excellent
thanx
awesome photos
I had today also a GT mini open
as I noticed now also here in the pictures the MCU is not original Atmel, looks like a chineese copy
I had in first Prototype board of fireflies also this MCU and programming it failed
Lexel,
thanks for sharing those pics…
so that means it may not be possible to reprogram the “Chinese clone” of the Atmel ATTiny85 MCU chips in the GT Mini?
I think people have already reflashed them. Maybe those that have done so can tell us which mcu their driver has.
Lumintop contacted me and assured me that they do not buy fakes to save money and said “it is impossible to buy fakes of these we think”.
And to be honest, I don’t disagree with them. It is a strange thing to fake that is for sure, I find it hard to believe there would be a big enough market to make faking this worth it. Particularly when the savings would be so small.
They are looking into what is going on with them, I know they had trouble finding the tiny85 is china at all (along with every other manufacture that has tried to find it pretty much). Them simply being old stock from 10+ years ago is both very possible and probable.
I am not sure what is going on with the MCU myself but I do trust them when they say they did not know about it and they sure did not try to buy fakes. They simply have never complained about the price of doing something the right way when I insist on it, why would they do that with something so important and also so cheap?
I re-flashed the mcu on the prototype they sent me and it worked outside of some connection issues at first. After some alcohol cleaning of both the chip and connector it worked. The flux / solder they use does seem to have some kind of film that makes getting a connection difficult without cleaning.
Doubt that it’s Lumintop’s problem.
It’s probably the supplier which is having fakes mixed in. It’s a major problem in electronics manufacturing.
It is very easy to fake chips by a manufactory with the proper gear
years back big manufacturies added some sort of hard particles above the silicon chip layers so you can not polish each layer open without destroying the first layers
the question is if the copies reach the original chips specs or not
It is quite simple why you can buy those only in China and Taiwan, they get copied in Taiwan and sold to chineese suppliers
I doubt why an original Atmel factory should do spelling error of their size code that is there for ages and all batch markings removed on old stock and then export tens of thousands to a Taiwan chip manufactory and chineese suppliers
copying chips is not that hard, you simply polish each layer of them use a very good mictoscope to make of each layer a template
I never said it could not be done, I said it doesn’t make a lot of sense to copy this particular chip as it does not seem to be very popular due to how hard they are to find (generally popular items will have large stockpiles in china and be easy to get).
Regardless, it does the job and has not had any issues that I know of. That is all that matters. They are looking into the issue for future drivers now.
making this chip in Taiwan costs the factory like 10 cents or less selling those at 60 cents in 1000 pieces is quite a very good profit, as Atmel chips are pretty expensive compared to other chips
Its quite simple for Lumintop to find out if those are original, send pictures of them to Microchip and ask if those are original old stock or not
Why do you think they are made in Taiwan?
Do you have a trusted source?
It is not that simple, they do not even see the chips before the final drivers are delivered, the production house takes care of most of that.
And once they are delivered the drivers are already tested and working, so why go looking for a problem when they already work fine?
It is completely understandable that they would not even think there was a problem. I didn’t even think to check on the prototype.
You didn’t even notice the problem until you had an issue, because that is just how things are, if there is no problem, why go looking for one?
I am not sure what your agenda with this entire discussion is? They work, they are looking into it for future drivers, there is nothing they need to do about the drivers already made at this point.
seems like quality management on their side is not pretty good, I saw it right when I had the driver in front of me that its not the original marking
Like I said I doubt those chips meet the full specs like the originals have
if I tell the fab buy original Atmel chips they should not source some chips from a doubtful source in China or Taiwan,
if they import the chips in a big quantity they should not pay more than the chineese supplier payed so it should be cheaper
Its not hard to order 1000 chips from USA supplier to the Fab,
there is no need to source them in China if costs and profit do not play a role as Lumintop pays for it
So basically you just want to bad mouth lumintop?
I am not going to get into it other then to say that lumintop has been one of the best manufactures I have worked with in regards to quality and honesty. They take the extra step to make sure things are done right and when they say that they did not buy fakes, I 100% believe that they did not knowingly buy fakes.
I will also say that the sourcing process in china is FAR more complicated then you make it sound when it comes to hard to find parts. So complicated I had to “smuggle” in the components for one company to build some drivers by ordering it myself, then shipping it to china under the radar, which in the end almost doubled the price of the components due to all the shipping and fees and taxes and such. All because they could not order it directly.
China goes out of it’s way to keep companies from importing things from other countries. The more I learn, the more I am glad I live in the USA.
If Fireflies has 0 problems sourcing Attiny85s and all other parts for DD driver from Arrow USA, why should a Chineese fab or Lumintop should not be able to get it?
They complained about its too expensive and I insisted on it, it wont be that bad to pay like 1$ more than sourcing some doubtful parts in Chiona, but this way they get guranteed original parts in good quality.
Its not that hard for a manufactory to check a driver if the components are the same as they have to be,
optical inspection, which should show something wrong with the Attiny85 markings, they had original in the past so they should notice the difference
check if resistors are 1%
check mechanical tolerances ect.
If they just assemble the light and check if it works and call this quality management they are doing something wrong
Ha ha, this is all of China pretty much. 
Not to bad mouth a whole country, but when it comes to flashlights the quality control there is below what most people expect. The attitude is usually “If it works, it’s fine”.
When I was working in a company making 3D scanners that are used to scan buildings tanks and so on there were several issues even with german companies
for exaple for high frequency part measuring the timing we ordered custom coils with copper wire with 45um silver coating as only those meet the specs
in the past those were made by hand from an assembly worker
using those coils reduced the accuracy by a lot
so one engeneer found out testing the coils with HF, that the silver coating must be too thin
so they had to make 1000 coils again this time with wire we supplied to them
also all electical parts even resistors were stocked and aquired in the our company and then send to the PCB fab to ensure component quality
would you complain if you order a PC mainboard with original Intel processor if instead you get some other cheaper fake processor, even if it runs?
Are there Chinese-made AVR-compatible MCUs? Maybe it would be a good idea to just port our firmwares to avoid future issues?
German Gründlichkeit rulez!
When you buy a lamp and it works with the fake µC I really don’t see a big problem like TA. It is a flashlight not a rocket.
But if you want to flash a new firmware on it it is different. Especially when future driver incorporate the Flash-Key™, you don’t look on the chip side anymore.
That can be a big trap with the next BLF flashlights.
@agro
You can get Arduino Uno boards for $3 shipped from China to Europe. I don’t think the chips are original.
So a schematic, pcb and sourcecode is useful.
Thanks Texas Ace for the sourcecode.
This is even more than I expect. I had DOA lights already. :smiling_imp: