dave_ Scratch made (by hand) - update 16th July (local) finished - sort of

Nice work on the boost driver Dave, really like how small that is. Would be good for driving Nichia 119s too.
You should be able to get those emitters off the plate if you scrape under them with a razor blade. I’ve done that with no problem before.

Thank you! :slight_smile:
On a proper board it would be even smaller. Especially if you use a proper inductor. This is a ~5A shielded inductor I had lying around. Very much overkill. :wink:
Good idea! I will try to remove the emitters. Thing is, it is only 0.5mm RF4 and quite thin where I filed through the copper layer. (As I said, I have very limited tools. Had to use a key file to cut the aliminium profile also. ;-))
I better do this when I am fully awake.

Hey Dave,

Its great to see you back in full swing. The beam profile does look a bit odd with that optic.:bigsmile: Maybe you could make a cap light of some sort. It certainly looks light-weight enough for the task. How did finals go?

Cap light - that’s actually a great idea! I have to keep that in mind. It is indeed very lightweight. The Oslon SSL emitters it is made for are a bit dated now, maybe I will try it with different LEDs.
Thank you, finals went quite good. The next weeks I will be busy with finishing my thesis and it’s defense, but I will hopefully have some time for building stuff. :smiley:

Love the encoder idea. I went so far as to buy a panasonic 9mm one for a future project, and haven’t got around to implementing any software either. PIC has the 18f4X31 line with hardware QEI module.

9mm encoder sounds sweet! My Alps is 12x15mm I think. Not small, but it’s decent quality and only around 1€.
But sadly no pushbutton . . .
QEI hardware interface can certainly be useful! For my manual operated encoder, a slow timer interrupt and a couple of if-then-else style conditional statements will do. :wink:
Nothing time critical going on. Only monitoring battery voltage, some buttons and/or an encoder and a timer for the dimming output. The attiny10 sadly has not enough pins for that. I think I don’t have any so8 parts left, so i’ll have to take one of my attiny44. I don’t know much about those Microchip parts, but some of them have really nice specs! Have to try them out some time. :slight_smile:

The price is right on your encoder. Sometimes the hardware modules are overrated :slight_smile: . And your right on the load factor, just about any flashlight driver is going to be next to nil.

The form and size of the flashlight is really cool, look forward to the build.

Thank you! :slight_smile:
If you ever come across your encoder, could you tell me maybe the part number please?
I was looking for a smaller one for a non-flashlight related project some time ago. :slight_smile:

Beg your pardon, it is a Bourns Inc. part no. PEC09-2320F-S0015. Check out the data sheet for all the different options.

That looks like the Ledil Lisa 2 oval. Nice choice for a cap light. Making your iwn driver, priceless.

Very interesting. I mainly deal with buck driver. I should have a try for LM3410. The Attiny 44 has 8 pins more than SO8 part, what are the fancy ideas to make use of these pins? Look forward to the new progress built.

@ nickelflipper
Thank you! That encoder looks really great! It has even a metal axle. :slight_smile:

@Rufusbduck Thank you. :slight_smile:
Yes, looks very much like that Ledil optic. Good eyes! :wink:

@Microna
Well, I planned to use an Attiny10 which I have in sot23-6 package. 3 actually useable pins are not enough if I want to use the encoder. So8 would be perfect, but I don’t have any tiny25/45 left unless I want to ripp them out of other projects. But I have a couple of tiny44 here, so I don’t need to order anything. :slight_smile:

That is the best handmade DFN PCB I’ve ever seen. I would not have even tried it. Good job! :beer:

Thank you! :beer:
With a >=8 pin package I probably would have gone with dead bug style.
But this was surprisingly easy, just needed a calm hand, a Stanley blade and a couple of minutes. :wink:
If you cut in a slight inwards angle, the copper delamiates really easy.

The tiny84 lines up real nice on the proto board. Who would have thought cutting the pads in half? not me, great job.

Thank you! All those 1.27mm pitched packages like sop fit nicely on splitted pads. Speen and noise are no issue in this build, so why not use a piece of prototyping board? :slight_smile:
Only a few days left, I hope I can finish the build on sunday, probably just in time.

It’s astounding how fast a month goes by when a deadline looms. You guys making your own drivers deserve a separate catagory based on the time you have to spend on it.

Yes, time runs quick when you need it the most. :smiley:
I don’t know, doesn’t make a difference to me if the invested time is used for electronics, software or mechanical work.

Nice going dave_. I take my hat off to anyone that can solder, especially those miniature weird looking electrical thingys let alone understand what they do.

Very cool, Dave! You guys give me so many ideas watching what you come up with for this contest. I really like this little light you came up with. ;)