LED drivers and Accessories you want, but don’t exist

Jokers….
Once you have a simple low-power buck driver, adding a FET-based linear driver is a matter of like 20 extra components, mostly passives. That’s not a small change. Adds some board space, but not terribly a lot - LD4 is single-sided 17 mm and these components take about half of its board space. May require use of a MCU with more pins than the old SOIC8 ATTinys have. For that effort the payback is much higher regulated output as well as longer regulation.
Once you’re there adding unregulated mode costs nothing and pushes the peak further up.
And then adding a resistor cheap and reduces moonlight to ultra-low level.

Overall: Complex. Expensive. Unlikely to fit on a double-sided 17mm driver. But:

  • peak power is top notch
  • peak regulated power is top notch
  • bottom power is top notch
  • efficiency is top notch

W/out the buck driver, the points 1,2,3 would look the same in a simpler, smaller and cheaper driver. But efficiency at low modes won’t be top notch. So I view that as the high-end choice for 1S 3V lights where it’s not too large….which is quite a lot of lights.

Did he mean WiFi?

The following is of course just an opinion. Take it, build upon it or leave it.

Lots of people here are keen with the MOSFET driver idea. Such idea is not a fit for everyone or any case. It is unregulated and overall limited, and requires careful assessment of all components as there's chance to make the emitter operate with too much current (past optimal zones) or even fry it. Of course I can understand the people here aims for hybrid drivers, but this would require for the driver to know when to switch operating modes… ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

As far as I understand the MOSFET thing is clearly superseded with a proper linear design, a MOSFET linear design like led4power designs or the LD-25 (reviews: there and here). I also gets rid of PWM annoyances.

A proper linear design uses a suitable MOSFET and a current sense element. Selecting a proper tiny value current sense element is key, notice how the latest LD-25 does with just 10mΩ. This is key for high power output. Since dissipated power at the sense element is P = I² × R even smaller values may be due.

Anyway, I'd say the best option is a buck boost design. If you really like to go nuts and “fry” your emitters, oversizing the components and removal of the whole constant current logic could be done for regulated drivers, and leave you selecting desired output voltages for the different modes through some way like adjusting current in LD-25s (a constant voltage supply).

Cheers ^:)

It seems there’s some work on updi in avrdude:
https://github.com/facchinm/avrdude/search?p=1&q=updi&unscoped_q=updi
I see on avrdude that some people are using it though I fail to understand the details.

Maybe missing PIC microcontrollers' love: programmers, people making ports of existing code for other chips and such.

Plenty of PIC micros in many drivers.

Regarding software names, calling software Anduril or Narsil just sounds @#$% to me. I prefer descriptive and senseful terminology, plus detailed version numbers.

Are there any 15mm drivers with Anduril installed?

There are some TA 15mm designs that could have anduril flashed to them.

Lexel most likely offers them pre-made as well.

Hum, what do you mean by pre-made? Ready to install the FW? I don’t know how to install it and have no means install the FW.

Also, another question about those TA drivers: do they work without the 7135 chips in the bottom (spring side)?
I have some lights in which I could use 15mm drivers with only the spring (or no spring) on that side, as the chips would interfere with internal space/battery.

Thanks for the reply in advance!!

It should be able to work without the bottom side 7135’s but would need the right mode group selected to do it.

Lexel makes drivers that are ready to install in small quantities.

I generally don’t bother with making drivers to sell unless I can sell at least 25-50 of it, just not worth the setup time for less then that personally.

Thanks for your reply TA! I get what you say, and I would need to check with Lexel if he could make those drivers as it would imply more work!

I also know that MTN has those flat sided drivers ready to install, but I didn’t see them with Narsil or Anduril, only the Ramping IOS from the D4 on them.

Thanks again! :+1:

I’ve been using the new TinyAVR Series-1 chips (412, 416, 817, etc) in some recent designs, including my "smart" tailcap.

They’re pretty neat, but the difficulty is that pretty much all flashlight firmware up to this point is for the 13A / 25 / 85 chips. I wrote a new barebones NarsilM-inspired firmware for the Series-1 chips earlier this week. And last night, I converted Tom_E’s RampingIOS to run on them (not fully tested yet though). I hope to be designing a single-sided 5A linear driver around these chips pretty soon for the Emisar series (with the D1S + Flat White in mind). I want to confirm another design is working properly first (a 17mm single-sided linear 3A driver). I really like the single-wire debugging and programming that the UPDI provides. And it makes the “programming key” pad footprint smaller and more manageable. They have a lot of good peripheral options, too: internal VRef and temp sensing (which the 85 does have), RTC, TWI/I2C, 16-bit clocks, flexible low-power options, QTouch, etc.

AVRDUDE has added support for UPDI, but not in the published compiled versions yet. So if you want UPDI, you have to compile it yourself. I also ordered the JTAG programmer that El Tangas is working with, but also haven’t tested that yet. For now (until I get fully up to speed) with the Series-1 chips, I’ve been using Atmel Studio 7 for flashing, done via a ATtiny416 Xplained Nano dev board set up for off-board programming.

Oh, it is descriptive.
Narsil was forged by elves and Andúril is reforged from Narsil.

Excuse me but,

I don’t even wanna know…

:smiley: ……………………………………… :open_mouth: ……………………………………… :person_facepalming:

Come on, you guys know what the "E" stands for in my name?

E for this? :smiley:

Edison?

Eggplant?

Magic electronic Elf.

:slight_smile:

Magic Engineer Elf.