Thank you for bringing this little experiment of yours to BLF.
I am also one that is very interested in trying one, whether building it myself with your flashed MCU or a complete driver.
Might would have to build a whole new flashlight from scratch just to honor your work on this !
I would love to try one of these out as well. I am thinking 18650 powered mini C8 with an XHP50.2. After having build one XHP50.2 in 4000k for an old SupFire I have, I have really decided that I like this new led. I would be willing to build 1 to test if I had a programmed MCU and a shopping cart list.
Thanks for your kind words! I’m currently working on a write-up on this project and releasing all open-source as well as offering the boards on oshpark so everyone can build one for themselves. I do have extra boards and I can offer firmware-flashed boards with MCU at a later time, but I really will not have time to offer built drivers. I do understand it’s a bit tricky to put together and I highly recommend either a micro-soldering station with magnification for hand-assembly, or even better if you have solder paste (can apply using a needle) and reflow with an oven or hot-air. Updates will be on this thread.
I’m not quite sure if it makes sense from an electrical point of view, since there’s really not much use case for it except in flashlights (which makes up a very small % of their sales), and that it’s not electrically efficient since resistive losses go up by the square of the current.
I’m 100% sure I can fit it all onto a 17mm driver with no less functionality and with a single PCB. Just need to find some time to do it!
It takes a while to assemble this together by hand only because it’s fairly small. So I don’t really have any plans to offer these for sale as whole drivers, unless I have some help in getting this mass-produced! Otherwise I’ll be releasing more open-source so anyone can buy the PCBs themselves on OSHpark or similar and assemble it
Very much interested in building a couple of these. Also very interested in the "New 0.4mm pitch micro programming header for ATtiny84A" you mentioned, and how to utilize it. I would like to be able to make "tweaks". I'm sure real estate is tight, but if you haven't yet, if you can add 1 to 3 pads for spare I/O pins, much appreciated. Indicator LED's is one thing I'm thinking of or possible dual e-switch support.
I'd also love to see those pics of the board blown up a bit.
I managed to get all the components on a 17mm board, I used a different digital potentiometer, so I had to change the connections to the ATTiny.
One more thing: In this design you need one wire across the board on the top side, so it’s usable, but not great…
Sure that’s possible with blind vias and buried vias, but I’m stuck with 2-Layer designs on my software.
I think it’s even possible with 2-Layer and without an air wire, but that takes a lot of time, just positioning all the components.
Does Oshpark even do 4-layer? I think you’d need a larger minimum order from Seeed studio or someone else to get them. This is where I was thinking some of the miller’s donation/developement money should go if we want a boost design to get from open source to production.
Yeah, OSHPark does 4-layer. Richard made one of his MTN-MAX buck drivers in 4-layer. I don’t know if he still sells that one. But, he was getting them from OSHPark. The price is a bit higher and the lead time is longer compared to the regular 2-layer boards.
OSH Park does four layer boards. They don’t support buried or blind vias though. The lead time is shorter than the two layer boards with extra copper thickness, and not noticeably longer than regular two layer boards.
Oh yeah, I forgot that they don’t do blind vias. But, even if you have to do a via all the way through the board, that still takes up less space on the top and bottom than a complete trace. The vias can be made small and placed under components or in some other out-of-the-way place. Still, if the layout can be made to fit onto a regular two-layer board with a 17mm diameter and no air-wires, that would be better.