Agreed, I think the solution to that is what we’re discussing here: reasonable/acceptable defaults for the majority of people, plus customisability for us enthusiasts. I think this one of the great advantages of Anduril, it’s not hard to have both.
This is the downfall of so many software projects i’ve seen over the years i have lost count at this point.
Basically feature creep combined with the need developer feels to force-feed new features to everyone. Exactly like we see here - “it has to be enabled by default so that people know it exists, otherwise how would they know if they are not reading change logs?”
Feature creep is bad by itself, but when combined with this it often becomes unbearable…
Default user experience has to be consistent. So that flashlight made in 2022 and in 2024 works exactly the same way by default.
Otherwise even people who are willing and able to mess around and learn how to configure things will get annoyed and just choose something without Anduril so that it works and does not require reading whole book about it each time to understand what’s going on.
Not to mention people who simply want a functional light and do not care for any configuration options Anduril offers. This will consider stuff like POVD a fault, return the light or simply write it off as “failed experiment” and avoid anything with Anduril in the future.
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Just like… was it the SC31? A modest-power “granny light” that was simplicity itself, then grew into the S, the Pro, the Woohoo, and other “upgraded” versions.
Nice big clunky switch (the one with the square metal plate and screw in each corner), easy to work it, not overloaded with the usual garbage, wouldn’t set things on fire if left unattended, etc.
But the usual “better, stronger, faster” feature-creep turned it into Yet Another Commodity Tubelight™ with nothing to differentiate it from the hundreds of other “Me Too!” lights.
“Making it better” just buried it in a sea of camouflage.
I already saw a “Wtf is this?!?” reaction to an existing feature, the epilepsy-mode aux lights on my TS10. I have normal standby as constant-low, but epilepsy-mode for lockout. Seems a quick way to just make it bright and noticeable if I’m carrying it into the basement or car or somewhere, so that if I forget it, I could just look for the blinky orange glow to find it.
As soon as he saw that, he was like, “Naw, I don’t want that shiite on my light!”, and I had to explain at length that it doesn’t come out of the box that way, and that you have to go through multiple rounds of 7 clicks to get there. Doubt he’s gonna buy a TS10 in any configuration after seeing that.
Now imagine that became the default (ie, default on) at some point.
Apparently, there were already plenty of complaints that people were thinking the light’s just going mental when being turned off, and asking about it gets nasty “RTFM!” replies. Is that the best way to try to sell lights?
I hate with a passion when apps or an OS changes whole menu structures so that you can’t find shiite anymore, and have to relearn “muscle memory”. And often it’s just (by their own admission) to “freshen” the interface, and no other reason! Gimme the same ol’ f’n stale interface that I’m used to and that I’m good at!!
Dunno, but I don’t think that just dressing up a light in a colorful clown suit is all that appealing, but worse when the end-user (and a normie, at that) has to go through the extra trouble of undressing the clown just to get it to look normal.
Some of my favorite lights are still 1-mode on/off lights, and simple UI lights like the EC50-gen2 (on/off, hold for L/M/H, that’s it). The more “kewl shiite” we overload “our” lights with, the more and more we lose the normies.
That attitude might be fine if you’re selling Lambos, but not when you’re selling Fords.
For the record, I like the different aux modes and some other niceties, but just as you say, I want different versions of lights, even made years apart, to just work the same and predictably out of the box, so that I don’t need to have to go changing 30 things before I get it to where I want it. (And possibly redo everything if I have to factory-reset it.)
Just as a quick aside, my car has the option that’s turned off by default to tilt the side-mirrors down when shifted into reverse. It’s great when backing into spots in a parking pot, to easily center the car between the lines, but isn’t as useful when parallel parking. I don’t need side mirrors when parallel parking, so have no problem with the feature turned on, as I did. But someone who isn’t familiar with that feature? Imagine trying to parallel park, and the mirrors shift down when put into reverse! Then imagine telling those people complaining about it to “RTFM!!” in response for their asking! But even just telling people that to disable it, they have to go into the DIC, navigate through the menu options a few levels deep, then turn it off.
it’s a great great feature if you want it, but they did the smart thing to NOT turn it on by default, even to “show it off”.
That… restraint… is much appreciated, even though I like that feature and prefer to have it turned on.
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Thanks Jon. I would not have known that’s what my Firefly E07X is doing but for this thread. Sorry I haven’t followed thread from beginning, but it seems this is only for newer lights with latest Anduril 2 version? My Wurkkos TS30S Pro has RGB button light but doesn’t seem to have second flash option to turn it on.
Second unrelated question: my Firefly E07X brightness step response is ultra quick. Meaning when I click and hold from “light on”, it goes from brightness level 1 to level 2 extremely quickly and if I don’t pay attention it will have jumped to 4, 5 before I let go of the hold. I look in the manual but couldn’t see step timing as an option. Is there one that I’m missing? TIA
One more question for you (or anyone) pls:
My Firefly E07X bleeps 3 times (not two) for battery voltage: as in 3 then 6 then 5 bleeps, 3.65v?
I measured 3.63 with volt meter. Is it something new also, voltage reading to 3 digits/third significant figure?
BTW, corresponding POVD is green.
I think should be disabled by default. And I find it in general the color codes are confusing. The color codes even the most inexperienced user will understand are Green, Yellow and Red. Could be:
Green - full (75-100%)
Yellow - I don’t know, say 30-75%
Red - 5-30%
Red flashing <5%
It should give average idea of battery charge state to anyone. If I need to know specific voltage, I can always get to that menu.
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Yeh, I just tell people the 3click thing.
“4 blinks is great, you can leave it alone. 2 blinks is bad, definitely recharge it. 3 blinks is good, and the higher the 2nd number of blinks, the better. If in the lower half, recharge it.”
Could flesh it out to be more verbose, but that’s the gist of it, and they get it.
When I’m feeling more verbosey, I make an analogy to a car’s gas tank. Anything in the 4th quarter, you got plenty of juice. Anything in the 2nd quarter, you definitely want to gas up. Anything in the3rd quarter, the higher the better, and you can gas up if you want to, and if in the lower part of it, you might want to gas up more.
That’s their lightbulb moment, and they “get” what the numbers mean.
Give people a rainbow vs red/yellow/green, and they’re all like “wtf?!?”. Purple??
Nope. Not at all intuitive. Memorise the rainbow scheme, and sure, but again, we’re thinking of normies, no? They think “green = good”, not “purple = good”.
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Purple is rarely seen in practical use.
- Purple: 4.1 - 4.4
- Blue: 3.9 - 4.1
- Blue + Green: 3.9 - 3.7
- Green: 3.7 - 3.5
- Yellow: 3.5 - 3.3
- Red: 3.3 - 2.9
I find the system quite intuitive. While in the green range, you still have roughly 50% runtime at moderate output levels.
Why stick to just green and red when we can use blue as well? Wouldn’t that be oversimplifying it unnecessarily? Sure, purple might feel a bit ambiguous, but realistically, how often do you see it unless your battery was just fully charged?
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Yes, if your Anduril 2 version is from after October 2023, the three-click voltage check also displays the second decimal place. Honestly, I feel this provides more information than necessary.
Edit:
In 2023-12-03 release, the resolution of last blinks is 0.025V. That is, the last set of blinks can only be 0, 2, 5, or 7.
“Upgraded battery voltage resolution from 0.1V steps to 0.025V steps. Battery check has an extra digit which can be 0, 2, 5, or 7 (for example, for 3.70V, 3.725V, .3.75V, and 3.775V).”
In the most recent release 2024-04-20, voltage resolution was increased to 0.02V.
See here for the full list of updates. anduril/ChangeLog.md at trunk · ToyKeeper/anduril · GitHub
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Green for 50% is akin to putting the ‘F’ on a car’s gas gauge at the halfway mark, and maybe ‘S’ for “SuperFull” at the actually-full mark.
