It may not be a flashlight for each and everybody surely that was not the intention, but there is a lot of options for who needs it. The product is an alternative for those who like a special light with lots of control and good tints.
P.S: For those who are still waiting for their M43 Meteor orders, we are struggling day and night to ship your orders as soon as possible.
Thanks.
Hank was so kind as to hold my hand and walk me through the process and I see what has been happening.
For me, the electronic switch makes an audible click when depressed. So I thought 3 quick clicks and hold meant to hold the 3rd click. Hank is pressing it 3 clicks then pressing it a 4th time to hold it! Communication discrepency due to language differences. Welcome to the 3rd Rock from the Sun. 
Sweet! All is well and it’s a known factor now, no issues no worries.
Once set up, this will work as any other light…you just get to be the one that set’s it up to your liking. Turbo is a monster, so it makes sense to take some precautions there. Having a momentary action for this is probably a good idea. And in the case where you need it for a longer interval, it latches after 6 seconds so you don’t have to keep holding it. I did this last night watching the skunk. It’s really quite intuitive once you get it set up. I have mine coming on in Low, with Medium at the double click. Turbo is available at all times.
The blinks and battery checks are available for instant use outside the main circuit, also cool for someone that doesn’t typically use these…you go straight to them on the occasion that you DO want to access it.
Hank’s video makes it obvious and easy. Thank you Hank!
Which UI are you using? 1? Looks like I wasn’t patient enough. This sounds good… as I don’t using high much. As a side note, would anyone like to trade a DDT40 for this? (ha!)
Thanks for the shipping update Hank! Keep them coming when there are new developments. Thanks again.
You are welcome, Dale, I’m quite confident that every Meteor works as it should.
Thanks.
Impressive little Meteor, to be sure.
Here’s two shots, taken this morning (yes, I’m a mess, sorry) Canon G1X at ISO1600 f/5.6 and 1/8 sec shutter, just like last night’s last shots. This is our game room without lights on and then illuminated by the Fiery Meteor….
No gimmicks here people, no fancy footwork in software, simply left the settings the same as last night and shot the room with the lights all off and blinds drawn. Then shot it again with the Meteor pointing at the white styrofoam ceiling tiles. I’m standing in the same place in the dark photo, holding the light up just the same. lol.
Indoors especially, this thing has MONSTROUS power!
Edit, for the record, this room is essentially a 2 car garage. The house plans were altered to make it a game room and a second actual 2 car garage added just behind me when the house was built. My dad was a builder when I was growing up, with a Lumber Yard. So the room is 20x20’ and 8’6” in height. The Meteor lights it up quite well!
what video from Hank?
I’m having a tough time understanding why people are so easily frightened by the UI options. In no way do you need to operate this light in a complicated manner. If you want to, you can (UI3) but leave it in UI1 and it’s as basic as can be. Forget about the other two UI’s. Burn the manual and never look at that frightening thing again if it’s that bad knowing you have other options available. I have a armytek predator pro v2.5 and just because it is fully programmable (which is probably more complicated than the meteor to do), doesn’t mean I’m worried about owning the light. I still can use it in a basic flashlight manner. Heck, if anything this light is more intriguing and interesting knowing it’s packed with some extra OPTIONAL features and not just some basic driver that any cheap light can have.
Sorry, I don’t mean to offend anyone with my rant. Obviously everyone is entitled to their own preferences and that’s what makes this hobby so fun and addicting.
I was a little intimidated when I first checked out the famous Zebralight UI. Then I bought a Zebralight and found out myself how nice that UI really is. Perhaps the M43 UI is somewhat the same sorta thing. Anyways, anybody master UI 3 yet?
Umm… The Predator Pro is a cake walk. I own it, and it’s my favorite UI. You can basically make it a one mode light or two mode light. You can set it and hand it to anybody to use and they can do it without even realizing it has an advanced driver. That UI took me two minutes to figure it. And I’ll never need to refer to the manual again. It’s advanced but the implementation is so well done, that it’s genius.
The UI options are not frightening… I also own Rayus lights, and they’re complicated too. This is similar, and the Meteor is amazing…. but you need to mess around with the light for a while to get it. The UI is good and advanced, but it’s not the most intuitive. I feels like some criticisms of the UI are valid and some are not. The extreme criticisms of it are not constructive though. Neither are the extreme defenses of it either.
I really want this light, and the more I read about it the more I want it. So many cool features, so small, and so much light...
