Lets put in an OLED/touchscreen menu for this function
Yes, I have a D4 and D4v2, both sst20 5000K.I can’t see green color with both.They also have exactly the same tint
If you are considering the SST20,obviously you aren’t worried about losing a bit of output. If you were,I would get the XPL Hi. It will have uniform tint at all power levels,even though it may be more floody than the SST20.
However,if you are concerned more about the tint, I would get the higher CRI st20 4000 K. I have a D4vs2 with that emitter. If there is green in the tint at lower power levels, I don’t see it. Yet I do appreciate the better color rendition that the SST20 4000 K provides.
However, you asked about the SST20 5000k and whether it is green at all. I can’t answer that, but it won’t offer the higher CRI of its 4000k sibling. So even if 5000 may be a bit less warm in tint, you lose out some with color rendition. But either sst20 emitter should be a bit more throwy than the XPL Hi.
Actually it is her fault. I can understand that some people want to support TK and this is great and all, but not acknowledging her mistakes is plainly wrong. In small projects developed by one person it is developer’s responsibility to test if all pieces of code work as they are intended to. And I doubt that turning “muggle mode” into “suicide mode” was TK’s intention.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to start a rant here and I am fine with flashing new firmware to my flashlight, I am fine with this bug(people make mistakes, it’s normal) and I genuinely respect TK for her contribution. But I can’t stand people saying stuff like “it’s nearly impossible to produce bugfree software because you can’t test everything”. This is simply not true. First of all, whether the software will have bugs or not mostly depends on developer skills not the amount of testing that it is going through. Extensive testing may help sometimes though. And I don’t want to offend anybody, especially TK, but IMHO this “muggle bug” happened not because of the lack of testing but because of the lack of proper code planning. Second, Microsoft, Adobe and other IT giants have bugs in their products not because they can’t create something highly optimized and free of bugs but because their current production strategy is the most profitable for them. That’s just how the market works, your goal is not to make the best product available your goal is to minimize production costs and make a product that will generate good sales and revenues. I also find it inappropriate to compare Anduril and most of Microsoft’s, Apple’s, etc products, because the difference in complexity is too vast. Third, I can’t agree that switching a flashlight into muggle mode falls into category of doing “something objectively dumb” and that the fact that D4v2 actively tries to commit suicide in muggle mode has anything to do with being responsible for your own ignorance.
Just throwing this in here:
According to Steve McConnell’s book, Code Complete: “Industry Average: about 15 – 50 errors per 1000 lines of delivered code.” This is known as the defects per KLOC (1000 lines of code).
He goes on to say that “Microsoft Applications: about 10 – 20 defects per 1000 lines of code during in-house testing, and 0.5 defect per KLOC in production.”
It is possible to achieve zero defects but it is also costly. NASA was able to achieve zero defects for the Space Shuttle Software, but at a cost of thousands of dollars per line of code. If people will die because there are bugs in the software then that kind of cost makes sense. Most projects simply cannot afford the same level of testing as NASA.
=> Bug free software is basically not possible under most circumstances.
Perhaps “objectively dumb” is a little strong, but I think many here would agree that leaving an e-switch light unattended while the battery is installed and the circuit is closed is not generally advisable. I haven’t had a problem with any of my e-switch lights so far, but I also don’t leave them sitting around not physically locked out. Apart from the fact that a tiny (and cheap) little mcu is basically the only thing keeping the light from spewing lumens like a different kind of firehose, you also have the possibility of children, pets, or random hooligans activating the light without understanding the potential consequences. I lock up my guns, my sharp tools, and my vehicles for similar reasons. A flashlight should be less dangerous than say a firearm or a chainsaw, but I believe that all liion based equipment has some inherent danger associated with it. Someone with a D4V2 that suffers from the bug would catch this behavior the first time it happened if they didn’t leave it unattended without physically breaking the circuit.
The only light of this type I have that isn’t locked out physically is the one in my pocket. It is locked out via software, and on the off chance it decides to turn on spontaneously, I should be able to feel the heat and remedy the situation before it becomes a real issue.
This may not be to everyone’s liking, and I understand that “AUX is pretty” so a lot of us want to leave the things on or otherwise ready to go. The above is my personal approach to responsibility, and it has served me well so far.
I can’t speak to TK’s “code planning” as I know nothing on that subject. I think we could all benefit from greater organization and improved skills though, and because TK is human, we can’t expect perfection from her 100% of the time (even if she gets close most of the time). My experience has been very good using Anduril thus far, and I think we’re all pretty lucky she happens to like flashlights enough to spend her time here. Her skills in this area are much stronger than mine. I believe that Anduril is open-source, and if you were inclined you could likely make a difference for the good of the community by participating in its development.
As far as perfect software goes, I would like to see an example. I’ve never personally seen perfect software, and I’ve touched lots of different software in my career/hobbies. I don’t believe it exists. I have seen some pretty good software though, and I’d put Anduril on that list.
Keep in mind that Hank wanted to take the aux lights further, going multi-color. The changes requested needed more space which meant a totally new MCU that had not previously been tested for these drivers. There is a whole lot of new going on here and time restraints were put on the one single person writing, proving out and testing all this new code. By definition it’s virtually a given there were going to be issues, not only due to the new but also the quick AND the language barriers. Astonishing really that it (the bug) was as deeply buried as it was.
