Today we’re dropping our brand-new Z1 Artemis, codenamed Pocket Rocket – engineered to redefine the standard of small-form-factor 18650 EDC lights.
3 Premium Finish Options (Community Requested)
Astral Aluminium
Void White
Matte Black
Whether you’re an EDC collector, weekend hiker, night walker or commuter seeking reliable backup lighting, the Z1 Artemis hits every box.
Mine are set to arrive any day now! Black with 5009r and Astral with SFT70.
Have been looking forward to this for a while! I mentioned to Ivy last fall that I was hoping you would come out with a compact 18650 flashlight. The L50 was all the evidence I needed. Since then I ended up buying more than a few of your lights but the Z1 is the one I’ve really been waiting for.
Hi dear, thank you for your loving of our lights! 
I contacted Fiona for a shipping date a couple of days ago and she kindly checked and prioritised my order, sending me a shipped confirmation as her reply. Many thanks.
I wasn’t really planning to get any more lights, but I’m gonna have to make an exception. Just gotta decide between the black (discrete) or the Astral aluminium.
looks like a beautiful light
dual switch design sounds fascinating
Yeah this will be my first FireFly light for sure. I wanted the E07 or whichever when they were available with SW45K but never got one. They seem like they’re all way too big to pocket carry, although they’d be good walking or working lights I’d imagine. Probably try to find a T9R for sure.
Still don’t have an SC64/65 yet. This Z1 seems to be a great size. Smaller than D4V2 and 6V single emitter TIR? It does sound amazing and look great.
I figured the fancy tail was just for aesthetic purposes, not a dual switch. That is very intriguing, since I prefer a tailswitch for most applications. I’m gonna wait a bit but I will definitely be ordering one.
The silver, white, and more yellow brass alloy all look great, gonna be hard to decide.
@Fireflylite-Ivy Can you confirm about rear switch? THERE IS NO INFORMATION ON SITE.
If I knew about it I would probably not order the light…
Love the design.
That’s thrown me a bit too.
This reminds me… I got a message from Jacky a couple months ago and tried to reply, but I don’t think the reply was received. Should probably follow up on that, to get the Fireflies firmware situation fixed.
What’s the issue with their firmware?
It’s a divergent fork which is missing some features, has extra bugs, and now also contains proprietary code which isn’t GPL-compatible… so it can’t be used in this project without violating the license. Gotta rewrite the proprietary parts, and … also rewrite a lot of the rest, because it needs some pretty significant changes before it can be merged.
So there’s quite a bit of work involved.
Gotcha, thank you!
I hope there isn’t any issue with the Z1.
Feel free to ignore if this question annoys or offends you, that’s not my intent.
Have you started incorporating AI coding into the project? I’ve considered toying with customizing it for my lights (as you encourage in the project!) and would probably use AI.
It seems like a lot of the challenges with the FFL firmware could be resolved by a strong coding LLM in a codebase of this size.
No.
Several reasons.
It tends to produce pretty bad code, especially for niche projects, and especially when automated tests aren’t practical. In particular, it tends to write way more code than necessary, without good high-level abstractions or architecture, causing the project to become huge and unmaintainable. Ever talked to an AI long enough that it starts forgetting things and becoming incoherent and just repeating itself? The same thing tends to happen to AI-written code.
To be practical at all, it still needs someone to do all the high-level architectural design, and keep a very close eye on all the low-level details. It’s generally bad at architecture, and tends to get a lot of the details wrong too, unless closely monitored and rigorously tested. But automated testing has not been practical for this project, and the main issues right now are architectural. The code wasn’t designed to handle dimmable RGB aux LEDs.
It’s also expensive, if you want access to any decent models, and/or want it to be able to actually read all the code instead of just short snippets.
The output from AI isn’t copyrightable, so I wouldn’t be able to enforce the GPL. That’s a big liability for a project like this, which needs GPL to get manufacturers to behave.
There are ethical issues with how they train the models. Again, a copyright issue. The people who did the work aren’t getting acknowledged or compensated, and their licenses are getting ignored.
There are also larger societal issues and macroeconomic issues and environmental issues involved, due to the way AI megacorps are reshaping the entire economy to eliminate personal computing and try to force everyone to rent computing power from huge energy-intensive data centers.
AI has become wildly unpopular, and very divisive, and a lot of people avoid anything associated with AI. It has its uses, but the overall sentiment is that people are pretty unhappy about it.
So far, every vibe-coded patch I’ve received has been pretty terrible. Even the ones written by Claude. And every vibe-coded fork I’ve seen has quickly become unmaintainable.
Studies have shown AI use tends to be detrimental to the person prompting it, too, causing cognitive decline and brain rot. It’s important to exercise the ol’ brain muscle to keep it healthy.
Basically, it goes something like this:
dev: I have a problem.
manager: How about adding AI?
dev: Okay, now I have six problems.
(edit: fixed typo)
Thanks for explaining your view! I hadn’t thought about the license issues at all.
Specs? Tint? Battery type? Cost? LED choices?
I am Sure there’s more things I’d like to know about at the moment that’s all I can think of.
Thanks Jon, that fits with what I thought originally because my other FireFlies all have the removable ring magnet in the base.
To be honest, the only thing that isn’t on the website is an explanation of the tail switch that isn’t a tail switch. About the size of a Zebralight SC65, several tints and emitters. Costs, just a little more than you wish it did, but hey…great quality, fit and finish, lovely switches.
