All the smaller AAA boost drivers I’ve seen with modes use stacked boards to fit an mcu. Somehow they look bigger on your table than mine. 
With 12mm you serve quite a lot of AAA lights 
I’m hoping at some point these boards will be sold ready to go, Mtn Electronics is the obvious seller, but a source in Europe or Asia is easier for us overseas.
To that effect it seems GB’s with custom drivers can make that happen. The drivers end up sold separately afterwards.
This project still alive? By all means!
But all of you following this thread are now accustomed to the length of my production cycles…
Nevertheless, there is hope for some professional solution:
RMM seems to be still working on a boost driver, as he did let slip in his thread:
Perhaps if we start nagging :innocent:
Hmm, I really hope that Richard get his boost driver succesfully running and for sale…
Today I hoped to mod a BLF X5 (the OL-engraved one) with a boost driver to get it working on Eneloops (I’m sure that Old Lumens will approve that, he used to be not keen at all on using li-ion cells), so I tried an LD30 that I had. Unfortunately, the three modes on the XP-L Hi led are as badly spaced as can be: 1lm, 120lm, 135lm, can’t live with that 
On the bright side: to my surprise the X5 with the XP-L Hi at the very modest 135 lumen is a very nice and useful flashlight, it is not as impressive as the 1300lm of the stock X5, but its good throw makes it still a powerful flashlight.
Where did the LD30 come from. I’ve never had one outputting like that and would prefer not to.
Not sure, I have had it for a while, the little plastic bag it was in suggests banggood, but is is not listed there (anymore?). It is one with a long narrow battery spring.
1-120-135 is a very strange mode spacing. Does is occur with 1xAA and 2xAA? Maybe it’s optimized for 2xAA and with 1xAA it can’t boost high mode enough.
Ah, the X5. I’m eyeballing it (the black astrolux s3 host to be precise) for some time now but couldn’t convince myself to spend the 20$, yet. But it’s still on my list…
The X5/S3 has a very effective reflector for a single NiMh flashlight, it is a small enough size but the finning is bit overdone for the mere ~1W of power that is produced. Ideal would be a slightly leaner host the size of the ancient Romisen RC-G2 (which has a slightly smaller reflector that unfortunately is quite heavy OP).
Just about perfect for a Micromag on a single nimh.
I put together one of the 15mm V3 boards today. It’s currently running in a SK68 with a $1.68 XPG3 from Arrow Electronics. I’m very happy with the light considering the minimal cost. I went with the standard thickness boards(1.6mm?) and didn’t have much trouble getting the driver to press fit. Thanks for all the hard work HQ.
Seems to run fine on a 14500 as well.
Hi Bourbon Guy,
thanks for the feedback, I’m happy and proud to hear you got it working. I was extremely busy the last weeks, so I couldn’t respond earlier. But I’m really curious about the following:
Where did you source the PAM2803?
How many capacitors did you use, which ones (µF) and where?
Which firmware did you use? Anything to share, perhaps?
How did the soldering work out, any places with too little space?
Cheers
HQ
I’m glad that this project is still alive!
It would be especially awesome if it ends in a ~5 dollar china-produced finished 15mm driver with pretty configurable software, similar to the BLF-A6. That will make it available to a much larger public. But I must admit I see no easy route to get it that far.
Perhaps Banggood is interested if this driver as part of a to-be-designed BLF-AA flashlight. If this project is taking place sometime, I vote for a compact zoomie.
I’d buy them
But the 15mm version is so tight that I doubt it can be reliably produced in numbers. I still consider an MMU version an option, but that can not be re-programmed.
I finally did the schematic of these drivers.
Sorry to disappoint you HJ, but I didn’t add anything to your work. Apart from the BAT60 and an additional 10µF cap all the components were swapped from the fasttech driver. I just used minidrv with 2 modes.
I actually assembled a second one as well, and felt the component spacing was very good. Not really any harder to assemble than some of the fet+1 drivers.
Question for the driver ninjas around here: does a guy with average skill have any chance of building the 15mm driver with a soldering iron or stovetop reflow? I can do lots of cursing if it helps 
If not, what about the 17mm ? I’ve been thinking about a 4/3AF NiMH light for a while to leave in the car.
You could, with a hot air gun! I build 1 and 2 sided drivers that way.
Nah, I’m not disappointed, I’m truly glad it worked out.
Soldering iron, I’d not dare on these.
Most parts of these boards are not stock eagle parts. I made almost all of them smaller, so they still work for a reworking station, but you have not much space for an iron. The MCU will already be difficult. The PAM2803 is so tightly surrounded that you will probably bridge where you don’t want to even with a 0.8mm tip. The pads of the inductor are hardly protruding at all, just so much that you can see if the solder melted.
Stove should work pretty well.
I haven’t done it with a driver board, but I reflow emitters on a regular basis with a stove, a very small teflon pan, a sliiiight oil film, this solder paste and pliers. As these boost driver boards are single sided, that should work pretty well. Just be gentle with the heat, don’t use the stovetop directly without a pan, and try the solder paste on empty boards first to get a feeling how much heat you need before you fry some precious parts.
But if you got 40some bucks to spare, a Youyue 858d+ is really worth it and can be used for easy desoldering and building double sided drivers as well.
What’s the purpose of the oil film? Heat transfer? I’ve done one triple in an old teflon pan so far and it went fairly well so I’ll probably try that first. I really don’t need one more tool to put away. At least not until I can make more space.