But this light will be a unicorn to me. Original price was too high for me, and I got a feeling it will just go up in price from here and get harder to get your hands on
Sorry I should clarify. Programming the predator pro is the tricky part (if you choose to program custom mode setups). Once set up, I fully agree. It’s a cake walk. But I feel like the meteors ability to be complicated is scaring people when all it takes is a simple process and you can have a simple UI. I guess I should handle the light first but I don’t think the meteor is as scary as some people are making it seem.
Not easily.
The only code available is for a much earlier version, so there would be a lot of development to do to get it back to the current state. Also, the code is written in assembly instead of C so everything takes like ten times as much code to do and is harder to read. The comments would all need to be translated in order to understand the code. And the author claims that it could never fit into 8k if written in C, though I suspect that’s more a matter of pride than truth since we’ve already managed to fit quite a bit into just 1k using C. Regardless, after ripping out the UI code there should be plenty of space left to replace it with something simpler.
There are other complications though. It sounds like the MCU does a bunch of complex soft power regulation and the hardware has a tendency to “fail open” (short, basically) in response to bugs… so apparently it has a tendency to self-destruct during development. It would also need special high-voltage flashing hardware, soldered directly to the driver board.
So it’s possible, but it would be very difficult and time-consuming.
One could potentially re-route the MCPCB traces to be powered in parallel (12P) instead of 3S4P, then use a flashable SRK-like driver… maybe… but it would be pushing like 60 amps through one pair of wires. And it would either sacrifice most of the features or require using a bigger MCU and writing new code for it. Or develop an all-new boost driver for it, but that’s even more work.
Anyway, all I’m saying is it’s not easy to modify in that way. Changing the emitters or optics is simple, but changing the driver or code is not.
About Zebralight… I like Zebralight’s UI but find its sub-level thing annoying. I don’t really care for mode memory, and ZL has three or four different mode memories plus another three or four sub-sub-level memories. And the 12+ clicks to change between sub-levels is really obnoxious. Like, to change from M3 to M2 is 16 clicks, IIRC. Or maybe 14. I forget. I generally have to cycle around an extra time anyway to be sure, so it’s more like 22 clicks to change the brightness by one step.
I’d rather just have a ramp. Preferably smooth and reversible with shortcuts to min/max/mem, or stepped with access from both ends like STAR-momentary. And we have several flavors of those already written and available.
My dream UI:
Click - on
Hold- ramping steppless to high
Doubleclick -ramping to low no matter which brightness is used.
Clickylight on, off
Lockout
No other “feature” neccessary
or hidden
Like or love the flashlight
but hate the modiselection, all three possabilities aren’t a great choice.
We measured 5300 Lumen and 70 kLux that is great !!!
(XPG2 dedomed)
Regards Xandre
I measured lux just now at 37.5Kcd for 387.3M throw.
Normally a de-dome in a reflectored flashlight with a single emitter pretty much doubles throw, so this figure is not at all surprising and shows a very large hotspot as the light does indeed produce. At ranges under 50 yds it makes a whole lot of light. Not a lot of use beyond that really as it’s spreading out too wide.
If Hanks comes out with this kind of UI, I’m ready. Perhaps if I only have one light, then I can teach myself to memorize it, but….and I can’t even optimize my ZL SC600 functions because of it! By the way, a real step-less ramp would be excellent…not like Roche’s M170 that steps down/up from 100% to 70% to…I can no longer remember.
TK’s ramp has 64 levels that goes from one end to the other in 2 seconds. Smooth, with a slowing down (multiple steps of the same level) at the bottom to make it easier to stop on a given level down where it matters. Love it. I’m using it in my modified Zebra Light SC52 with 1117 lumens.
This Meteor doesn’t do that, but what it does do it does well. The sheer total output makes some of the feature sets a moot point as in the end the Lo-Med is for using and the Turbo is for blasting and playing. UI1 is really pretty easy in this respect, with the ease of changing the 1st level from moon to low or the 2nd level from Med to High. Pretty easy to set up and forget it and Turbo is available at all times.
I like mine like this so far…
Lo-Med …. Turbo.
Moon is really low and while I don’t need that very often it’s easy enough to attain if/when necessary. I like having the double click on med for battery savings and the much larger step to Turbo. So it’s all good. Play with it, figure it out, set it and forget it.
Looks like Dale was getting what I was saying, thanks for proving that.
So whats the consensus now on the best battery choice?
LG ICR18650HE2, LG ICR18650HE4, something different?