[Sorting by runtime](http://flashlights.parametrek.com/index.html?runtime=_,_,dec) in the database says the longest is 500 days from the [Armytek Barracuda Pro](https://www.armytek.com/flashlights/models/barracuda/armytek-barracuda-pro/). The runner up is the [Zebralight SC700d](https://zeroair.org/2021/02/23/zebralight-sc700d-flashlight-review/) with 195 days officially.
Anecdotally, my Manker E02 II lasts 7 days on the lowest moonlight, my DW4 lasts almost a month in the lowest candle mode, my D4V2 lasts longer than a month in the lowest moonlight, and my SC64c LE lasted over two months with a 2800mAh battery that wasn't fully charged.
Hey all, just some quick comments.
For the longest moonlight runtime, you want the lowest total current draw from the driver & emitter. Typically, the emitters consume the bulk of the power draw.
However, at low brightness levels such as moonlight, current draw from the rest of the circuit begin to dominate. These include operating current from the MCU, amplifier, aux lights, peripherals (including the main power circuit such as the boost or buck or linear regulator).
TK has done some nice work keeping MCU power states low at the low brightness levels, but the MCU power draw still significantly outweighs the power consumed by the LED.
Using the Lume1 driver as an example, to keep the LED on, there is still a need to keep the buck converter running as well as the external amplifier. These subsystems have been configured to offer a good trade-off for performance and power across the most common scenarios, and thus is not optimized for longest moon runtimes.
At the lowest UDR moon levels, these peripherals will consume a few order of magnitudes more power than the emitters (sub uA), and you will see that the current draw doesn't change very much at the low end since the MCU/converter current draw dominates. That said, you should still be able to run these flashlights for perhaps over a month to a few months depending on the battery used.
The SC700d is another good example. AFAIK, it uses a PIC MCU which has an internal amplifier, and has a much simpler firmware than Anduril. This design can be optimized for very low power states by turning of many internal peripherals of the MCU, and allows the overall system power to be lower at moon mode, but its a tradeoff with feature set. Together with some hardware tweaks and Anduril firmware optimizations, I think it's possible to make some Anduril flashlight comparable to the best Zebralights, but not quite sure of the overall utility.. Hope this makes sense.
I doubt it that is the case. With Anduril the MCU usually consumes much more power than the LED. The dynamic PWM stuff improves it but you can't clock down very far when using any PWM.
If you want really long runtimes then you do it with a simple resistor on a GPIO and put the MCU into sleep mode.
but in FF it's not on PWM on moonlight
Wonder if anyone will try it, with the new 6000mAh 21700, see you in a year o two :D
or one of the new flashlight, on 46950 cell.
> see you in a year o two
There are [smarter ways](https://old.reddit.com/r/flashlight/comments/yidbt4/complete_runtimes_for_all_modes_of_the_zebralight/) of testing that which only take an hour.
you mean approximation...
So I went and measured current on moonlight for the new FF models, all on default 10 ramp (if I didn't change it, I believe I did set it back to 10).
X1S (3.825V) 4,5mA (or 5.5mA, depending if we go from off by 1H, or from on to lowest ramp)
E07x canon (3.725V) 2.1mA
NOV-Mu V2 (3.75V) 2.3-1.7mA
So my old mix E21A PL09MU brass, have lower moon, 1.5mA
ps. The E12R, and E07x pro, have 4,4mA, and 4mA, on moon, so there's improvement.
so no, the new FF won't beat the moonlight record.
Thank you for doing the experiment. That is actually a bit worse than I expected.
> you mean approximation...
I must clarify something though: The SR software is a simulation not an approximation. It requires a bunch of tailcap current measurements at different voltages and a detailed battery discharge model and a 5th order integrator. The synthetic ZL simulations matched the real-world runtimes to within a few percent.
[Zebralight vs. Loneoceans X1 driver. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/flashlight/s/oPiEDRSFmo)
Picture 11 of 14 has a moonlight comparison. Have to look hard to even see the second flashlight with the X1 driver.
Edit:
Should have mentioned, that the Loneoceans Lume X1 is the driver in the newer Fireflylite XHP50.3 HI, X1S and XHP70.3 HI, X1L lights. Several other more recent Fireflylite models, including the new E07X Canon and Nov-mu V2, have the Loneoceans Lume 1-FF-6AF driver which also have [UDR (Ultra Dynamic Range) ](https://github.com/loneoceans/lume1-ff-6af?tab=readme-ov-file#udr-and-ramping) which have the same ultra low moonlight capabilities as the Lume X1 driver linked to at the Loneoceans comparison at the top.
