So, I have this beautiful brass light from CNQG / FancyFlashlights. (reviewed here) It’s nice, but I want to make it better. Here’s what I have in mind:
Use a frosted lens for a floodier beam. It’s pretty throwy as-is.
Add a moon mode, make PWM faster (~18kHz), and maybe get rid of mode memory. (re-flash the driver or switch to Qlite driver)
Replace the XP-G2 with a Nichia 219 4500k 92CRI emitter.
I haven’t actually started yet, but I have at least determined that it’s easy to remove the lens and reasonably simple to remove the pill. However, I’m not quite sure how to take apart the contents of the pill, or if the parts I want are available in the correct sizes, and I don’t yet have the hardware (soldering / re-flashing tools) to actually modify anything inside the pill.
This is the first light I’ve attempted to mod in any non-trivial ways, and I’m really hoping I won’t destroy it since there aren’t any more of this model available. I think it could turn out very well though, because it’s such a nice host. It’s small for a 1x18650, slightly shorter and lighter than the Zebralight SC600 mkII (and significantly narrower), and looks very nice thanks to its all-brass body.
Anyone have suggestions for parts, tools, or suppliers? I can easily start with the frosted lens, and then move onto the pill later.
Most likely picked it up after reading your review.
It’s in my EDC rotation when I want something compact that can still throw a bit.
Since I like the throw I don’t want to change the optics. I seem to be lucky enough to be impervious to PWM and don’t need a moonlight mode on a small throw light so the driver is fine. I’m almost all set but then there’s the tint.
It’s not that it’s bad, just doesn’t seem right for a classic, brass light. I thought about swapping in a Nichia but the more I think about it the more I’m leaning toward an XP-G2 in the 5C to 7C range.
I know going that warm, at least the 7 tints is counterintuitive for a light I want to throw but lately I’ve been liking the warm tints in my small lights.
I tried an XM-L2 7C4 in my DST and didn’t like it at all, went back to a 3C. For my small lights though warm is the new norm.
Wow, so I started this thread a long time ago. I’ve been a bit behind on modding projects. I have two of the three changes done though.
For a floodier beam, DC-Fix “sand” on the lens worked well.
As for new firmware, I noticed today that the driver is held in by a screw-on retaining ring instead of being soldered. So, it’s really easy to get access to the chips on the top side of the driver. It uses a common attiny13a for the MCU, so I reflashed it with a version of my heavily-modded STAR firmware. All I had to do was remove the solder bridging two of the MCU pins, and it took new firmware easily. Now it has the following modes:
Solid 0.45 / 9 / 47 / 173 / 403 lm primary modes.
Moon-med flash / low-high flash / med-max 1Hz flash. Produces 4 brief bright pulses and stays on the dim mode the rest of the time, with the whole cycle repeating once per second. Good for when you need to both see and be seen, like on a bike.
It uses short-cycle memory, meaning it resets the memory to the first mode after being on for at least one full second. That means there is no need to go through all the strobes to go from, say, medium to low. Just “tap tap” and it’ll be on low, no matter what mode it was in before.
There is currently one small bug, but it doesn’t bother me. The moon-med flasher is actually off and med. This is because I changed the PWM speed for the moon mode, using phase-correct instead of fast PWM. But on the flasher mode it uses fast PWM, and the level is too low to light up at all. I didn’t fix it because the ROM is already at exactly 1024 bytes and I don’t really feel like removing anything to make room for the fix. (I used phase-correct because it gave me a 0.45 lm level, while fast PWM could only do 0.07 lm or 0.98, which was too low or too high)
Now I just need to swap the emitter. Nichia 219Bs are nice. IMO, even nicer than the 219A. I wonder if I can find a copper star of the right size…
I think Toykeeper has the previous version of that light.
…but OMG, banggood is selling them even cheaper than CNQG? Now I’m really tempted to get the AA -version… arrr, too many lights!
Edit: The banggood’s AA version seems to be bigger and heavier than the CNQG’s according to the measurements.
Anyways, it’s nice to know that the old brass beauty should be programmable, if I sometime have the time and money to get into that.
Yes, I have the previous version of that item. It’s the one on the left in this pic:
It’s using a flavor of the firmware I originally created for the light on the right, my custom Convoy S7-219B. I haven’t gotten the files into my firmware repository yet, but they’re online here if anyone is curious: http://toykeeper.net/torches/brass-beauty/
Getting the moon mode right, on pretty much any hardware, will require some tweaking and testing. Moon modes are really sensitive to the exact hardware specs.
Oh, definitely. I added a battery check mode to my Skyray King recently, and was thinking it’d be nice on my other lights too. The problem is that my clicky-switch firmware is already at exactly 1024 bytes, so I’d have to remove stuff to make room. I might just vastly simplify the low-voltage code to make room, maybe remove one of the self-ramping strobes.
