We got most of the updates done on the shoppe for now. I'm sure we got some price wrong or description incorrect.

I assembled one of the revision 2 zetex boards and troubleshot it for several hours. I found a non linear condition with the part making it deviate from the simulations. Now that I know what it is I'm less concerned with the deviation than before. The new revision works great. I can trim it so it has a flat CC regulation over a limited range and this can be adjusted for single Alkaline operation or for two alkaline operation. The board also has a mod to it allowing it to run well below 1V and still put out a plenty of current to the LED.

This late night I made the updates to the SUP board and Don named the board Remora after the cleaner fish that hangs onto the real Sharks in the sea. Most appropriate name!

The current Shark blinks when it's first turned on making it hard to discern the level changes when using the UI. When it only had the trim pot and single level current this was not really noticeable. Now it is. If I get a chance I will see if I can modify the loop stability to reduce the initial turn on flash or eliminate it altogether. The current UI sports 4 brightness levels and is only active right after turning on the light. If you do not cycle the power to change the brightness level then after ~2 seconds the command mode is locked out and the light operates in the current brightness level. To change brightness you need to turn the light off and let the uP drain off and then start over. It's a very simple, dumb interface and I'm sure I'll hear about it from many of you that would like a smarter interface.

One option I might consider is to store the current state into nonvolatile memory. This will allow the light to resume the last powered state. If low is not the primary used level then I can see a preference to turn on the light to the desired level without going through the command mode and cycle through to get to the brightness desired. On the other had it only takes a few clicks to cycle through the four brightness levels and it's it's not that big of a deal. I believe the intial surge is more annoying than having to use the UI to set the intial brightness all the time.

For the Shark, changing the 0.1 ohm sense resistor changes the maximum output current for the Shark. The 0.1 ohm resistor is setup for 1A maximum. Doubling or halving this scales the max current up or down respectively. A 0.22 ohm resistor sets the maximum current to 454mA (nearest value for 500mA).

The current Levels in % full scale are:
11%
30%
50%
100%

The IC doesn't support control below 10% so the control from 0-11% is the same and makes 11% the minimum number possible. For the 1A range this puts level zero at around 85mA.