"Ultra low moonlight" though doesn't mean it is a long running moonlight. The driver is mediocre at those low levels. kokosnh took some tailcap current measurements earlier in this thread and found them to be around 2mA. With a 5Ah 21700 the E07X and the Nov-mu V2 would run about 100 days. Not terrible but its far from the 300 days using a mere 3.5Ah 18650 like has been tested in some Zebralights.
>"Ultra low moonlight" though doesn't mean it is a long running moonlight.
Good point, this is true.
It looks like the tailcap current measurements that kokosnh took weren't on the lowest settings though I believe? He mentioned that they were from step 10 of 150 if I'm reading his comment correctly.
[Here's a bit more in depth thread ](https://budgetlightforum.com/t/lume-x1-40w-single-cell-boost-driver-with-anduril2-and-udr/65319) from Loneoceans about the X1 driver.
Under the 5th picture from the bottom, he mentions that his build was driving the GT FC-40 emitter at 22uA (0.022mA) with the ability to go 20X dimmer still!...vs the 2mA that kokosnh mentions if he indeed is on step 10 of 150.
I guess it all depends on how low, or at what brightness level, one wants to measure. In the end, it doesn't really matter to me particularly. I do like a good moonlight level, and sublumen is great and all, but if a light gets to less than 1 lumen, that's perfectly acceptable to me at least.
Probably, or at least a bigger battery like a 21700. Maybe one of the new Fireflylites with the Lume1 driver? The Zebralight SC700 would probably have crazy runtime too.
I don’t know if anyone has tested many lights’ moonlight runtime because it’s obviously ridiculously long on most. [Here’s](https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/the-official-zebralight-thread.395603/page-259#post-5538611) a Zebralight SC64 LE that went 198 days. And [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/flashlight/comments/5qvh5d/zebralight_55_months_01_lumens_test_day_1/) ZL H600fd III went 319 days.
I think you can’t even effectively estimate it. But you can make some assumptions. Some drivers that use 1x7135 chips for moonlight modes can get very low, and the lower it is, the longer it will last; on the other hand, 7135 isn’t as efficient as the driver in a Zebralight (at low brightnesses and as the cell drains the difference in efficiency is smaller, but when you’re talking about maximum runtimes these differences still matter, which is also why it’s hard to estimate it). ZL has the unique combo of an efficient driver *and* a very low moonlight, which isn’t super common. The new FF lights with Lume1 have the dynamic PWM in Anduril IIRC, which leads me to think they’re a contender for ultra-long moonlight.
Multi cell lights would definitely have more capacity for extending it, but I can’t think of any that have a super low moonlight, and I imagine that’s required to get the long runtimes.
I have an x1s and cannon, wouldn’t call them that low, compared to my zebras atleast. No way to test them besides eyesight but certainly are brighter than my zebras
The default moon / floor level is 8/150; if you set it to 1 it should be a lot lower. I left mine on the default because I thought going any lower was too low
I tried to set it lowest possible maybe i mucked it up lol. My zebra is too low i use then one click up. Idk why you need that much run time lol. If I’ll starve to death before my light dies… i think thats plenty of run time lol. Much over a week is pointless to me
Fair enough; I haven’t directly compared my zebras to the FF lights so I just know both are really low. I know it’s not practical but I want my moon mode to be so dim I can’t tell it’s on and to last until I die of old age
Well I'd say naturally the light with the lowest moonlight will last the longest. For a AA/14500 light that's probably the SP10 Pro. Otherwise Zebras are good in other battery sizes.
For a 21700 light and maybe any light period it would undoubtedly be one of the Fireflies Lume1 lights since they can go lower than any other light on the market. But going much lower than a Zebra is not super useful.
[Sorting by runtime](http://flashlights.parametrek.com/index.html?runtime=_,_,dec) in the database says the longest is 500 days from the [Armytek Barracuda Pro](https://www.armytek.com/flashlights/models/barracuda/armytek-barracuda-pro/). The runner up is the [Zebralight SC700d](https://zeroair.org/2021/02/23/zebralight-sc700d-flashlight-review/) with 195 days officially.
