great suggestions! for reasons, decisions have been made to ship Anduril lights with 150/150 ceilings… I would rather see 100/150 ceiling, which I consider Sustainable.
I totally agree that an AA compatible driver would be a HUUUGE benefit, and imo, marketing to the AA users, will Increase Sales
Im promoting 3Amp Discharge Rate batteries, as a way to reduce the unsustainable output from the H10 battery that is most frequently recommended when a new user asks what cell to buy for their TS10.
My answer is buy the battery Wurkkos sells, NOT the H10… This is for newbies, who do not understand the limitations of Turbo.
I also promote the use of 100/150 ceiling, for similar reasons and concerns for newbies. I want them to understand that
otoh, I realize that there are people here, who are not newbies at all, and it is not my intention to deny them the option to use Turbo… Im just trying to educate the newbies, that ask what battery to buy, and ask why their light is getting dim, that Turbo is not a Sustainable Output.
@Wurkkos thanks for supporting the flashlight enthusiasts community with this new pocket rocket.
Suggestion - on the basis of the early adapter BLF experiance with high-discharge li-on battereis, perhaps Wurkkos would consider setting the factory default FW values to the lower levels being discussed above.
Enthusiasts who want to tweak the light for maximum can still make the deliberate choice to do so.
This is sort of like the decision by another company to ship their lights out with the Anduril in Simple UI mode. Keeps new user experience less intimidating.
Thank you for raising and discussing this point:
1: We have not tested the 10C power battery on the TS10, so at present I would recommend using the WURKKOS battery, which has brought a better experience
2: we will soon start testing 110/150, 120/150, 130/150 to see the maximum safe value it can finally support, the maximum output will be reduced a bit after adjustment.
3: if it needs to be compatible with AA batteries, then the structure of the TS10 will be different, it will be the same length as the SP10S, we will not consider it for the time being
Another way to handle the problem with the H10 is to ship all the lights with Anduril 2’s “Simple” UI mode activated by default. And cap the simple UI at a much lower level… perhaps 110 / 150.
Flashlight enthusiasts would still have the option of swapping the UI to “Advanced” mode on their own.
You could also include a card in the box advising users that the light ships in simple UI mode to protect the light. And that if Advanced UI mode is used, to not use the 10 amp batteries such as the Vapcell H10.
Or you could simply not inform users in the box that advanced mode is even available. Flashlight enthusiasts can find out about Advanced mode by checking enthusiast forums like this one, or perhaps going to your website and looking up info about the light.
Personally, I prefer this option to capping turbo output in all modes before shipping. If you set turbo mode to say 100 in both simple and advanced UIs before shipping, enthusiasts who like max power would be unable to activate it without special hardware to reflash the driver.
This, plus if I walk around the side of my house and a skunk surprises me being 10 feet away I want TURBO for a quick retreat…happened last summer…luckily was carrying my 4x18a
It is expected that the specific quantities and styles allocated by different platforms and stores will be decided and announced on 6.28th.
Then we will require all Amazon operations staff shpping to Amazon warehouse within 3 days.
I am the one who took the photo of the failed E21A in post #445. I can confirm that it failed because of a bad reflow. After I replaced it, it turboed just fine with a H10 using my custom firmware with reduced FET.
I have also used turbo with a H10 and stock emitters and they have been fine so far.
These LEDs are pretty unknown in the flashlight community. Maybe they can handle a lot of current, maybe they can’t. We don’t know. Only time and experimentation will tell.
For now, anybody who is worried should play it safe and avoid using high-discharge cells (like Vapcell H10).
Please let’s not ruin this light with a bigger, hamstrung driver.
It would be nice, but That driver was ruled out up front by vote that since it has to be a fair bit bigger due to the coils etc and the point of this light was tiny size. Since we can’t have our cake and eat it too, I’m ok with the lack of aa supoort so that we may have the shortest aa light on planet earth… Anyway,there’s lots of other lights out there for running aa’s.
Not that i prefer it, but I’m ok with a very brief flash of max turbo due to heating up quickly. I spend alot of time outside at night in the country and its nice have a super bright turbo available to be able to blast something further away with 1000+ lumens, identify it, then go back to a walking around level of 200 lumens.
what output level does your custom firmware reduced Turbo to? (iirc you said 65% on reddit, do you know if that is equivalent to a ceiling of 98/150?). And or do you know how many lumens your reduced Turbo is?
> I have also used turbo with a H10 and stock emitters and they have been fine so far.
is that also with custom firmware, with Turbo reduced to 98/150? or at Full 150/150?
I don’t have any means of measuring the output, but I was able to measure the current at the tail. My custom firmware reduced FET to 67% (I used the PWM levels from the Fireflies PL47-219B firmware, it is also a FET + 1 x 7135 driver), and with a fully charged H10 it drew ~5A at the start of turbo and increased slightly as the emitters got warm.
The stock emitters on turbo with the H10 was using firmware with unrestricted FET, and I measured over 7A at the start of turbo and went up to around 8A as the emitters got warm.
When I first noticed the reduced output on the LED in mine, I took off the head and looked at it (this was the first time I had ever opened the head). To my eyes the output appeared uniform, but just much dimmer than the other LEDs. It actually might have only been producing 10% of the light of the other leds.
When the light was off, the top of the LED looked completely pristine. It actually looked better than the other 2 leds which had specs of dirt stuck to them.
After I opened the head and reflowed the LED it was still dimmer. But now it appears to be only one side of the LED is lighting up. That side is at full brightness, but the other does not light up at all. Overall this was an improvement before the reflow from maybe 10% to 50% brightness, but it is obviously still not working right.
Looking into the bezel of my light now it looks like the LED in your picture in post 445, except without any visible burn marks on the led surface.
You also mentioned that in this and your next post that your TS10 failing was caused by a failed reflow. Meaning it worked fine before the reflow.
My conclusion and recommendation:
Previously I thought there had been two TS10s that had suffered possible LED damage due to use of Vapcell H10 battery. That seemed like strong evidence that the LEDs couldnt’ take it.
However, based on Zumlin’s post it now appears that my TS10 is the only light that has suffered a possible malfunction in this way.
A sample size of one may be too little evidence to conclude that the H10 is the problem. The problem my light had might not be too much current to the LED. Perhaps it was a bad factory reflow or defective LED.
Perhaps no changes should be made to the driver and the light left as-is. Or maybe just change future versions of the driver to default to “simple” mode with a lower output. The user can then swap to “Advanced” mode and take the risk if they want more output.
There are no reports of LED damage in the TS10 with the Wurkkos battery. Not even at 150/150 maximum. There is One report of LED damage from using H10 battery at 150/150 maximum.
some strategies to prevent possible damage from using a 10A battery at level 150/150
1. Use a 3A battery, like the one Wurkkos offers. :student:
2. Set Simple mode as default UI with ceiling of 100/150 :+1:
3. If one Must use a 10A battery, lower the ceiling by 67%, to 100/150, do not use 150/150 with a 10A battery, unless youre feeling lucky… :confounded:
4. change the mcpcb to allow the use of Nichia 519a :innocent:
Yeah, I did see that. Nice mods and work, by the way!
So to clarify, your stock emitters did not fail, it was the E21As that you flowed in for a mod, right? But Firelight here did have his stock emitter fail.
I wish Wurkkos had done a more fully thorough product testing before releasing this light to the public…like the TS21. I/we might have assumed that if they were releasing a Latticepower emitter with a FET driver, it would have been tested enough to show that it can handle the power fed to it with any of our available cells…else the driver would be changed to suit, as it seems they might be looking into now. If it’s really not suitable and people still want the turbo boost from a small cell/host, maybe just go with traditional robust emitters like the vast majority of lights use, right?
Comparing the Nichia we know that it isn’t capable of much current without special treatment (see previous threads from Clemence and Djozz and some others…a few years back…seems like 3A was pushing it to its edge). Not to knock any manufacturer but Latticepower (fka Latticebright) doesn’t have a great track record in this area compared to the majors, so it would be surprising if this emitter was capable of more than Nichia’s. But then again, I dunno…does this Latticepower use a ceramic base or is it the same plasticky material as the E21A?
Wurkkos has been doing a good job but these mistakes are disheartening……perhaps focused the wrong things and rushing products to market too fast. Overall I think the TS10 is a great little light, but maybe jumped the gun a bit. I don’t think it’s necessarily worthy of being an enthusiast’s light with these issues and the assembly choices that make modding and repairs difficult or destructive.
10A seemed like the most likely culprit. But lots of people have used the TS10 with 10A batteries and so far mine has had the only known failure in this manner.
Zumlin confirmed that his similar looking failure was actually caused by a failed reflow after a modding attempt. Mine is the only known sample that had an led fail before any modding was done. I’m not sure we should be generalizing to problems with 10A cells, based on a sample size of 1. Also, I’m not convinced Wurkkos should be making heavy mods to nerf this light based on only a single failure.
While 10A still seems like the most likely cause, it is also possible that mine failed due to a defective LED from the factory or some other cause. It should also be noted the the other 2 leds in my light continue to operate perfectly even on H10, showing that the leds in question can actually take high current. At least most of the time.
I agree…we just don’t know much of anything right now, certainly not enough to push suggestions or cautions. And it’s only been a couple weeks or less since anyone had theirs in hand. If we see a significant amount of failures in the emitters then there will be more to look at. Maybe Wurkkos would be kind enough to send some of these emitters to one of our members that does good tests (if they’re willing to spend the time testing). Right now we’re all just guinea pigs in two different ways with this new model.
Firelight, I hope Wurkkos takes care of you with a replacement or something….they seem to be great about that just like Sofirn.