Almost everything has green for go and red for stop, whether traffic lights, chargers (actual, like, Earth chargers that go from red/charging to green/full, and it’s what 99%+ of the planet expects), go-or-blow gauges, and so on. Green good, red bad. People can actually handle a yellow in the middle, too, without too much trauma.
It’s what people expect, and other than what normies see as flashlight eggheads who think that blue is “fuller than green” and purple is “fullest of them all”, most normal people are going to be confused by the color-coding that they’ve never ever ever seen before in their entire lives, used anywhere else. They might as well be using pH papers and a color-chart to match it up with.
This, and 2 decimal places for voltage?? Where in-use vs resting can significantly change the sensed battery voltage? Who thinks up these things?
Dunno, but the more crap that gets throw into the OS which caters to Flashlight Enthusiasts™ but is basically a big FU to normies who buy 99% of these lights, the more Ivory Tower and less mainstream these lights become.
And then mfrs wonder why this Super Great Next Generation Flashlight they collaborated with The Flashlight Community™ to design, ends up a flop when it hits the market.
Drills, holes.
Most people would be happy with 4 LEDs showing 25/50/75/100 charge percentage, and we’re giving them a pH chart or 6 significant digits of readout. For a single indicator, I like green/red/blinkyred, but hey, that’s just me, evidently.
Anyone ever watch Mr Ballen videos? He might read something like “…and then Paul walked about a mile to the cabin”, and a “subtitle” pops up with
1 mile = 1.60934 km
because we obviously neeeeeeed that much precision.
That’s about as silly as all this voltage stuff sounds.
Oh, whatever. Youse do what youse want to do.
Zathras warn, but no, no one listen to poor Zathras, no.
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Well thats interesting. Setting ceiling lower changes the range the rest choose from?
Ie ceiling of 150 the 40 is 4/15ths of the total of 150 .
But ceiling of 110, 40 is 4/11ths of that…
I would expect it to still be 4/15th of 150, just cant get past 110…
Would make a lot more sense if 40 is alway 4/15ths, even if the cap is at anything above that.
No wonder I have issues setting it up with same spacing of levels, but different if I move the ceiling.
Thank you for the (as always) helpful post. Agreed - a little TMI.
For a moment the third bleep series made me think extraterrestrial beings from Three Body Problem was trying to contact me.
Someone (@Oli ?) brought up the good point of how battery voltage needs time to recover right after turning off. The post made me check my EO7X, which has 7 leds draining large current at Turbo. Interesting to see this recovery taking place: it goes green, blue, blue, purple.
Thanks and agreed. In my case I don’t care as much about the specific numbers, but group them into 4 groups: Bluish group (do nothing) then Green, Yellow, Red (do something, do something NOW, drop dead). 4 big groups is much easier to remember and the function is fun, but how useful only time will tell.
So far I like it in actual use because for my use case it doesn’t bother me and is there when I’m interested . BTW, I do see purple with E07X.
Good thread. I am learning more about Anduril, not just POVD. 
Normally, yes. However I recently got a D4K with the Lume X1 driver and SFT25’s, I saw purple on that thing for over a week. One thing that I think helps is that the SFT25’s are so bright I’ve set my memorised level as 3/7 instead of 4/7. I’ve confirmed the battery voltage with a DMM too, it just seems to be really efficient.
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Interesting. I do see purple regularly and my Firefly AFAIK has the Lume driver also.
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Never mind. I think the speed of change is the same as my Anduril D4V2 and perhaps I was just so used to Convoy’s slower speed.
Is it time to finally recognize Andurilitis™ as a formal condition?
The photonotic disease has also appeared to make a jump from flashlights to its human hosts.
The late Leonard H. McCoy, former emeritus head of the FDA (Flashlight Disease Administration) might characterize these developments as warning signs of impending madness. “I’m a doctor, not an engineer!” as he was fond of saying.
