriety stuff, no matter how shitty it is. That being said, I’m at least looking forward to seeing this type of driver in Wurkkos lights.