Knowing what I know, this is absolutely bonkers in my book… I would at least use an IR thermometer to keep an eye on its temperature and abort in case it got over 60C or so.
I’m very happy to say I never, not even once, turned mine on turbo: out of the box it went and I removed the insulation plastic and got straight into the click-sequence to turn off turbo and limit ceiling to 120.
Since I got my flashing kit, I configure my TS10 (and FC13) that way straight into the HEX, so not even a factory reset will allow it to go turbo (or ceiling >120).
LOL
And let’s not forget, that’s with Alu… Bra, Cop and Tit still TBD…
I think this is the other extreme, ie extreme underutilization – and there are times we can use over 200lm for short intervals.
My vote is for the happy medium: determining the safe&useful limit for each light and setting ceiling to it – and meanwhile keeping Turbo disabled.
agree, as long as the Operator uses the Thermal Sensors built into their Hand… LOL
rule of thumb, however bright we choose to use a light, if it feels Hot, its too bright.
Part of the problem is that floody multi emitter lights have lower Lux than focused hotspots from a reflector.
so floody lights require more Lumens to match the intensity of a focused hotspot. This is the rabbit hole that led marketting to give us 1400 (Unsustainable) lumen FWAAs and TS10s…
Unlike our cars, which we never drive at full throttle, there is no Speed Limit for flashlight Turbo… the result is consumers buy lights, run them at Turbo, and then post asking if it is normal that their light gets too hot to touch…
I totally agree with your strategy to eliminate Turbo from your Hex file builds…
Marketting is caught in a trap. If they reduce the Turbo output, consumers wont buy the light, because they have been trained by marketting, to choose the light with the most lumens… (misguided).
If marketting was to promote their lights based on Sustainable Output, we would not be talking about overheated lights.
For a safer firmware build, try modifying the PWM table for the DD FET. Like, cut all the values in half. Then turbo would be limited to only 50% power. Or whatever other divider you prefer.
Calculating a whole new ramp is an option too, but it’s more difficult. I had to manually tune the TS10 ramp quite a bit to make the low modes smooth.
Or, of course, just setting a lower ceiling level and setting the turbo style to none. That covers most needs. However, strobe modes would still reach full power. The ramp table method is a more complete solution.
Agree, and with a naked thumb so no gloves (except the ones that leave the fingertips uncovered).
That’s what I do even with my lumen-limited lights, and if I sense they getting warm, that’s already yellow alert for me. Haven’t happened to me yet, but if they get hot it’s turn-off time, unscrew the cap/head for mechanical lockout and swap it for my backup light until I can get home and check it adequately, because hot means something is seriously wrong (battery going to hell, or a short has developed somehow, or whatever) and nothing good will come of pushing it further.
Agreed. A way out of that trap would be for vendors to start de-emphasizing max lumens (slowly so as not to turn customers away) and start emphasizing sustained lumens instead, to cultivate the customers to the superiority of that last metric.
Thank you TK for chiming in! Disabling turbo and lowering ceiling to 120 has been working great for me so far, but with your incentive, I may start experimenting with the DD FET PWM table. I will post about it further in the Anduril 2 feature change suggestions topic.
Yeah, only the ramp mode has thermal regulation. (the mode it goes to with one click to turn the main LEDs on)
I started adding regulation to the strobe group modes once, years ago… but people didn’t like the idea of having a strobe throttle itself, because of some hypothetical life-or-death tactical situation where it could maybe be slightly less than ideal. So I didn’t add it, and never got back to it. And before long, there wasn’t any room left to add anything like that.
Probably should have done it anyway… because these lights aren’t really built for tactical purposes.
As of 2023-10, only the ramp mode has thermal regulation.
Since recent lights have a bunch of ROM free though, thermal regulation could be added to other modes at some point. The main reason it’s only in ramp mode is because of space limitations on attiny85 MCUs, but not many new products are using those any more.
I have no problem with lights that have ludicrous turbos that only last for a few seconds. It’ great for showing off to friends or for brief bursts of bright light. I use my lights like this all the time.
The problem with the TS10 is using it like that causes significant damage to the emitters, reducing the light’s maximum output by sometimes 50% or more.
To prevent this damage I recommend disabling turbo and setting max brightness to 120/150.
