[released] 17mm 8x7135 with Zener & dual-PWM + stubborn: A17PZL

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
25

Thanks & you’re welcome!

In order to build these and get the 7+1 functionality (dual PWM / low moonlight) you’ll need the ability to flash an ATtiny13A, that is your biggest expense if you do not already have it. In order to flash drivers you’ll need 2-3 things, a USBASP and a way to attach it to the MCU (ATtiny13A). I’m using a Pomona SOIC-CLIP from Mouser, some colorful wires from eBay, and a USBASP from eBay.

For the actual driver hardware you may transplant an entire Nanjg 105c, Nanjg 105D, or Qlite. For offtime you’ll need to add a single 1uF capacitor, X5R or X7R is recommended but you can probably get away with putting almost anything in place of that cap.

With the stock 19.1k and 4.7k resistors from a Nanjg/etc stepdown and shutdown values for low-voltage warning and protection must be adjusted (for a 3v stepdown and a 2.8v shutdown maybe use 138 and 129?).

Here are some links:

My advice is to consider bumping your cart to QTY=100 on all the <$0.10 components in order to maximize your savings and have some on hand. They get very cheap in QTY=100.

26

27

Yes. [Insert NASA joke here.]

28

Sweet! Just ordered 6. I’ve got enough loose 105C/Qlite components on hand to build 8 or 9. Also have what I need to flash attiny’s as well. So the newest STAR firmware should work?

29

Correct, the firmware on JonnyC’s GitHub should work. JonnyC merged the dual_pwm branch back into the main branch some time ago, so stick with the main branch.

The constants to focus on when setting up the firmware should be these two:
#define MODE_MOON 3
#define DUAL_PWM_START 8

30

RMM sells parts and board kits with star firmware as well as the moonlight special so I think he might also be able to flash just the mcu for this application and it would not at all surprise me to see this in kit form on his site soon for those of us still not set up to flash our own drivers. Hint, hint. Nice to see this. Has anyone ordered them yet?

31

Three people that I know of: I just ordered some a few minutes ago, DBCstm, and grantman321. All of us can flash, so we should be good to go.

RBD, you don’t happen to know where to get those 5x5mm 105c springs do you?

32

I’ve pulled bunches of em off Qlites, they’re hanging around here somewhere.

33

I’ve got 15 here that I didn’t throw away, yours if you want em.

34

International outdoor store has a selection but not the cylindrical spring that comes on a 105C. I actually like the “F” size more since it is more compressible than the stock spring.

35

Hmm, interesting call on the F spring. I’ve only got the E spring, but maybe I want some F springs now. Looks like it compresses flat.

36

The “E” is a bit soft for me and has a bigger foot but I used them in the butt plate of the Marvin the Martian Blaster.

37

A rare gem, I smile whenever I see the thing.

As far as the “E” springs, I haven’t actually used them and I don’t remember exactly why I wanted them.

38

I felt rather silly making it but sure learned a lot in the process. Now if only I could remember some of it.

39

I'm confused. Remember what?

40

Steve, Scott was trying to remember how much you owed him for his custom electronics work on your project. :wink:

41

Man, this is really slick. I just swapped out the driver in the Eagle Eye BLF light with a 105C and was wishing for more clearance around the bottom side. Now granted it looks like FT is going with a 105D (managed to see that thread) that would solve that, but this is so much prettier and actually being able to implement dual-pwm would be nice :) Awesome work!

42

Looks like Oshpark sent my order to the fabricator two days ago, so I reckon I’ll have them in hand in about a week to 10 days at the most.

While I’ve got everything I need to edit and flash firmware… I haven’t actually ever flashed an attiny before. I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to do the flashing itself with the USBasp, cable and breakout board I have…. but I have absolutely no idea what changes to make to the firmware, or if changes even need to be made, or how to make those changes. Is there a crash-course explanation on how firmware works and how to (or how not to) edit it anywhere?

I’m pretty psyched about the dual PWM and can’t wait to try it out. As far as my goal for the UI, I’m hoping for L-M-H with memory and a turbo stepdown after 120 seconds… So nothing too complicated I think. Will probably do off-time mode memory as well if I get around to ordering some capacitors.

43

Awesome! Always cool to see new people give it a shot. Unfortunately there's no guide to editing the firmware other than reading the comments in the code. Most of it is pretty easy to understand, but things like turbo timing might not be obvious at first just because we added customizations of the time between "ticks", so it's not as simple as setting the TURBO_TIMEOUT variable to "120 seconds". Because of this I actually just pushed changes to the code that only changes the initial declarations of variables so that a 120 second turbo timeout is possible just with one variable change, and gives an easy way to change the code if you want more than 120 seconds. I highly suggest the turbo ramp down instead of step down. You can even say "after 30 seconds, start ramping down to a preset level" (granted this requires calculating how long it will take to ramp down based on the "ticks" timing). Makes for a nice smooth transition that usually causes me to go, "is it even ramping down?!", or "wow, twice the current might not really be worth it" as my eyes can't really tell that it ramped down.

It's late, I'm rambling. If you have any questions certainly post up in the main STAR thread.

44

JonnyC’s response covers what I was going to say, other than the point that you should get around to purchasing offtime caps. That is 100% worthwhile.