2sparky
Newly Enlightened
hey scott could you PM me a quote for a X566 Q5 or X485 K2 TFFC in an M3 if you supplied everything? Thank you.
-Barry-
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Sold/Expired Milkyspit Mods, Thoughts, Eye Candy [LOTS OF PHOTOS] Part 2
- Thread starter milkyspit
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Hey Scott,
I replied to your PM on CPF Marketplace, but judging how hard it is to get a PM in to you, i'll just ask here.
Is the price quote for the U2by2 for parts supplied by you? Or my U2 head I send to you?
I don't really care whichever way you want to go about it, but i'll need your adress/paypal in either instance.
Thank You! :twothumbs
I replied to your PM on CPF Marketplace, but judging how hard it is to get a PM in to you, i'll just ask here.
Is the price quote for the U2by2 for parts supplied by you? Or my U2 head I send to you?
I don't really care whichever way you want to go about it, but i'll need your adress/paypal in either instance.
Thank You! :twothumbs
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milkyspit
Flashlight Enthusiast
Folks, been meaning to write something like this for a looooong time, looks like today is finally the day to get it done... IMHO it ought to help new users of an Acorn-driven flashlight, even though more thorough instructions were posted months ago as part of the Gotham thread, I've never been completely happy with the complexity of those, and it's not exactly intuitive to find them... 
So, without further ado,
[size=+1]Acorn User Interface QuickStart![/size]
Your flashlight probably has a SureFire or compatible clicky switch.
Put batteries in the flashlight.
Click the switch. The flashlight should turn on.
Click it again. The flashlight should turn off.
Press the switch just enough to turn on the light WITHOUT allowing the click to occur. Hold the switch this way for a couple seconds, then release. The flashlight should have remained on for the time you were pressing then turned off when you let go of the switch. This is known as tactical momentary activation.
Let's do that again (the momentary activation) exactly as above, only this time, leave the light on for only a short time... a quarter second, perhaps, doesn't have to be exact. As before, the flashlight should have remained on for the time you were pressing then turned off when you let go of the switch. A momentary activation for a very short time, for our purposes, will be called a TAP. (Technically the light should remain on for less than a half-second.)
Click the switch. The flashlight should turn on but now will be at a different brightness level than before. The TAP you performed above told your flashlight to change brightness.
Turn off your flashlight, then try another TAP, then click the switch to turn your flashlight on again. The brightness again should have changed.
You can cycle through all brightness levels using the TAP, and you can bunch several TAPS together. Try tapping three times: TAP-TAP-TAP: then CLICK the flashlight on. You'll notice while doing this that each TAP changes the brightness, one step per TAP.
There are some additional features and certain customized versions of the Acorn programming will behave in special ways, but this is basically it! Congratulations, you have just completed Acorn training 101. :thumbsup:
You might want to read the post over here to learn about some of the more advanced capabilities of the user interface. Don't worry, none of it's hard.
One final note: there is one special capability in which two TAPS followed by CLICKING your flashlight on will cause the flashlight to jump to maximum output. This exists as a safety, for the following reason: suppose you're walking through the woods turning your light on and off at ultralow output, your eyes dark-adapted. Then you hear an unknown rustling noise, possibly from a large animal, just out of range of your ultralow beam. You will always have max output available with a TAP-TAP-CLICK, regardless of what you were doing before.
Hope this helps.
So, without further ado,
[size=+1]Acorn User Interface QuickStart![/size]
Your flashlight probably has a SureFire or compatible clicky switch.
Put batteries in the flashlight.
Click the switch. The flashlight should turn on.
Click it again. The flashlight should turn off.
Press the switch just enough to turn on the light WITHOUT allowing the click to occur. Hold the switch this way for a couple seconds, then release. The flashlight should have remained on for the time you were pressing then turned off when you let go of the switch. This is known as tactical momentary activation.
Let's do that again (the momentary activation) exactly as above, only this time, leave the light on for only a short time... a quarter second, perhaps, doesn't have to be exact. As before, the flashlight should have remained on for the time you were pressing then turned off when you let go of the switch. A momentary activation for a very short time, for our purposes, will be called a TAP. (Technically the light should remain on for less than a half-second.)
Click the switch. The flashlight should turn on but now will be at a different brightness level than before. The TAP you performed above told your flashlight to change brightness.