One is that “Hot” is subjective. Some consider the slightest perceptible rise above ambient to be a faulty light as they rush the ER complaining about fifth-degree burns before calling their lawyer for a liability lawsuit and launching a PSA campaign against the evils of high-powered electronics. Some have no issue with 45C as it takes fairly prolonged exposure to 118F (~47.7C) to burn the flesh of a healthy adult (though exposure time does drop pretty rapidly above that point) and even Li-ion batteries can safely endure those temperatures unless one wants to preserve their batteries as heirlooms to be passed down to their grandchildren.
The other kind of ties into the “heirloom Li-ions”; not everyone considers efficiency and lack of strain on items to be at least 47 of their top 3 priorities with sustainably output being the other 18. That diversity in market preference should be accommodated instead of having things gentrified to uniformity due to the uber-conservatism of some. Not everyone thinks mayonnaise is spicy, and the fact that some people do think it is does not mean that we need to stop making hot sauce.
I think that they should be marketed on both. Let people decide for themselves whether they want their light for a good time or a long time. Just be a little more upfront about thermal things like rampdown and why the light has thermal regulation. Yeah, it’s a sad state of affairs that many see, “As the temperature rises, TS10 is programmed to automatically step down and step up the brightness to prevent overheating.”, and cannot deduce that the light does heat up, but c’est la vie.
While I think sustained lumens should be a more prominent marketing point, I feel it impossible to define “superiority” here in a completely objective way, devoid of any and all personal opinion.
Don’t get me wrong, I like sustained lumens. That’s why I have lights with more thermal mass that have batteries with 3-5 times the mAh. And I think that marketing on that point would really boost TS22 sales. Sustained lumens are not why I have my TS10’s though.
Maybe I don’t’ Turbo often enough to have encountered that yet, or maybe I’ve just been lucky. What’s the amperage at 120/150 and Turbo, with both stock cells and an H10?
I have several TS10s. Each has spent some time in Turbo with the stock battery. None have noticeable damage to emitters. I’ve even reflowed emitters to get a mix of CCTs with no damage from using turbo, and those emitters are not easy to work with!
I do have a TS25 with 1 dim emitter. That light is supposed to be able to handle turbo, so probably a reflow issue.
If I do damage an emitter, I’ll replace it. I like the ability of the TS10 to blast out >1000 lumens!
New to the hobby but having owned 50+ lights this thing gets hot super fast to the point of having to put it down even after disabling turbo. Looks cool but Im thinking its a hot piece of garbage.
Turbo can be disabled completely, or the user can simply not use turbo. If nothing else, it’s got lots of options.
Personally, I’d prefer a regulated boost driver with AA support and a more reasonable maximum output level… but even without that, I still like the TS10 quite a bit. I just don’t use turbo on it. But then, I don’t use turbo on most lights. I rarely ever use more than 50 lm, so a battery lasts a long time and heat isn’t an issue.
The TS25 is what many claim the TS10 is; poorly regulated, too hot, and poor sustained lumens. Barely above what the TS10 can hold despite the big difference in thermal mass and surface area.
How many of those lights were hotrods? Also, how are you holding it? Unlike the aluminum and copper versions that heat the entire light, the TiTS10 only really gets hot at the bezel and a bit warm at the head. If you hold it full-fist, then your hand will indeed touch the hot part. With “cigar grip”, the way many people hold short lights with tailswitches (TS10, FWAA, KR4…), your hand won’t be on the part where many lights warn you not to touch. When used at the levels that any light of comparable size can sustain, it runs about as cool as most other lights it’s size. It’s only when you push it to levels that many 18650 lights would start to get warm that the TS10 gets toasty.
That said, the TiTS10 doesn’t handle heat as well as the versions made from the most common materials used for heatsinks; aluminum and copper. Titanium’s thermal properties are why I actively avoided all titanium lights until now.
I would love a light like that myself. However, I don’t want to turn the TS10 into that. I’d rather have an entirely new model for much the same reason I don’t want the Toyota Supra to be a king-cab pickup.
Interesting take. The TS10 was at the top of the poll for favorite lights last year. Judging by the numbers shown at different sites for sales I would not be surprised if it is a top seller too. So, people seem to love their “garbage”. I have 6 of them now and love them. I have to say that the Ti version is not my favorite. But it is far from garbage… It is a tiny light and has limitations (as all small lights do), but it just does so much right…
and I would add, do this with any small (<18650, perhaps even <21700) Anduril light, at least while TK doesn’t make thermal regulation work on Turbo.