Yes, your math and conclusions are correct. You are looking at many years to drain the cells at the current parasitic drain level. This also means many years to kill the cells, in which case if you leave the cells in the light for 4-5 years+ without checking on it, I can’t say that is unreasonable considering most e-switch lights out there will kill the cells faster then that and also do not have LVP.
Narsil does indeed have LVP, pretty sure it is using basically the same setup an anduril, they share a lot of code last I checked.
So what I’m getting from this is that the flashlight has LVP and will cease operation when a preset voltage is hit. However, this does nothing to stop the parasitic drain from the carrier which will continue to drain the batteries past the LVP voltage floor. But the parasitic drain is so small that this should only be a problem if you run the flashlight until LVP kicks in and then leave the batteries in the light uncharged for a LONG time. Plus, it’s ill-advised to run a light till LVP kicks in and then not charge the batteries because self-discharge will eventually bring the batteries below their voltage floor anyway.
P.S. They still sell this for $150 anywhere? By the time I finally made up my mind I missed all the sales haha
The brass positive posts have sharp edges, and when pulling out the first battery my fingers were not able to pull it all the way out, so the edge of the battery snagged on the brass post.
The brass post sliced into the wrapper over the top edge of the battery and shorted the + and - terminals through the battery I was pulling out. The wrapper burned and smoke started immediately. (The other two batteries were shorted thanks to the battery I was taking out)
I’m a little nervous about this battery carrier now…
I am using samsung 40T cells, and they do seem to not want to come out, the post snags on the battery wrapper around the + terminal.
Thanks for the heads-up, I will be more careful now with the carrier, and may sand off the sharp edges. Btw, what I do with all my batteries nowadays is adding an extra wrapper so that they handle moving them around a bit better, with the extra advantage that I can colourcode/mark matched batteries for multibattery flashlights.
That is odd, the FET’s are supposed to prevent this situation in the carrier. I am guessing that the FET has some sort of cap that caused it to stay on for a moment after the + end of the battery lost contact and that allowed it to short once the case made contact. An edge case to be sure but still concerning.
This is why I prefer mechanical polarity protection options, they are not as elegant but they just work (or if they don’t it is obvious that they won’t).
Ok, that explains it. Yes, the stock charging board has protection against this type of thing built into the board. Part of why it has a higher then normal parasitic drain. You can technically put the cells in backwards and it will not short although for obio9us reasons it is not recommended.
My order from Bangood was automatically cancelled today, which is 45 days after I placed it. Bangood cancelled it because they have not shipped it yet. I didn’t even have the option to prevent it from auto cancelling, and the flashlight is listed as out of stock on Bangood and everywhere else that I’m aware of. I wonder if they are going to make more of them?
How would I know if I have the new version of the light? Mine was purchased October 1 from NealsGadgets, and today I discovered that the light killed 2 of my 3 Vapcell 5000mAH batteries despite the light being in mechanical lockout (to disable the battery LED and always on LED) - as apparently it was the cell carrier’s built in parasitic drain that caused this.
So this means, within a 6 month span, 2 fully charged batteries were drained completely (they were at 1% and 4% according to my Vapcell S4+ charger), while the other was at about 80%
Hopefully the batteries weren’t damaged from this, but does anyone know whether I can tell if my flashlight is the newer variant with better parasitic drain, and if so, is there a way for me to purchase a variant of the cell carrier without the parasitic drain issue? (even if this means without usb charging)
It’s hard to say, but if you bought it this late you probably got the revised version. It shouldn’t have drained fully batteries on 6 months though. The only way to check is to do the parasitic draw test. Mechanically locking out the light does not work. The parasitic drain is in the cell carrier and can’t be isolated. You need to remove the batteries if storing it for a long time.
Yeah, I only realized after they were drained that that wasn’t sufficient - I was aware of the led being always on so I thought I would prevent parasitic drain through mechanical lockout, and only discovered today that the cell carrier itself has parasitic drain.
Other people were saying that the flashlight should’ve been updated to where it would take 1.5-3 years to fully drain, but this seems to not be the case? I am going to run a capacity test on my S4+ charger in hopes the batteries are still fine, but needless to say, I am quite annoyed as these batteries were not cheap given they were the exotic ones with both high drain and high capacity.
Anybody know where I can perhaps buy a spare / updated cell carrier / buy a modded one without USB charging?
You can modify the carrier to remove all the components and charging on it, this will eliminate the parasitic drain. Wish they had listened to me and left the USB charging out of it, it always seems to have some kind of issue.
Far as where to get a carrier with the parts removed, I suppose I could do it for a fee and I am sure others can as well if you can not solder.
Is WildTrail still a going concern? They seem to have pulled out of Amazon…no products and can’t even find them in an out-of-stock search, but old links still bring up the pages. I see only 11 products listed in their ali store, not too many of the WT3M and some WT1M. I hope they aren’t on the slide to disappearing from the market.
Last I heard amazon was not working out for a lot of the china suppliers, the rampant return abuse just kills it for them. Some of them just send the returns to me since they are useless to them after being returned (which I love BTW, anyone else wants to send me the returns, I can pull them apart and tell you what went wrong if it did and then keep the leftoovers lol).
I got one the other day that claimed to of only been minorly used and within the 30 day window. It is more beat up and in worse shape then my EDC of the last ~6 years!
Also last I heard from wildtrail the supply disruption was still having massive ripple effects for production. Getting the components to build lights is very hard and getting more and more expensive along with general manpower lacking in all areas.
Basically it is hard for everyone right now and the smaller companies feel it first.
Ok, well that…good…I guess. I wondered if supply chain stuff was the cause. Except for that five-hole retaining ring thing, I really like their lights and attitude and hope they stick around.
Wondered about the amazon thing as well….and worried a little when I heard that Simon was opening up a store there because it’s such a learning curve and it seems that sellers can get hosed in so many ways (abusive consumers near the top of the list, but many other avenues, too). It’s nice having the amazon option for sure, though.
That’s interesting about the returns! Lucky you. Warranty and returns are sometimes really educational. I used to enjoy that (with some products anyway), sure learned a lot.