Now I can’t stop doing this, and I’m gonna have to place another order to that Osh Kosh or whatever place.
Looks good Willy. :+1:
Hello everyone. I’ve just read this entire thread and signed up just so I could ask one question… Anyone have any spare parts they want to sell? I have 2 BLF A6’s and I’m interested in a couple clear tailcaps, 2 6 led boards (17mm dumb) and a few leds (red and blue) to populate them. I’m trying to avoid buying 5 tailcaps and hundreds of leds that I won’t need. I’m in the US and have PayPal if someone has spares they would like to part with.
Maybe someone could offer kits… :money_mouth_face:
TexasAce was selling completed boards. Not sure if he still has any or not. Its a bit more complicated than that though since many drivers need a minor modification too.
Honestly I’d recommend you just break down and buy the parts. 5 boards won’t last you long, cause you’ll be putting these in everything you can. And you can find multi-packs of 0805 LEDs pretty easily — 10 each of 8 different colors or something like that. Not a lot of waste and/or leftovers, really.
But if you really just want a few parts maybe someone can help.
I have all the parts except the PCB’s currently. Although I do have a fully assembled purple tailcap.
I should be getting some PCB’s in the next week or so and I should have an extra if you just want the parts but like was said the driver will need a bleeder installed to work properly.
Thanks Texas Ace. I understand the mods and tuning required I just don’t need 5 tailcaps and hundreds of leds. I changed the leds in the switches and dash of my pickup and still have a few dozen 3528 and 1206 leds left over with nothing to use them on. I will have to buy a resistor assortment to tune the lights. Maybe I should buy more lights… I could sell them at work.
the pot will take care of the adjustment, the only resistor you really need is the bleeder. I also like to install fixed bleeders on the tailcaps to limit max current to ~.5ma or so to reduce issues but it is not a must.
I put one of the rev5 ring boards in an Astrolux S41S. Nothing revolutionary here; I just wanted to share some photos:
There you go, just make more of them, flashlight addiction solves all of your problems!
I’ve ordered 6 sets of Pilotdog boards from Oshpark, 5 tailcaps from KD, 0805 resistors and leds assortment from BG, solder paste, and various other items. Now I need to order a few more lights and I’ll be all set. 
:+1:
Has anybody considered using a pot for the bleeder?
The bleeder is usually a tiny 0603 resistor and on the top side of the driver, thus it would be very hard to adjust. Better to use a fixed resistor there and a pot on the tailcap where it is much easier to access.
My understanding is the bleeder goes between + and - to allow power for the tailcap to bypass the driver. There was a Rev of the tailcap board with two 3x3 pots on it. I was wondering if that could be modified to be a bleeder pot and a brightness pot instead of 2 channels for the leds. If you change the brightness with the pot, wouldn’t you need to change the bleeder value to compensate?
The bleeder has to be on the driver as that is where the positive normally gets cut off.
The pots on the tailcap are only for controlling LED current, having 2 of them allowed you to control 2 different colors of LED separately.
Now the rev 5.3 is the “standard” board and it uses a single pot to control brightness for the tailcap and fixed resistors to adjust the current for each channel.
So, do the tailcap LEDs cut off when the switch is closed due to the internal resistance of the LEDs, so the current takes the path of least resistance (the switch)?
I’m trying to figure the best way to connect an LED strip under the optics in the head to illuminate the front as well. Do you think if I connected the pos (on LED strip) to the pos lead from the driver going to the main LEDs and then ran a neg lead from an empty pad on the driver (with neg current of course) to the LED strip that would work? Maybe I should draw it out on paper as something seems off when I do it in my head.
I don’t see any way to switch your led strip in the head on when the tail cap switch is off. Is that what you’re hoping to do?
I have a problem with my illuminated tailcap and fet+1 driver with blf a6 firmware. I noticed that when battery is fully charged, it take 8 seconds to go backward at medium tap and around a minute for long tap to reset to the first mode. But when the battery is around 3.6v or below, everything’s back to normal, med tap (1 sec) and long tap (longer than 1 sec).
What’s wrong with that? Maybe the bleeder resistor I used? It is 470ohms for the bleeder and 3.9k for the tailcap led.
Yes, you will have to fiddle with bleeder and tail resistor values to solve that. Since those timings do not go to infinity but still are measurable, you are not that far off a workable set-up. Perhaps going to 10K for the tail already makes it work fine with still a good amount of light coming from the tail leds.
Here is a chart I put together from various measurements I took at different resistance levels to see what the corresponding current is. I tested 4 different colors of LED’s, White and blue will be inline with the green and purple results. Orange will be along the lines of the yellow and red.
From my testing as expected Green, blue and white put out a lot more light for a given current. At 0.04ma of current these colors are MUCH brighter and do indeed need a 100K pot to get them as dim as many want but the Red, yellow and orange on the other hand are almost too dim at .1ma.
Click for larger version:
