So cool, which light has the most durable anodization in from your experiences?
Probably black and green or blue the weakest.
I was recently working at a SEARS being liquidated and had my cyan D4 all over the place, most recently lighting up a darkened 40’ trailer while I loaded rugs on pallets, along with rolled up ones. I used it as a candle, so I could read the labels and stack them like a wood pile.
It got knocked over a couple/few times and during the two months, I was on my stomach strapping pallets and lugging rugs around wearing denim blue jeans. Except for some oils from my hands, dirtying up things, the cyan finish has been fine.
I even mis-reinstalled my pocket clip and it didn’t mar the finish.
Now, if you’re out on the front lawn eating paint chips and scraping it on the driveway, all bets are off.
Chris
Is the green D4 discontinued,?
MTN no longer lists it.
Hanks site, International Outdoor only lists the grey and black D4 now.
What we need is the same level of development in Peltier effect semiconductors as we’ve seen in LED emitters. A hybrid Peltier effect/LED would be really cool! (small pun there)
I used to use them to cool CPUs. They worked ok, but they are no more efficient today, than 10 years ago. I would not begrudge adding more power for benefit of the light maintaining a comfy temp on turbo. Sort of like field weakening in a DC motor. Uses more power, but provides higher RPM.
I just love my D4. Never before have so many owed so much buespottedness to so few. Everybody seems compelled to to point the cute tiny little thing at their face and push the on button. lol It never gets old.
Ever handed a BLF-A6 to a muggle, with no explanations or warnings?
lol
I love the A6 so much, I bought a bunch for friends. I don’t know if they ever learned how to fully operate them, or whether my threats of reclaiming them, and providing them a bic lighter in exchange dissuaded them from asking me to “stop by and fix the flashlight so its like it was before”. Now, if there are any more flashlight visit, it usually is a cracked lens, and I don’t mind replacing those.
A couple of my friends stopped using the A6, which made me feel like the flashlight Nazi I am, so I provided them SII’s and all are happy. Muggle mode might work for some, but I’m afraid that my friends will find a way to escape muggle mode almost intuitively, but never get it back to what they want.
Usually what happens with the A6:
- Click.
- “Why isn’t it doing anything?”
- Click.
- point at face
- Click.
- scream
Bwahahaha Exactly. Thankfully, most of my friends don’t own firearms. Oh well. at the end of the day, they are my friends though. I made them myself.
I’m much calmer these days, not like when I would carry spare optical mice, to replace the lumpy, grotty ball mice that they expected me to use to make their computer work again, and which I would unplug, put into a plastic bag and stomp.
I’ve mellowed I guess.
I see you’ve met my father.
Does anybody here know where i can get a new switch for my d4 at? I have emailed Hank 2 times and gotten no response.
I just got 2 from Mtn, delivered Saturday. The Nichia and S4 2B. Both are awesome but I like the warmer Nichia. I’ve burned several pieces of paper 
Hi! I got this torch a few days ago in grey with the XPL Hi, a small tube and 18350 batteries in addition to what comes standard. I’m literally blown away, but what gives me satisfaction on top of that is the face my friends make when they see it… The reason I signed-up today on the forum is, to let everybody know how happy I am that such exists, (I never knew about this community until very recently) but also to let you know what would make this torch the best ever in my usage scenario. Please don’t get me wrong, I totally love it, but even a Ferrari can be custom improved. Because the very small 18350 at 700mAh, the need for opening the tail-cap (or front-end, for the same matter) is to frequent in my opinion. A USB charging port would remove that necessity, make it more flexible (car charging, or any other on the go source), without the need of carrying a lot of spares or a charger. Secondly, I miss for some tasks a magnetic tail-cap. In my scenarios these two additions would make the D4 the only torch to have… Well, I also got two Q8s, but that’s another universe…
Thank you guys for the amazing job!
There are higher capacity 18350’s, 1100mAh. Or you could mod it :innocent:
Welcome to BLF! You’re not going to hurt our feelings talking about how things could be improved/upgraded. That’s how a lot of the BLF specials like the Q8 got started! We’re fairly laid back around here, although we’re humans and still get grumpy sometimes. :smiling_imp: Feel free to offer your suggestions (respectfully, of course 
) on lights. I hope you stick around to see all the benefits of being part of this community!
Thank you, you are very kind. Like I said, mostly for the 700mAh, it would make a lot of sense to include a USB charging port; it would charge in less than an hour… For some different tasks it would be nice to be able to get as an accessory a tail-cap with a magnet. I understand that some people don’t like their things (inside a pocket) to hold to the magnet, but it’s great to have it handy if needed… So, maybe as an optional???
My buddy and I are working on a platform which integrates “smart ” capabilities practically to any torch… It will work in conjunction with an app and you will be able to do the entire set-up on your app and send it over to the torch. You will also be able to have different scenarios on hand and fast change them, as well as the entire information about the status, like used mAh, remaining mAh, brightness and so much more. He is reluctant to give it away as simply as that… I have no problem sharing, but I can’t do it without his approval…
You all have a good one!
In general, the optimal charging rate for li-ion batteries is about 0.5C to 1.0C, where C is the capacity. This means batteries ideally take about two hours to charge regardless of how much energy they hold. If it takes less than an hour, it’s most likely charging too fast.
The optimal rate varies depending on several factors, but if a cell is enclosed and insulated like it is inside most flashlights, the rate should be a bit lower so it won’t overheat. I’d be wary of a flashlight which charged its cell in less than an hour.
The FLEX Asgard did that. It wasn’t very successful. A lot of that had nothing to do with the programming features, but part was because people don’t really care much about programming their flashlights from a phone.
https://www.fasttech.com/products/0/10004469/1342000-flex-asgard-1052-lumen-programmable-cree-xm-l2
The HexBright flashlight did too, but over USB instead of bluetooth. It was pretty successful, but as far as I’m aware it was only a one-off project. Also pretty pricey for what it was, and not great for actual flashlight purposes. Could be nice if the idea was used in a better light.
I made a proof-of-concept last year for configuring or maybe even reflashing a flashlight entirely by blinking binary code at it from a computer screen, but I haven’t done much with it. The data transfer speed is incredibly slow, and it has only limited use cases. It’ll be more feasible with a MCU big enough to fit a bootloader, so the bootloader can handle reflashing the OS, but the chip I was using was nowhere near capable enough for that. But I’ll probably still flesh out the idea more eventually.
The most widely-used approach I’m aware of is to make the light’s MCU easy to reach and clip onto, or somehow expose the pins needed to reflash it, and then use common cheap programming tools from a computer over USB. At least, that’s how most stuff at BLF works. The BLF Q8 is particularly easy to reflash, since it doesn’t require any soldering.
That sounds great. The Foursevens Smart series had a similar feature with bluetooth, but they didn’t really take advantage of it (it was not possible to freely reprogram modes for example). And the light itself was quite complicated but lackluster and had hardly any instructions on the UI.
There are different ways to do it… I encourage you to check out the resources we have in a radius of 10 miles around our zip (98008) and you will easily understand… As far as ” people don’t really care much about programming their flashlights from a phone”, allow me to tell you that “people” are thrilled to do so… At least in our extended IT community of geeks who have different thinking patterns. As far as fast charging goes, the worst thing which can happen, is shortening the life of a $5 battery from 1000 cycles to let’s say 400-500… No big deal. In any case, thanks for your input.
CRX,
Thank you; 400mAh on top of the Efest 700 is a big deal. Just got a pair