Astrolux EC01 with added display, RGB, UV, and instrumentation

Spectacular! :open_mouth:

anychance youcould do a break down on how much this would cost

Not much. Off the top of my head:
Display $3
Microcontroller $1
Power monitor $1
Touch sensor $0.1
7135s $1
Various passives, wire, materials $4
RGB emitters $6
UV emitter $10
Breakout board $0.3

So in total the added components probably cost less than the host light

Stunning Work! We do need to get there - features many lights could/should have.

Didn't even realize you did a similar to mod to a SD Mini 3 1/2 years ago! The SD Mini is still one of my favorite lights all time.

Very impressive!

i have to bump this again to ask ,how much would one of these cost to make

and how much wont one cost to buy retail

thanks man, im super impressed

I answered above. Total added parts about doubled matched the cost of the original EC01 ($30)

Its not the parts costs its all the work and know how to make one
Also usual flashlights with more than one PCB and a lot of interconnection, flex cable is not easy to do in mass production in a small form factor

Just found this mod….awesome stuff.

Could you please elaborate why? I see oshpark offering flex PCBs for a reasonable price and I before I saw your post I assumed that production volume would be significantly cheaper…

I think he meant small factor assembly is difficult and expensive, not the production of flex pcbs.

I can vouch for the wiring being a nightmare. I ordered some 36 AWG wire after seeing this, and had a use for it recently. It seems about as thick as a dog hair. I had trouble with a board mounted switch, so ran a couple 36 AWG wires to patch it up. The fix worked, but, wow, can't imagine doing a lot of these wires like done here.

Here's mine:

Dunno, maybe my 36 AWG is thinner than what he used. As you can see, it sure looks messy closeup but the tabs on top were recesses into the plastic, so some of the plastic got melted. To further complicate it, I tested the switch before applying the epoxy and it worked, but after installed in the light, it worked for 5-10 times, then stopped working. Letting it cool down, it would work again another 5-10 times... Strange, but the solder bond probably wasn't made. For switches like this, they need extra bracing, so I use extra solder on the front and epoxy on the baxk - never has one of these beefed up switches fail.

All the wiring in this light was done with 34AWG, which is my preferred size for general use. I also keep a roll of 40AWG for the rare occasion that 34 is too big, but that stuff is extremely difficult to work with.

Dang, I must have mis-read that, I see now you said 34 AWG - I ordered 36 because I thought that's what you used :FACEPALM: . Sux get'n old...

Ok - I see Remington has 34 AWG, 200C rated, 2 oz., 1011' length - $8.30 on Amazon Prime. Does this sound like the same stuff you are using?

Another Q - the 36 AWG seemed impossible to strip. I assume just touching the iron to it is enough to melt off the coating, same for the 34 AWG?

@tterev3, since we are at the topic, would you mind telling us a bit more about your tools and work environment?

Yes, you just have to gradually push the end of it into a bubble of molten solder on the iron tip and it burns off the enamel. You can see an example of this in my video about a Nitecore Tube mod here.

I think all those magnet wires on Amazon, etc. are probably equivalent. I believe the brand I happened to buy was Temco but I don’t think it matters.

Sure. My primary tools for small soldering work are:

  • Metcal MX-500 with STTC series tips (usually the very small conical tip) (this is an expensive iron but you could get by with a TS100 and a small conical tip)
  • Binocular microscope in the 10x-40x range (I have an old second-hand one that is very nice with zoom, but I have also successfully used fixed-magnification cheap scopes from eBay that were around 40x and cost about $40)
  • Xacto knife with enough extra blades that you don’t mind using a new one pretty much every time you start a task
  • Flux, solder paste, 1mm solder wire, kapton tape, solder wick, magnet wire, superglue, epoxy, sometimes 0.8mm copper-clad blank PCB material

That’s pretty much all that’s necessary to do this kind of work. Ideally you’d have a fairly tall workbench with an ESD mat on it and very good lighting. I do a lot of this kind of soldering under the microscope so it’s important to have one with a large focal length so you have room to work. Other less-used tools I keep on the bench are a hot air tool (cheapo from Amazon), needle nose pliers, scissors (I actually prefer fine garden shears), screwdrivers, a few other sizes of cutters, and a clamp or stick vise.

That covers the physical soldering work aspect, but once you get into the reverse engineering, debugging, programming, or designing aspects the list grows by quite a bit. For those purposes my commonly used tools are oscilloscope (Rigol DX1054Z), bench power supply, multimeter, computer and programmer (PICkit3 typically), USB to serial adapter (FTDI232), thermocouples. The materials list grows too - I have a lot of microcontrollers, resistor kits, capacitors, MOSFETs, regulators, commonly used ICs, breakout boards, displays, sensors, wire sizes, etc.

@tterev3

Just wow. Impressive mod

How have you managed to remove the driver. I think it is glued. And is there any way to reduce brightness of high setting for switch leds, to put higher value resistor or something ??

For lights like this with the driver glued in, I usually remove the switch cover and switch board so I can push down on the top of the driver board with a thin screwdriver. This does come with risk of damaging parts on the driver though. Sometimes it’s also necessary to heat up the body with a heat gun to soften the glue.

Yes indicator LEDs can easily be reduced in brightness by increasing the value of the current-limiting resistor.

Thank you very much for the info. I really apreciate it. I have subscribed to your youtube channel :+1:

When I was doing assembly work, I was soldering under a binocular microscope and the largest wires were 36 gauge.

For my home setup, and for the job I had after that, 36 is the smallest I can work with. I was using 36 gauge magnet wire to wire a PoE ethernet jack to its control chip, because the genius manufacturer thought it was acceptable to surface-mount an ethernet jack like they weren’t going to rip off the board and bring some trace with ’em.

I hope Astrolux takes notice of this. Who knows? Maybe already next year we could get one for the budget price.