Fault goes back to who made the requests for all the changes and that they didn’t provide ample team and time for provenance. Nonetheless, it is being dealt with in as swift and sure a manner possible. I wish VW would have asked ME how I wanted to handle the code error in the ECU of my Turbo Diesel…
Did you have one of those where they cheated the emissions tests?
Emissions tests are just another scam.
(legal scam)
Long shot but does anyone in the US want to do an even trade?
My gold D4v2 SST-20 4000K for your black any emitter D4v2. Prefer someone also ordered an 18350 tube and bonus if you have 2 tail caps.
The firmware on my light is already fixed.
Are people removing the FW3A battery?
Well, the D4 suicide bug is potentially life-threatening, if it happens to set fire to your room while you’re asleep. But, yeah, there’s no way a small company could afford zero-defect software, unless the code is very simple.
I completely disagree with that. It’s completely reasonable to leave a light off with a battery installed in it. It’s probably what 99.9% of people do. I’m not going to remove a battery or mechanically lock-out a light every time I’m not using it. It’s an unreasonable demand on the user. I expect a light that I turn off, to remain off until I turn it back on. 100% of the time. Bugs are understandable, but bugs in the most basic functionality are unacceptable. I think Hank and TK and others in the project agree with that, based on their quick effort to produce a resolution.
No light should be a serious safety hazard when turned off. Is it possible? Sure. But so is getting hit by lightning. People die when they go outside, but it’s unreasonable to tell people to stay indoors their whole life. The safety risk with an “off” flashlight should be similarly small.
When the firmware state of the light is “off”, the code should be structured so there’s no way for it to get out of that state unless a button is pressed. I presume the colored-lights made that tricky, but IMO that feature should have been denied if it complicated the code in such a way that “off” wasn’t persistent.
I think Hank and TK are doing all they can reasonably be expected to do, to address this problem.
What isn’t an appropriate response is to tell people to always remove the battery from their light when not in use. People are not going to do that. It’s like telling teenagers that abstinence is the only good birth control, and then being shocked when teen mom shows up.
Toykeeper acknowledged the mistake, fixed the code very promptly, and continues to take and respond to feedback about Anduril. I hope that fact is not getting overlooked in the discussion.
Separately, I wonder if Atmel has documented anywhere that their chip provides bad temperature data under some conditions. Toykeeper and Hank are not the only potential links in the chain of development where risks like this could be addressed.
Agreed in general principle, but this calls to mind the 3 Features engineering paradigm. The most common version is: “We can make the product better, faster, and cheaper. Please pick which two you want, because it is impossible to do all three simultaneously.”
In this case, it’s, “We can make the firmware more sophisticated, more reliable, and lower cost by leveraging code developed as a hobby/community contribution in place of most of the normal paid developer time.”
This is a legitimate concern, although hardly unique. The D4 is known to be able to burn paper under good conditions, although I’ve not seen anyone start a self-sustaining fire with one.
Other examples I’d actually consider more serious, in part because they involve products from companies with greater resources to get things right the first time: I had a conversation with someone last week whose microwave caught fire (the microwave itself, not the food in it), although fortunately it went out when they shut it off. I also know a family whose kid actually did burn their house down accidentally with their toaster (granted, presumably user error in this case).
I replaced the outlets in my house that are UL listed, but the cheap back-stab connectors Leviton designed them with have minimal contact area which, combined with oxidation over time, causes increased resistance. Some of them were so badly overheated that the charred plastic housing fell apart when I was removing them. My first clue of the problem was when a space heater had its plug get hot enough the prongs shifted in the softened hot plastic when I unplugged it.
The space heater itself actually got discarded after low mode started drawing the same amount of power as high - my guess is the transistor that PWM’d the heater element failed on.
The worst example I’ve dealt with personally is the Takata airbags - they failed to test those in a decade of humid climates before selling tens of millions of them, and even the first replacement when the problem was discovered was still bad, so one of the airbags in my Honda was actually replaced twice.
The scam is post-sales emissions tests, where the car owner is charged a fee to “test” the vehicle. For cars built after OBDII became standard, which is nearly everything on the road today, the “test” basically amounts to asking the engine controller if it has turned the “check engine” light on.
In my state, they actually have us drive our cars onto a dynamometer, before plugging into the OBDII port, getting a printout confirming the lack of codes, and then driving off again, $15 poorer, without ever engaging the dyno or hooking up the sniffer equipment.
The tests f0xx was referring to are the tests manufacturers have to submit to in order to verify they are complying with the law. Those aren’t a scam. They are part of the enforcement process for the relevant laws.
Yes, we sold back our 2015 Sportwagen with Turbo Diesel and DSG transmission, bought a Camry. Still miss the VW almost daily even after 2 1/2 yrs. First VW either of us ever had, quite possibly also the last… Ours ran very clean, had the AdBlue system, couldn’t ever understand why our new clean running car was even involved. It is what it is…
Got caught in the middle for a couple three months and was paying for both cars, sold off a LOT of flashlights…
Indeed.
Here is a link for those who care:
I had a buddy who had one of them, I think they ended up buying his back and he drives a Toyota now.
Some like it hot and some sweat when the heat is on…
Lol… Just saw this after posting the comment above. Toyota is good stuff most of the time. You aren’t the friend I’m talking about are you? (his name isn’t Dale… just having a laugh.)