As of now I donāt have any such plans. Now that youāre saying it - a flooder with 3000 lm CRI97 COB would be interesting. Though definitely out of my skills range.
I think Iāve seen at least 4 inquires about it in the past quarter - and thatās it.
Thus far, Iāve built a total of 4 of theseātwo of the original Rev A and two more of the Rev A2. Sadly, I managed to fry one of the original Rev A boards, so I only have 3 operational right now. I am rather happy with them, but still would like to hack on the firmware a bit.
When I get a moment, Iāll try to get some more pictures of the new builds, along with some measurements. However, I wanted to check in here and ask a question, as my fifth build is currently having some issues: after I power it up, it blinks the LED (at lowish power) 4 times before turning off. My guess is that communication to the temperature sensor isnāt working? But wondering if anyone else ran into the problem / how to solve it.
Iāve got some of the 20mm boards (finally!), and will be doing some builds of those with some new S11 hosts from MTN.
(And yeah, I have had trouble getting my hands on the 47uF 25V recommended caps; 10V and 16V are fine for 6V and 9V operation, but 12V is too little margin. Managed to get a few from Mouser but they are since out of stock.)
Itās been awhile back but I believe the very first one I built had the problem you described. I had used a small amount of solder paste on the 4 small pads and you can imagine what that did when reflowed with hot air with the pads being so small. I tried reflowing it again a few times and never did get it to work properly. I finally reflowed it off and cleaned the pads of any solder, used a brand new temp sensor with just flux on the pads and reflowed. That fixed it. Iām pretty sure it gave me the same 4 blinks then off until I reflowed the new temp sensor on with just flux. I would try replacing the temp sensor or try reflowing the installed one again, maybe giving it a small tap on the top of the head when the solder reflows to get all 4 legs seated. I know itās a pain being so small but thereās not much else you could do besides replacing it and try again.
The last 47uF 25v caps I purchased came from aliexpress. They were considerable cheaper for the amount I received. They may not be of the same quality and I havenāt used any yet. But I did measure a few at 40 to 42uF. I do need to try out a few before I could recommend them. If they can hold up under the voltage they should be fine.
Might want to tone down the cussing, it is not allowed on this site.
That said, having been working off and on with another member for a driver like this, I can tell you that getting this working at all is WAY harder then it sounds.
LO did an amazing job to even get this driver functioning at all.
I also spent well over $100 on components for the testing and prototyping of drivers based on this IC
I wonder if more people has build this driver for themself? Maybe with firmware avalible for all, we can create some improvement which people have requested, but I do not have enough skill to make modification with open firmware and currently I am happy with basic firmware.
Schoki has been working on a version of this driver that would use a ATtiny85 MCU and thus allow normal BLF firmwares to be used on it for some time now. He has been super busy recently though so not much progress has been made.
Sooner or later someone will get it to work with BLF firmware. The only real question is how small will it be?
the loneoeans firmware is on github on the gxb172 website, so I am thinking if anyone here has skills to modify it to work with narsil or anduril firmware? I will also like to try it with my build to see how we can make it work!
Is it possible to get a boost driver like this to have an output ~9V to run a triple in series (something like XP-L2)?
Itās my understanding that boost drivers are typically more efficient than linear especially at lower outputs? But I havenāt seen this sort of setup before so Iām guessing thereās a good reason whyā¦.can anyone enlighten me on this?
Boost drivers tend to burn up when too much current is passed through it. 50 watts as about the most. So maybe 4 amp total at 9 volts (triple 3 volt leds in series). This is quite low for a triple xp-l2.
You could get much more power wiring the leds in parallel then using a FET driver. Thatās what most folks do.