The making of the BLF UC4 charger: the start of a new venture, INTEREST LIST, UPDATE 7 (Well, ramping stopped :/ )

zoulas · 2024-02-09T17:19:09.816Z

Can the person who is leading this project give a status.

papundekli · 2024-02-09T20:37:34.121Z

I think many of us are waiting.

Ocelot · 2024-02-16T21:15:33.221Z

After reading the first post, the rich feature set of this mystery charger is a dream come true, but

The only status message is “on hold” and the interest list hasnt been updated since 2020. Almost 600 signups though, should be plenty to start production.

Im game for at least 2 but im afraid this great idea has become a dream deferred.

koef3 · 2024-02-16T21:36:30.683Z

Ocelot:

Im game for at least 2 but im afraid this great idea has become a dream deferred.

Pretty sure this project is dead.
BlueSwordM was last online a year ago.

mrbill · 2024-02-17T02:40:10.919Z

Maybe someone else can take over?

m03da · 2024-02-17T09:19:29.465Z

I don’t think there’s a public repo yet, nothing the community could pick up. This happens with open source projects sometimes, be it due to creator burnout, limited time and resources or other priorities in life taking over and it’s valid, we are owed nothing by the people who decided to donate their free time and resources in this way.

That said, when the WIP stuff is made available in a repository, the community can not only continue development should the original author stop being able to continue, but also support the author a perhaps prevent them from burning out. I hope @ebastler considers this with their amazing project. It would be sad to see another one go.

mrbill · 2024-02-17T09:57:08.467Z

Perhaps one of the manufacturers could pick up the feature wish list from here and come up with a product?

m03da · 2024-02-17T10:22:18.857Z

They might but the most prominent feature will likely be lost. The MC3000 already does everything but it’s closed, as is the case with the vast majority of commercial products on the market.

ebastler · 2024-02-17T11:59:17.840Z

Mine will be 100% open sourced. I’m already keeping it in a private git repo, as soon as I reach a point where j feel comfortable releasing it I will switch it to public. Probably when I order the first prototype batch.

I’m doing too much changes on random places and haven’t fully finalized the featureset yet, so I wanna keep it private for now.

m03da · 2024-02-17T12:00:15.650Z

Way to go!

zoulas · 2024-02-17T12:02:55.658Z

Do you have an eta.

ebastler · 2024-02-17T12:34:05.795Z

Not really as I’m pretty busy with university and work stuff. The charger is mostly my “it’s evening, I don’t know what to do but still have enough energy that I don’t just wanna Netflix” project.

I’d say I’m at 80-90% of the electronics, but I’ll probably do a lot of optimizing in the end, trying to shorten power paths, space components better, allow for better heatsinking etc.

Anything between 2 weeks and 2 months until I order protos I’d guess.

zoulas · 2024-02-17T13:57:45.396Z

Cool

gravelmonkey · 2024-02-18T09:48:33.617Z

All I want is a charger that has big tabs on the sliders to stop tearing up my cell wraps

SamSam · 2024-04-15T05:32:24.391Z

Am i able to put my name down for one?

Mandrake50 · 2024-04-15T23:11:10.884Z

I don’t see why not… but I think the chances of anyone getting one of these in the foreseeable future are quite low.
Though I am still hopeful.

opt · 2024-09-18T17:06:50.228Z

Heading for Good Hope… One for me too one day… ^.^

raccoon · 2024-09-18T17:22:43.084Z

Have a pleasant time at this friendly forum, opt!

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mortuus · 2025-04-17T11:57:00.129Z

is this never happening ?

ebastler · 2025-04-17T12:58:18.874Z

Focused on the S21Evo flashlight driver for now… I’ll Backport some of the hardware development from that one over to the charger, and most likely the software will be able to share a lot of code too.

It’s on hold for now until the S21Evo is ready and tested, however.