In the works: The making of a BLF charger

[Barkuti]

It's mostly cooked, but take a look at the following BLF thread. It may be of interest to you:
The making of a BLF charger: the start of a new venture

It's gonna have a lot of advanced features while aiming to avoid being overly expensive. We'll see.

 

[madstabber]

Sounds like an excellent idea, they seem to have it covered so let me know when it’s made, especially at the price point they’re shooting for. I’ll definitely be in for at least one.

 

[Mooch]

It's mostly cooked, but take a look at the following BLF thread. It may be of interest to you:
The making of a BLF charger: the start of a new venture

It's gonna have a lot of advanced features while aiming to avoid being overly expensive. We'll see.

Thanks for posting that link!

A great feature set but the actual implementation will be critical as many chargers have a lot of those features but they do it verrrrrr poorly. Under $50 retail means that it probably needs to cost less than $20 to make, and only if being sold in huge quantities.

It’s possible, but as you mentioned they will need a 4-wire IR setup and that will not be cheap to do robustly. Add on fans and a very expensive power power supply to be able handle the huge input-output voltage ratios and costs start creeping up.

Not a lot of talk about accuracy tolerances, safety, robustness/reliability, assembly quality, QC practices, etc., though. That kind of stuff gets expensive. I realize it depends on who they get to manufacture it but these things need to be part of the requirements, not something to hope the company does well enough.

I’m cautiously hopeful and would love to see it. Making the code Open Source and the unit programmable would offer great upgrade paths. Would any company agree to make it then? Perhaps not.

We’ll see what happens in a year or so!

 

[Barkuti]

Right now I also have some doubts concerning many of the qualities you mention, Mooch.
Other BLF designed and sponsored flashlights have ended up pretty well, yet there's been a few issues at times. Hope “we” make a good agreement with a trustworthy manufacturer, I tend to dislike cut corners.
I think it'll be ready quite a bit sooner than a year from now. But as above I said, we'll see.

 

[Rossum]

Having read the BLF thread, I too am scratching my head, wondering how realistic it is to do all that in a device that retails for $50.

 

[Barkuti]

Honestly speaking it can be done. LiitoKala sells Lii-500 full bundles at less than $20, for example. It all comes down to selecting the proper manufacturer.
However, I think some design care needs to be taken. Such a fully featured device at such a nice price (super couplet!) may be seen as a threat. Care needs to be taken to position it in the market. I do not want it to be made super charming or easy to use. I'd prefer for it to look like an advanced tool, plain, square, restrained, even Frankenstein; to keep muggles away as much as possible LoL.