A few Proton Pro oddities

While playing with my Pro I've noticed a few strange things that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere. Several people have reported the red LED flashing briefly when the light is powered off. It's been explained (convincingly, in my opinion) as being caused by the sudden voltage drop triggering the low-battery circuit momentarily. Now for the oddities: I've also noticed that the red LED will flicker when the light is switched on, in either the red or white mode. The flicker is very dim and brief, much shorter and dimmer than the flash at power-off; I usually can't see it unless I'm looking into the reflector at the moment the switch is pressed. Releasing the switch immediately after the flicker turns on the white LED; holding it a second or so longer turns on the red LED. I assume that this, like the power-off flash, is caused by the low-battery circuit kicking in momentarily.

However, sometimes -- rarely, but on occasion -- the white LED will flash at power-on. This is considerably brighter than the red flicker and in dim ambient light conditions it is noticeable even with the light pointed away from me. It doesn't happen every time, though, and has happened only when the light has been off for a while. Anyone have any idea why it would do this?

The third odd thing I've noticed happens only when the battery is very low. At this point, I can ramp the red up to maximum or the white down to minimum as usual, but cannot get into any of the strobe or signal modes. Attempting to do so just turns the light off (and if the battery is low enough, it won't come back on until I let it rest a couple of minutes). The weird thing is that by trying to get it into signal mode with a low battery, I managed a few times to get the white LED into a sort of reverse signal mode. That is, the light will go off when the button is pressed, but come back on when the button is released. To turn it off and make it stay off it's necessary to get out of this mode, by holding the button down long enough for the red LED to start ramping up. I've not been able to get it into this mode anytime except with a very low battery.

Has anyone else seen this behavior, or any other odd things (besides the usual easter eggs)?

In my old Proton I notice all the flashes you describe. As long as the light has been off for maybe 30 sec. I see the white flash on red startup. I have also seen some strange behavior when the battery is low. I imagine the electronics haven't changed much in the Pro.

I assume you know about the 3 min. shutdown setup.

Geoff

Flying Turtle said:

In my old Proton I notice all the flashes you describe. As long as the light has been off for maybe 30 sec. I see the white flash on red startup. I have also seen some strange behavior when the battery is low. I imagine the electronics haven't changed much in the Pro.

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Mine requires that the light be off considerably longer than 30 seconds for the white flash to happen; it takes minutes at least, perhaps even hours. I thought it was happening instead of the red flash, but a little further experimentation has shown that the brief red flicker also happens at the same time as the white flash. I hadn't noticed before because the white is so much brighter that it masks the red unless I'm looking straight into the front at the time it happens. The red flicker always happens at power-up, but the white only happens when it's been off for a good while.

I assume you know about the 3 min. shutdown setup.

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Yes, I learned about that trick here when I first got my Pro and have been using it ever since. I have a bad habit, when coming out of a dark area into a lighted room, of setting flashlights down on the bezel without turning them off, then forgetting they're on until the next time I pick them up, perhaps hours later. That hasn't happened with my Pro yet, but it probably will eventually, so that feature will save me a few recharge cycles.

I'll have to check this out. I've never noticed any type of flickering other than the brief RED flicker when powering down from high-mode.

Widsith said:

The third odd thing I've noticed happens only when the battery is very low.

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After you've played with them a while, NOTHING a micro does when it's power supply is low will surprise you. They can just go completely psychotic.

I have noticed the red LED blip when the light goes off. More an interesting tic than anything even worth bothering with. I love this little light. I lit my back fence with it tonight. I was shocked by the amount of light coming from it.

I just noticed something else interesting today. When using the white LED in the medium or fast strobe or SOS modes, only the white LED flashes. But in the slowest strobe mode, the red LED also flashes. It isn't easy to see unless you look into the reflector at just the right angle (so the white flash doesn't dazzle you). I haven't found this mentioned anywhere for the Proton, but I did find something similar in a discussion of the Freedom Fusion at http://forum.photonlight.com/50-power-mode-for-even-more-battery-life-vt1158.html:

...I ultimately noticed a fundamental difference between the slow blink mode and the other 3 blink modes of the primary: the slow blink lights all 8 lights up, but uses pulse width modulation (read: looks like a 50-75% mode). All the other blink modes use only the primary 6 lights, at full-on [well, essentially at least].

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So it looks like blinking the secondary LED during the slowest strobe function goes back at least as far back as the Freedom chip in the Fusion.

I'm also seeing the red flash during slow strobe in my old Proton. I hope someone figures out how to get the main starting on low. I know that's too much to hope for.

Geoff

Thank for the explanation concerning the red led flash, for a moment I'd thought I had a buggy unit. But this thing is a winner in the "single cell" division!

chiphead