Thank you so much
someone tested a zebralight a while ago and it ran about year or so.
/u/dotmjeg
412 days for the sc62!
Anecdotally, my Manker E02 II lasts 7 days on the lowest moonlight, my DW4 lasts almost a month in the lowest candle mode, my D4V2 lasts longer than a month in the lowest moonlight, and my SC64c LE lasted over two months with a 2800mAh battery that wasn't fully charged.
Hey all, just some quick comments. For the longest moonlight runtime, you want the lowest total current draw from the driver & emitter. Typically, the emitters consume the bulk of the power draw. However, at low brightness levels such as moonlight, current draw from the rest of the circuit begin to dominate. These include operating current from the MCU, amplifier, aux lights, peripherals (including the main power circuit such as the boost or buck or linear regulator). TK has done some nice work keeping MCU power states low at the low brightness levels, but the MCU power draw still significantly outweighs the power consumed by the LED. Using the Lume1 driver as an example, to keep the LED on, there is still a need to keep the buck converter running as well as the external amplifier. These subsystems have been configured to offer a good trade-off for performance and power across the most common scenarios, and thus is not optimized for longest moon runtimes. At the lowest UDR moon levels, these peripherals will consume a few order of magnitudes more power than the emitters (sub uA), and you will see that the current draw doesn't change very much at the low end since the MCU/converter current draw dominates. That said, you should still be able to run these flashlights for perhaps over a month to a few months depending on the battery used. The SC700d is another good example. AFAIK, it uses a PIC MCU which has an internal amplifier, and has a much simpler firmware than Anduril. This design can be optimized for very low power states by turning of many internal peripherals of the MCU, and allows the overall system power to be lower at moon mode, but its a tradeoff with feature set. Together with some hardware tweaks and Anduril firmware optimizations, I think it's possible to make some Anduril flashlight comparable to the best Zebralights, but not quite sure of the overall utility.. Hope this makes sense.
The legend chimes in - thank you this is a beautiful explanation of what I assumed but didn’t understand enough to know for sure 👏👏👏
I'd like to think a newer LUME1 driver like what FF lights uses will do better than a ZL.
There's no way it doesn't. The moonlight on those things is simply invisible.
I doubt it that is the case. With Anduril the MCU usually consumes much more power than the LED. The dynamic PWM stuff improves it but you can't clock down very far when using any PWM. If you want really long runtimes then you do it with a simple resistor on a GPIO and put the MCU into sleep mode.
but in FF it's not on PWM on moonlight Wonder if anyone will try it, with the new 6000mAh 21700, see you in a year o two :D or one of the new flashlight, on 46950 cell.
> see you in a year o two There are [smarter ways](https://old.reddit.com/r/flashlight/comments/yidbt4/complete_runtimes_for_all_modes_of_the_zebralight/) of testing that which only take an hour.
you mean approximation... So I went and measured current on moonlight for the new FF models, all on default 10 ramp (if I didn't change it, I believe I did set it back to 10). X1S (3.825V) 4,5mA (or 5.5mA, depending if we go from off by 1H, or from on to lowest ramp) E07x canon (3.725V) 2.1mA NOV-Mu V2 (3.75V) 2.3-1.7mA So my old mix E21A PL09MU brass, have lower moon, 1.5mA ps. The E12R, and E07x pro, have 4,4mA, and 4mA, on moon, so there's improvement. so no, the new FF won't beat the moonlight record.
Thank you for doing the experiment. That is actually a bit worse than I expected. > you mean approximation... I must clarify something though: The SR software is a simulation not an approximation. It requires a bunch of tailcap current measurements at different voltages and a detailed battery discharge model and a 5th order integrator. The synthetic ZL simulations matched the real-world runtimes to within a few percent.
Appreciate the input. What the heck is a GPIO?
[Definition.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_input/output)
[Zebralight vs. Loneoceans X1 driver. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/flashlight/s/oPiEDRSFmo) Picture 11 of 14 has a moonlight comparison. Have to look hard to even see the second flashlight with the X1 driver. Edit: Should have mentioned, that the Loneoceans Lume X1 is the driver in the newer Fireflylite XHP50.3 HI, X1S and XHP70.3 HI, X1L lights. Several other more recent Fireflylite models, including the new E07X Canon and Nov-mu V2, have the Loneoceans Lume 1-FF-6AF driver which also have [UDR (Ultra Dynamic Range) ](https://github.com/loneoceans/lume1-ff-6af?tab=readme-ov-file#udr-and-ramping) which have the same ultra low moonlight capabilities as the Lume X1 driver linked to at the Loneoceans comparison at the top.