Well, neither are the vast majority of flashlight users, and the mere suggestion that the curtain call blinky light show is in any way appropriate for that audience, or Simple Mode, is sheer madness. Or has the term “simple” taken on a new meaning in this crazy world?
The fact that a majority of advanced users with ACE certs (Anduril Certified Engineer) object to the feature being enabled by default, even in Advanced Mode, speaks volumes. It should not be an issue of discoverability, either, since any self-respecting, self-appointed ACE should already know the Spaghetti Chart™ like the back of their hand, rendering it a non-issue, no? And isn’t there a continuing education requirement for ACE holders anyway?
I’m generally one who prefers gauges over idiot warning lights, but I don’t think I could be bothered to memorize the Skittles Rainbow, and know what it means in terms of cell voltage, especially when it has long been three-clicks away…with precise decimal precision. Or is moar is better? Got pretty little aux lights so we may as well use them, in any way possible?
Superfluous UI is not good UI, and not making it a default doesn’t mean that it won’t be available for those who do want it.
All that said, no disrespect to TK, who has created an amazing piece of software, while having to work within the constraints of a one-button/one-response interface, and being able to cram some complex options into such devices, extending their utility.
But a UX is plainly bad, when users who purportedly know, and should be prepared for complex interactions are surprised, and perplexed by the behavior of a new feature, made worse by having it unexpectedly thrust upon them.
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I’d actually be fine with “not red” - good, red - bad or green - good, “not green” - bad and i suspect most people would be.
It has to be simple though. ~4 possible states are sufficient and allow understanding approximate charge state at a glance, without spending half a minute counting blinks or trying to decode where specific color is in the rainbow, especially with far from perfect mixing of colors most AUX have.
Similarly to how 2 decimal places for voltage are entirely pointless. Not needed to understand charge state and if i wanted that precision i’d just pull the cell and use a multimeter, it’ll be faster than counting blinks anyway…
If anything for me different style of batt check where 1 blink would represent 25% would be much more useful than voltage readout because again, if i wanted precise voltage i’d just measure it.
Each time i have to do something with Anduril i wonder… was such implementation a mistake? It sure is an interesting challenge, but i’ve used devices like soldering irons with tiny screen and two buttons (pinecil, for example) and it makes interacting with settings infinitely better, because you can actually see what current settings are, not just blindly change them and no weird combinations of clicks are required. That UI is actually intuitive enough to be used without reading the manual at all. Perhaps something like this would have been a better option than what we ended up with…
A simple voltage readout on such screen would be way, way more intuitive than blinks or colors too…
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The problem with andy is that there are probably 30 people at any given time howling for some New Feature that will revolutionise the flashlight world. And to (try to) make all those people happy, those features at some time get thrown in.
Imagine someone wanting to make tomato sauce for pasta, pizza, whatever. Someone likes it “bright and fresh” and appreciates lots of tang. Someone else likes a sweeter sauce and would want to add sugar. Someone else wants to amp up the tomatoey goodness and wants to add tomato paste to it. Someone else likes it saltier. Someone else spicier. But now someone wants a more “pure” sauce without all the crap added to it. That gets shouted over by someone who wants to add onions and green peppers to veg it up. Only veggies? No, it should be a meat sauce. Etc., etc., etc.
Take everyone’s advice at once, and it’ll probably taste like shiite.
Or try to build an economy car with good towing capability and lots of luxury items that handles like a sports car yet can go off-roading and…
That’s what we got now. Just sayin’…
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Despite some harsh criticism, I genuinely appreciate how Anduril has evolved over the years. My first experience with Anduril was with the FW3A, and I have no desire to return to that version. If reprogramming the firmware on the FW3A (or any other Anduril flashlight) had been easier, I would have done it in a heartbeat. While the old version of Anduril is no longer pleasant to use, it serves as a constant reminder of just how much better the current version is.
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