Hey Gabe
i reflow with solder paste
With iron it’s impossible to do . I tried couple of ways but it’s way too small the legs end up short circuit so i gave up.
Now im in love with AA flashlights
thumbs up to you
Hey Gabe
i reflow with solder paste
With iron it’s impossible to do . I tried couple of ways but it’s way too small the legs end up short circuit so i gave up.
Now im in love with AA flashlights
thumbs up to you
That LUMINTOP Tool AA looks nice! I think my wife would like one of those too. Where can the purple version be bought?
BTW, I just noticed that they’re back in stock in the Lumintop AE store for $17.51 with free ePacket
Thanks gchart!
I had a bit o’ fun tonight with a new tailcap: my first “smart” tailcap. It’s definitely not a new idea, PD68 was toying with this 3 years ago!
It’s using an ATtiny416 for the smarts side of things, driving 8 individual channels. To keep the power low, it checks the voltage, sets the LEDs, then goes to sleep. For testing, I have it waking up once per second. In a light, I’ll probably have it wake up once an hour or so. Just because there’s an abundance of flash for this use (4K), I added a basic startup animation: spinning circle, looped 3 times. Even with that, it compiles at only like 700 bytes or so.
I could probably do a little adjusting to the voltage on-off levels, but not bad for my first test. By some miracle, this was the first time I ever flashed the 416, and my first time writing code for it. It all came together pretty well.
Here’s the boards on OshPark. This is a small update from what is shown in the video. I’m using a P-FET for reverse polarity protection. I realized that I had two of the legs swapped on my initial design, so I just bypassed the FET pads for testing. This v1.1 has that corrected. Also not that I have not tested this in a complete light that might detract from the functionality. I’ll update this when I complete that test.- Ok, the first in-flashlight test is complete; see post 95.
Edit: BOM
Wow keeeewwww
Can u post the parts to built
I like. It’s fun to think I have a sort of legacy here.
I had a bit o’ fun tonight with a new tailcap: my first “smart” tailcap. It’s definitely not a new idea, PD68 was toying with this 3 years ago!
It’s using an ATtiny416 for the smarts side of things, driving 8 individual channels. To keep the power low, it checks the voltage, sets the LEDs, then goes to sleep. For testing, I have it waking up once per second. In a light, I’ll probably have it wake up once an hour or so. Just because there’s an abundance of flash for this use (4K), I added a basic startup animation: spinning circle, looped 3 times. Even with that, it compiles at only like 700 bytes or so.
I could probably do a little adjusting to the voltage on-off levels, but not bad for my first test. By some miracle, this was the first time I ever flashed the 416, and my first time writing code for it. It all came together pretty well.
Here’s the boards on OshPark. This is a small update from what is shown in the video. I’m using a P-FET for reverse polarity protection. I realized that I had two of the legs swapped on my initial design, so I just bypassed the FET pads for testing. This v1.1 has that corrected.
the question would be if its running on a bleeder or needs some intelligent driver that connects battery+ with a FET when off
bleeder and MCU running might get even with 470Ohm too much drop to get a real voltage reading, or even power up as voltage drops
I had same problem with my comparator tail cap and too high current draws in the >1mA range, rund fine on PSU but with bleeder you got no real voltage reading as too high drop on bleeder
I like. It’s fun to think I have a sort of legacy here.
Great to see you on, PD!
Oh, and BOM added to the post
the question would be if its running on a bleeder or needs some intelligent driver that connects battery+ with a FET when off
bleeder and MCU running might get even with 470Ohm too much drop to get a real voltage reading, or even power up as voltage drops
Thats a great question. My plan is to have it running on a bleeder, but I have not tested that yet (so keep that in mind before ordering parts, if someone is so inclined). I might have to make tweaks based on how it acts behind a bleeder.
Nice job gchart!
Especially like the decreasing lighted led’s to battery level indicator.
SUPER COOL!
Seems like with probably just a few very minor code changes you could use half green and half red LEDs and have a tail ring that fades from green to yellow to red.
SUPER COOL!
Seems like with probably just a few very minor code changes you could use half green and half red LEDs and have a tail ring that fades from green to yellow to red.
The problem with fading is that requires ramping PWM up and down, which requires the MCU to be awake. Awake, the 416 will probably use 1mA (@3.3MHz). Asleep, it should be around 1uA. (datasheet pages 439 and 445, not my measured values). If battery drain isn’t too big of a concern, that definitely is a possibility!
Ok… I tested it in-flashlight. It’s a Convoy M1 with a Nanjg105c & 750 Ohm bleeder. Results seem mostly positive.
Firstly, it works. But a few observations:
gchart,
This is sort of off topic but what do you have your buck driver attached to for power? I’m looking for a similar setup.
gchart,
This is sort of off topic but what do you have your buck driver attached to for power? I’m looking for a similar setup.
This. It’s very basic, but it works for what I need right now.
An update…
I managed to decrease the MCU power draw considerably by changing the main clock to be driven from the 32.767 KHz internal ULP (ultra low power) RC oscillator instead of the prescaled 20MHz one.
I also managed to get a good grasp on the ADC readings by using the 8 LEDs to display the significant digits of the ADC readings in binary (each LED representing one bit of the ADC reading). It worked really slick. I took 7 measurements across the typical voltage range and got a great trend line with an R^2 value of 0.99.
So now that I have a calibrated formula, I just need to plug that into the source code, re-uploaded, and we should be in business!
Thanks! What are you using as a power source?
Mr gchart I like your project very much! I am looking forward to more update and improvements!!
Give that man a Bells!
Watching close with interest
Updates:
SUPER COOL! Seems like with probably just a few very minor code changes you could use half green and half red LEDs and have a tail ring that fades from green to yellow to red.
Well, now that I know that power consumption during active state can be highly reduced using the ULP oscillator (~12uA), this actually could happen! :+1:
Thanks! What are you using as a power source?
Hey, I think maybe you might have missed post #97 ? Is this what you’re looking for? If it’s not, just let me know.