Turn off your flashlight, then try another TAP, then click the switch to turn your flashlight on again. The brightness again should have changed.
You can cycle through all brightness levels using the TAP, and you can bunch several TAPS together. Try tapping three times: TAP-TAP-TAP: then CLICK the flashlight on. You'll notice while doing this that each TAP changes the brightness, one step per TAP.
There are some additional features and certain customized versions of the Acorn programming will behave in special ways, but this is basically it! Congratulations, you have just completed Acorn training 101. :thumbsup:
You might want to read the post over here to learn about some of the more advanced capabilities of the user interface. Don't worry, none of it's hard.
One final note: there is one special capability in which two TAPS followed by CLICKING your flashlight on will cause the flashlight to jump to maximum output. This exists as a safety, for the following reason: suppose you're walking through the woods turning your light on and off at ultralow output, your eyes dark-adapted. Then you hear an unknown rustling noise, possibly from a large animal, just out of range of your ultralow beam. You will always have max output available with a TAP-TAP-CLICK, regardless of what you were doing before.
Hope this helps.
ttran97
Flashlight Enthusiast
milkyspit...Thanks for that very informative post! All this time, I kept trying to turn on my flashlight without batteries! Whew...I thought I was gonna have to send back my millky mods.
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milkyspit
Flashlight Enthusiast
milkyspit...Thanks for that very informative post! All this time, I kept trying turn on my flashlight without batteries! Whew...I thought I was gonna have to send back my millky mods.
Hee hee hee okay wise guy.
Just remember: if you have to pull the pin first... ain't a battery!
oo:
Scottiver
Enlightened
I had a problem with my Creemator getting stuck on high mode so I did some research and found this post from Milky in the Gotham thread. I tried it and it fixed the problem. I only had to tap it about 18 times to get it to come out of high mode. Here is the post:
Some Gothams seem to get stuck at max output every once in a blue moon. I've only ever seen it happen a couple times (not a couple BOARDS, but rather, a couple TIMES on all the boards combined) out of the 100 or so boards I've built with, so it's not exactly a high probability event!
Fortunately the fix, should you ever experience this, is simple: give the light 30 taps (that's an approximate number... 35, 40, whatever) and your light should change levels properly again. Note that you might have also switched to the other UI while doing this, so you might want to follow this by changing back to your user interface of choice.
Here's what seems to be happening: when Gotham is off, it's REALLY off... there is literally no connection whatsoever between battery and circuit, unlike most microcontroller-based lights out there. This in general is a good thing in that Gotham won't drain the cells while not in use, and long-life batteries will form the appropriate passivation layer internally to allow for extended shelf life.
The firmware interprets a tap (on then off within 1/2 second) as the signal to change brightness. Since Gotham supports a few multi-tap sequences, too, such as toggling UIs (20 taps) and jumping immediately to max output (2 taps in GenUI), it needs to remember how many taps have occurred... and does this by saving the count to onboard memory. It does take a short time for the hardware to accomplish this, maybe a few milliseconds... if the light happens to be turned off while the write is in progress, the counter will end up having some unknown garbage value in it... and the present firmware is coded to ignore invalid counter values, which seemed like a good idea at the time...
Anyway, point being that an incomplete write operation can cause Gotham's brightness selection code to stop running temporarily. The way to fix that is simply to tap 30+ times, which has the effect of clearing the counter and making things right again.
How likely is this to happen? In the grand scheme of things, not very! To trigger the stuck-on-max scenario, the light must be turned off during that few milliseconds window in which the memory write operation is taking place. That's most likely to happen if you're cycling through the levels VERY quickly... I would suggest as a matter of practice that you cycle through the levels at just a teensy more relaxed pace, not at frenzied-overcaffeinated speed! As mentioned above, I've seen this in the lights I've handled maybe twice ever out of 100 pieces (that covers the 50 Gothams, my personal lights, the prototype lights, and various mods I've completed in other hosts using the Acorn driver)... and you'll make it even less likely to occur if you tap a wee bit more slowly, not super fast.
In a way it's an interesting 'feature' though... if this functional oddity is most likely to occur when operating the light at frenzied pace, which might happen in a crisis situation (heard a bump in the night, got scared, tried to switch to max while the adrenaline was pumping) and the light responds to the internal write failure by latching itself into max output, that's probably exactly where you'd WANT the light to be!
I'm always looking to improve things and the Acorn driver is no exception, in an ideal situation the above quirk would have ZERO probability of ever happening. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't always play along with one's plans, especially not in the province of developing a completely new light. In the meantime, though, you can take heart in this being a particularly uncommon occurrence with an easy fix. Just wanted to mention its existence to let folks know what's happening if they encounter this, in the interest of full disclosure!
__________________
--Scott
Some Gothams seem to get stuck at max output every once in a blue moon. I've only ever seen it happen a couple times (not a couple BOARDS, but rather, a couple TIMES on all the boards combined) out of the 100 or so boards I've built with, so it's not exactly a high probability event!
Fortunately the fix, should you ever experience this, is simple: give the light 30 taps (that's an approximate number... 35, 40, whatever) and your light should change levels properly again. Note that you might have also switched to the other UI while doing this, so you might want to follow this by changing back to your user interface of choice.
Here's what seems to be happening: when Gotham is off, it's REALLY off... there is literally no connection whatsoever between battery and circuit, unlike most microcontroller-based lights out there. This in general is a good thing in that Gotham won't drain the cells while not in use, and long-life batteries will form the appropriate passivation layer internally to allow for extended shelf life.
The firmware interprets a tap (on then off within 1/2 second) as the signal to change brightness. Since Gotham supports a few multi-tap sequences, too, such as toggling UIs (20 taps) and jumping immediately to max output (2 taps in GenUI), it needs to remember how many taps have occurred... and does this by saving the count to onboard memory. It does take a short time for the hardware to accomplish this, maybe a few milliseconds... if the light happens to be turned off while the write is in progress, the counter will end up having some unknown garbage value in it... and the present firmware is coded to ignore invalid counter values, which seemed like a good idea at the time...
Anyway, point being that an incomplete write operation can cause Gotham's brightness selection code to stop running temporarily. The way to fix that is simply to tap 30+ times, which has the effect of clearing the counter and making things right again.
How likely is this to happen? In the grand scheme of things, not very! To trigger the stuck-on-max scenario, the light must be turned off during that few milliseconds window in which the memory write operation is taking place. That's most likely to happen if you're cycling through the levels VERY quickly... I would suggest as a matter of practice that you cycle through the levels at just a teensy more relaxed pace, not at frenzied-overcaffeinated speed! As mentioned above, I've seen this in the lights I've handled maybe twice ever out of 100 pieces (that covers the 50 Gothams, my personal lights, the prototype lights, and various mods I've completed in other hosts using the Acorn driver)... and you'll make it even less likely to occur if you tap a wee bit more slowly, not super fast.
In a way it's an interesting 'feature' though... if this functional oddity is most likely to occur when operating the light at frenzied pace, which might happen in a crisis situation (heard a bump in the night, got scared, tried to switch to max while the adrenaline was pumping) and the light responds to the internal write failure by latching itself into max output, that's probably exactly where you'd WANT the light to be!
I'm always looking to improve things and the Acorn driver is no exception, in an ideal situation the above quirk would have ZERO probability of ever happening. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't always play along with one's plans, especially not in the province of developing a completely new light. In the meantime, though, you can take heart in this being a particularly uncommon occurrence with an easy fix. Just wanted to mention its existence to let folks know what's happening if they encounter this, in the interest of full disclosure!
__________________
--Scott
milkyspit
Flashlight Enthusiast
Scott, thanks for making that text available over here... I'm sure it will help others and it's especially great coming right after the QuickStart that I'd just posted! :bow:
It's also worth noting that I've been working on reducing the incidence of that issue (not that it was ever that common anyway) in more recent versions of the Acorn firmware... I'm not ready to declare it completely gone, but it's certainly headed in that direction. Any light with firmware revision 'Aardvark', 'Amity', 'Cary', or 'Laguna' already incorporates the improved code.
This brings up another small point: I've changed from a numeric versioning scheme to an alphabetic one... in other words, firmware version 'Aardvark' rather than v8.04.04.01. It just seems more human-friendly.
Does anyone think the Acorn should have its own thread?
It's also worth noting that I've been working on reducing the incidence of that issue (not that it was ever that common anyway) in more recent versions of the Acorn firmware... I'm not ready to declare it completely gone, but it's certainly headed in that direction. Any light with firmware revision 'Aardvark', 'Amity', 'Cary', or 'Laguna' already incorporates the improved code.
This brings up another small point: I've changed from a numeric versioning scheme to an alphabetic one... in other words, firmware version 'Aardvark' rather than v8.04.04.01. It just seems more human-friendly.
Does anyone think the Acorn should have its own thread?
skalomax
Flashlight Enthusiast
Your siglines are the same.
:thinking:
:thinking:
milkyspit
Flashlight Enthusiast
Yup, I noticed that too. I don't understand it, but did notice.
Maybe somehow the sigline was snagged when the other Scott grabbed the quote? :thinking:
I've sold lights to him, so unless I've got multiple personalities I can assure you that we are in fact two different people!
oo:EDIT: It does appear the other Scott grabbed my sigline in his quote... if you go to quote his post, my images are carried forward in what you get. Also, the one he got isn't quite the same as my own... the last couple images are in fact absent.
Strange.
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donn_
Flashaholic
Yep!
bondr006
Flashlight Enthusiast
Scottiver
Enlightened
I think Milky should have his own forum with stickies and
everything. :twothumbs
As far as copying your sigline, I didn't even know that I had.
I just highlighted the whole post then copied and pasted it.
What I find weird is that the links work when you click on the pictures. :thinking:
And I guess that I somehow didn't highlight the last two pictures, that's why they are absent.
everything. :twothumbs
As far as copying your sigline, I didn't even know that I had.
I just highlighted the whole post then copied and pasted it.
What I find weird is that the links work when you click on the pictures. :thinking:
And I guess that I somehow didn't highlight the last two pictures, that's why they are absent.
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marcdilnutt
Enlightened
Scott,
You've got PM and an email from me about an Arc AA. I thought i had posted here already, must have drunk too much beer!:drunk:
You've got PM and an email from me about an Arc AA. I thought i had posted here already, must have drunk too much beer!:drunk:
wrencher
Newly Enlightened
Hey Scott, Just sent you a pm. Thanks
Jeff
Jeff
milkyspit
Flashlight Enthusiast
Scott, Greta (the webmistress formerly known as Sasha)
basically gave me clearance last autumn to have my own subforum, and the main reason it hasn't yet happened is that I've dropped the ball from my end... to make it happen I need to come up with a list of threads that would be moved into the Milky subforum, and I haven't compiled the list yet. It's a little daunting! If anyone wants to assist on that, it would be much appreciated.BTW, just so everyone knows, I'm sick again... or maybe STILL sick is the better description... I'm riddled with allergies, asthma, and sinus problems, making springtime a rough time for me... at present all my builds have ground down to a trickle of their normal pace as I try to get well... it just doesn't make any sense fighting my own body to do builds when my health status is at 20% normal... IMHO far better to take some time off, do my best to recover, then jump into the builds again with a vengeance... so that's what I'm doing. Went to the doctor today and got some good meds, hopefully they'll help me turn the tide within the next few days and all will be well after that. We'll see I guess.
I can observe for now, though, that it really blows to be sick!
bondr006
Flashlight Enthusiast
Even busy modders are allowed sick days. Take it easy, and get well my friend.
donn_
Flashaholic
You do good work for a sick man, Mr. Spit!
A Project M M3 X779, with 3x Cree XR-E R2 emitters in McR16 reflectors, and sporting a Tranquillity_Base bead-blasted tall Ti bezel ring. It's first home is a Leef 2x18650 tube running 2x A123 18650 cells. The tailcap is RPM's pseudo-Fatty.
A black P7 Optimator with the Amity version of the Acorn driver. The body is a vintage 6Z, with what Milky refers to as the 'Gumdrop' tailcap.
Well done once more, Mr. Spit! :bow:
:twothumbs
A Project M M3 X779, with 3x Cree XR-E R2 emitters in McR16 reflectors, and sporting a Tranquillity_Base bead-blasted tall Ti bezel ring. It's first home is a Leef 2x18650 tube running 2x A123 18650 cells. The tailcap is RPM's pseudo-Fatty.
A black P7 Optimator with the Amity version of the Acorn driver. The body is a vintage 6Z, with what Milky refers to as the 'Gumdrop' tailcap.
Well done once more, Mr. Spit! :bow:
:twothumbs
ttran97
Flashlight Enthusiast
I just put a Z48 tailcap on my Transgressor...and I love it! It balances out M3 better and now it can stand on its tail.
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