Thanks comfychair. I can understand led4power’s efficiency graph as well now.
Nice design! I hope all goes well with your final wrap-ups. Of course I'd rather see this go open design, open source, but hopefully this way, it will have a better chance to make it. The PIC controllers are pretty powerful. I believe there's been custom drivers developed using it, though maybe never made it to distribution. For $15-$20, I would guess it's gonna be tough to sell in quantity, considering most of our single cell lights are $10-$20 now, some to $30. To me, it would have to be under $10, and if more, I would buy/use very limited #'s.
Ideally, if you could hook up with a real manufacturer to get some production volume, then be able to pass along that qty savings to the us hobbyists, that would be really nice! Even if it's semi-custom manufacturing -- there are those guys out there who would probably be interested.
First let me start off by saying that I know very little about the specifics of this kind of stuff. Just enough to get myself in trouble!
Isn’t a constant current driver, based on a mosfet, that doesn’t use PWM, simply a linear driver? Unless the mosfet is in the full ON state, while operating in lower modes, isn’t all the extra power (voltage) wasted as heat?
If so, wouldn’t the efficiency benefits of driving an emitter with PWM-less constant current, be negated by the linear current controller wasting the extra voltage as heat?
I understand that an LED runs more efficiently with a constant current at lower amps, then pulsed current at higher amps, but pulsed current doesn’t waste any energy as heat, while a linear constant current wastes all extra voltage as heat?
If all this is correct, even with the energy loss through heat, is a CC linear mosfet driver still more efficient than the same exact mosfet driven fully on/off with PWM used to control current?
I’m not simply talking about whether the LED is running more efficient, because it will, but I’m talking about battery life, and current actually drawn from the battery?
This probably won't go open source,but if(when) I make a deal with RMM,I'll get him full access to firmware so he can change modes and other stuff for his customers.
Yes,it would be nice if all things would be free,open source,but every time when you make-design-create something and spend dozens-hundreds-thousands hours/dollars,you have more respect to other's creations/designs.Not to mention years of learning and thousands of "place a currency" spent on education/college.If everything would be free,no one would do anything,because why spend money/time/effort if all you'll get is "thanks,you're da man"?You can't live from thanks'.
Free,open source stuff is usually something simpler,or created by a "X" of people,and every of them invested "1/X" of his time-money-effort (1 person should invest "X" time-money-effort to equal that).
Mosfet is in linear mode which is equal to "smart" resistor,so yes there will be dissipation Pd=(Ubatt-Uparasitic-Uled)*I.
But in PWM CC driver that heat is also dissipated,but somewhere else- internal battery resistance,springs,wires,tiny gold led wires,internal led die resistance.
What do you think which is better/worse?
Extra voltage must be dissipated somewhere in lin. drivers,no matter PWM or PWM-less. And because main battery parameter for lin. drivers is capacity [mAh],driver that causes better LED efficiency (consumes less current for same brightness) will power led for longer time.
This looks outstanding. The combination of low height, clear perimeter for a driver ring, and high output sounds like what most of us have been waiting for. Put me in the "wanting moonlight" camp. I understand that it will require PWM in moonlight mode. As far as price goes, I'd buy a couple if it was $20 and arrived as a kit I had to solder together, a few more if it was $10 and ready to install, and it'd be my go to 17mm driver if it was ~$5 ready to go. Those are prices before shipping. I doubt $5 is possible, but it's the reality myself and others will face since there are already good 7135 drivers at that price.
I'd really like to see you come through with this. There are a couple other exciting driver projects that seem to have been put on permanent hiatus, and I would be disappointed if this joins their ranks.
If this takes off, I hope you'll consider a 46mm version with increased current (9-15A) and work with an electronic switch. At least to start with. I'm sure others would appreciate extra features, but I'd rather see something simpler reach production than it to get derailed by lofty goals.
This looks fantastic. I don’t understand half of the things that some of you guys are talking about but all I need to know is 17mm, 5A, very low height and moonlight is of no concern to me. I would love to get my hands on some of these and as others have mentioned some 2S ones would also be fantastic! I think I’m due for another MT-G2 build 
I am assuming it will be wishful thinking but $10 would be nice. I would probably buy 5 at that price and if a 2S version came out I would buy another 5 of them. No idea what I would put them in yet but would be nice to have in the parts box!
I’m in!
This is brilliant led4power!
Would modes like these be possible: 2% - 15% - 50% - 100% (turbo). I recon these would be normalized as to 3%, 20%, 70%, 140%.
