Would you like a Moon mode (1-8lm) in your Convoy S2+ ?

EyeballFryer · July 4, 2016, 7:58pm

Thanks. Another idea I had for the Convoy UI was to replace the SOS mode with a slower signaling strobe or signaling beacon. Unless you’re an adventurer going far away from civilization, SOS mode is pretty useless to be in a normal mode change cycle. Instead I would really hide it by requiring the user to cycle through their current mode group twice to activate SOS.

A signaling strobe or beacon is more useful than SOS when you want to get someone’s attention, but you don’t want to use the disorienting strobe which would be too fast and confusing for the person.

ToyKeeper · July 4, 2016, 8:00pm

A note for Woytas: It might be worth specifying what moon means.

In general, “moon” mode is used for anything from about 0.1 lm to 1.0 lm. “Firefly” mode is roughly 0.01 lm to 0.10 lm. A 10 lumen mode is generally just called “low”.

stephenk · July 4, 2016, 9:15pm

ToyKeeper:

FWIW, I tried to put a moon mode on one of the nanjg105d 8x7135 drivers Convoy uses. I found that the 7135 chips are really unusually slow to turn on, which made moon mode more unstable than usual with chunkier resolution than usual.

However, on most drivers I slow down the PWM pulses in moon mode to make it more stable. Like instead of 16 kHz I’ll run that mode at 8 kHz. In this case I had to go down to 1 kHz to make it stable, and the lowest I could get it was about 0.8 lumens.

Even the low mode, a 1% mode, needed to be slowed down (8 kHz) to make it work.

However, aside from that, it seems that a moon mode and a lower low are possible on the Convoy drivers.

I think the spacing looks pretty good at 0.1% / 1 / 10 / 35 / 100. Or at 1 / 20 / 100. Much better than the default 5 / 43 / 100.

I’m more of a fan of the mid modes for my purposes and would prefer 1/10/25/50/100. Always have to be different!

strongest2004 · July 5, 2016, 2:56am

I use my S2 as a night stand light. Moonlight mode of around 1 lumen would be nice.

Or you may want to order a stock S2+ with only 1 7135 chip. This hopefully will give you a 5% output low enough for your needs.

Yourrid · July 5, 2016, 2:01am

I voted yes only if we can still get max output on high. Like a FET+1 driver setup.

MtnDon · July 5, 2016, 2:17am

Yes, absolutely! I use ML a lot.

Woytas · July 5, 2016, 5:05am

Thank you for clarifying that. I’ve read somewhere on the forum (don’t remember where) that moonlight is between 1-8 lumens and stick to that. But I trust your opinion.

My personal preference for “moonlight” (or rather ultralow?) is somewhere between 1-5 lm. Firefly is far too low for me to be useful.

Martini · July 5, 2016, 5:23am

I like the idea of moon mood, but can’t recall ever using it since I put night lights in my hall and bathroom, so I’m voting no.