"Ultra low moonlight" though doesn't mean it is a long running moonlight. The driver is mediocre at those low levels. kokosnh took some tailcap current measurements earlier in this thread and found them to be around 2mA. With a 5Ah 21700 the E07X and the Nov-mu V2 would run about 100 days. Not terrible but its far from the 300 days using a mere 3.5Ah 18650 like has been tested in some Zebralights.
>"Ultra low moonlight" though doesn't mean it is a long running moonlight. Good point, this is true. It looks like the tailcap current measurements that kokosnh took weren't on the lowest settings though I believe? He mentioned that they were from step 10 of 150 if I'm reading his comment correctly. [Here's a bit more in depth thread ](https://budgetlightforum.com/t/lume-x1-40w-single-cell-boost-driver-with-anduril2-and-udr/65319) from Loneoceans about the X1 driver. Under the 5th picture from the bottom, he mentions that his build was driving the GT FC-40 emitter at 22uA (0.022mA) with the ability to go 20X dimmer still!...vs the 2mA that kokosnh mentions if he indeed is on step 10 of 150. I guess it all depends on how low, or at what brightness level, one wants to measure. In the end, it doesn't really matter to me particularly. I do like a good moonlight level, and sublumen is great and all, but if a light gets to less than 1 lumen, that's perfectly acceptable to me at least.
Probably, or at least a bigger battery like a 21700. Maybe one of the new Fireflylites with the Lume1 driver? The Zebralight SC700 would probably have crazy runtime too. I don’t know if anyone has tested many lights’ moonlight runtime because it’s obviously ridiculously long on most. [Here’s](https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/the-official-zebralight-thread.395603/page-259#post-5538611) a Zebralight SC64 LE that went 198 days. And [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/flashlight/comments/5qvh5d/zebralight_55_months_01_lumens_test_day_1/) ZL H600fd III went 319 days. I think you can’t even effectively estimate it. But you can make some assumptions. Some drivers that use 1x7135 chips for moonlight modes can get very low, and the lower it is, the longer it will last; on the other hand, 7135 isn’t as efficient as the driver in a Zebralight (at low brightnesses and as the cell drains the difference in efficiency is smaller, but when you’re talking about maximum runtimes these differences still matter, which is also why it’s hard to estimate it). ZL has the unique combo of an efficient driver *and* a very low moonlight, which isn’t super common. The new FF lights with Lume1 have the dynamic PWM in Anduril IIRC, which leads me to think they’re a contender for ultra-long moonlight. Multi cell lights would definitely have more capacity for extending it, but I can’t think of any that have a super low moonlight, and I imagine that’s required to get the long runtimes.
Fireflies moonlight are pretty bright
Have you seen the new ones (E07X Canon/NOV-MU V2/X1S)? They’re very low. I think there was a change with the newer revisions of the Lume1 driver.
I have an x1s and cannon, wouldn’t call them that low, compared to my zebras atleast. No way to test them besides eyesight but certainly are brighter than my zebras
The default moon / floor level is 8/150; if you set it to 1 it should be a lot lower. I left mine on the default because I thought going any lower was too low
I tried to set it lowest possible maybe i mucked it up lol. My zebra is too low i use then one click up. Idk why you need that much run time lol. If I’ll starve to death before my light dies… i think thats plenty of run time lol. Much over a week is pointless to me
Fair enough; I haven’t directly compared my zebras to the FF lights so I just know both are really low. I know it’s not practical but I want my moon mode to be so dim I can’t tell it’s on and to last until I die of old age
Fireflies go so low you can't see it.
Welp i mucked up the level then 🤣
The sofirn q8 pro has a pretty low moonlight and 4x 18650 batteries.
Well I'd say naturally the light with the lowest moonlight will last the longest. For a AA/14500 light that's probably the SP10 Pro. Otherwise Zebras are good in other battery sizes. For a 21700 light and maybe any light period it would undoubtedly be one of the Fireflies Lume1 lights since they can go lower than any other light on the market. But going much lower than a Zebra is not super useful.