A 8.4v version of this would be awesome for those MT-G2 builds, and I don't think low voltage warning would be needed.
Really looking forward to these, if the price is decent I'll get a few :)
I know little about electronics, but if a controller can direct actual electronic routes on the driver board, wouldn't a moonlight be just a direct drive route with a high-ohm resistor in series with the led?
Pretty sure no boost, so think'n you are right - hard to drive an XP-G2 at 5A, same as before. The 6 mohm resistance rated MOSFET is less than a East-092 driver (8 mohm). Still, this design has real incredible unique advantages, as listed in the OP
Price Prediction: $12.99 (I'm being optimistic maybe?), but could be possible with decent volumes
Is it possible to put strobe on half press and hold?
Yes this is the simplest method for low current,but there are no free uC pins available,and board is loaded with components, even one extra resistor is problem(I was forced to use five 0402 size components,those are 1.0 mm × 0.5 mm or 0.039 in × 0.020 in ).
No voltage boost,driver will try to supply led with 5Amp,and since it's linear driver,if battery voltage is lower than LED Vf@5Amp,driver is "out of regulation",so it will provide as much current as it can,which is equal to direct drive.I'm aware of xp-g2's pretty high Vf,so you would not see 5Amp with typical batteries,but idea was to supply as much current as possible on high(sure better than 2.8A or 3.04A max. for 105C and others).
Really like what I’m seeing here! Nice work!
For me, it’s a matter of what it takes to achieve a similar power level the way I’ve been doing it. A stock Qlite is ~$4. It takes 8 more chips to get close to 5A, which is another $3.20, driving the cost of the driver up to $7.20 approximately. This doesn’t take into consideration the solder and time spent stacking chips. Or the frustration when certain chips decide not to like their host and refuse to solder (hey, it happens!)
So, even at twice the price it’s a worthy venture with the benefit of linear drive and time savings for simple operation. The larger spring making it so much easier to do a spring bypass is just a bonus. So yeah, I’d be looking to use these quite a bit at the $12-15 range. That’s completely in line with any other option.
If they’re at MTNElectronics, then all the better…they can ride in the little box with everything else he’s got me addicted to! 
Best of luck making this happen, will definitely be watching and waiting for my chance to start using these!
Thanks for all the hard work, here’s hoping it serves you well…
So how's the weather in Galt's Gulch this time of year?
also, if you really wanna go that direction this might be useful: http://budgetlightforum.com/forum/misc/commercial:
Amazing work!
I want to buy some circuits if it’s price is lower than $10.
However as it is custom mode driver, price is not matter. Normal AMC7135 circuits are very cheap and you can see
everywhere, but this is not!
I hope this circuit will be launched in soon.
Also I’m admiring your jobs, led4power!
:heart_eyes:
My custom programmed 4.9A Nanjg costs a total of $3.34: $2.68 (here-qty-5),$0.66 qty 6 7135's (here-qty-100), total: $3.34. Yes I'm cheap, but I'd still easily pay more for this driver with it's advantages!!
Not a lot of folks like working for less than $12 hr these days. Even if it only takes 30 minutes to fully prepare a driver to go in a light, that’s a bare minimum $6 of time for labor added to the $3-5 for the assembled parts, if nothing goes wrong. Just sayin…
…hope you figured shipping costs into your parts estimate, and waiting time.
Led4power has actually created something from scratch and has done it professionally and elegantly, he deserves rewarding, not being compared to 105C driver cheapness. I am ready to be one of the first to buy some!
Why settle for cheap Chinese copycat boards when some genuine creativity and custom goodness is waiting to be put to good use?
I fell out of the budget crowd way back when my dad made me use cheap tools. I’m in line for some of this goodness…. (of course, I’ll have to get some new hosts now… )
(I’d like to see what kind of cars some of the cheapskates on this forum drive… no Caddy’s huh? No Lexus? No Mercedes or BMW for these guys! The worlds largest collection of Hyundai drivers…)
Not with a tail cap reverse clickie. Oops, I now see that it can work with an electronic switch. How many electronic switches have half clicks though? Maybe I'm misremembering my lights, but I think only my Solarstorm K2's do. So I don't know about a half press and hold, but I'd like to see some sort of press and hold from the on position to activate turbo. That would be like Eagletac's UI with the MX25L3. If there's a moonlight mode, I'd prefer press and hold from the off position to turn on in moonlight mode, especially if there's memory or if the first regular mode is high.