Just a note, unfortunately the Lume1 boards are unlikely to be compatible with Lexel's boards. I don't know what the exact schematic of his aux boards are, but the control is likely based on pulling one Attiny pin high or low to turn the LEDs on or off (or through pull up resistors in MCU).
However, the VCC voltage I'm running the Attiny at is different from the battery voltage, so the system may not work as designed. Likewise, the MCU used is different (1634 vs 85), as well as having different pins. Instead, the lume1 tri-LED AUX boards will allow you to recreate all functionality and colour combinations provided by Lexel's boards, as well as additional features provided by Anduril since Lume1 has individual RGB LED control exactly the same as the Emisar D4V2. This includes voltage display, a variety of flashing modes, colour combinations, and bright/dim settings.
The RGB Aux boards are included with the Lume1 driver for now as well, but tri-LED boards will require DIY assembly.
For FET disabling, yes the easiest way to do it is with the config files, just a one line change. The Lume1 also has 4 additional solder jumper pads that need some firmware to be taken advantage of. Perhaps toggling FET on/off could be one of them..
Anyway, I'd love to garner more feedback from the Lume1-Fw3x driver; perhaps I could roll them into improvements for future drivers. One flashlight I'm eyeing is the Noctigon KR4 and similar series but I haven't had a chance to purchase one yet! It would be nice to also including USB charging I think.
Yeah the brightness will be wrong with the Lexel boards, but I’m hoping that is just a resistor change. The ones I have light up (very dimly) at 2.5V. They look better IMO than the tri led boards.
I ordered few of them. Hopefully, they will be delivered smoothly without problems.
Speaking of the problems, I am OK with the programming pad for MISO and MOSI. It is something I can deal with. If I understand correctly, loneoceans has not tried out the version for the actual production yet. Also, hopefully, the driver will work fine without other problems.
I would like to thank everybody who has made this driver possible.
Awesome! I guess this means I need to get off my butt and get the code merged.
I’ve mostly been trying to finish up Anduril 2 lately, but after that I’m planning to merge the Lume1 branch and the AVR 1-series branch.
It’s unfortunate about the swapped flashing pads. I should probably get myself another flashing adapter so I won’t have to constantly rewire things. Perhaps it’s time to put in an order with Hank…
My mystery ebay 30 AWG stranded PTFE arrived. OD is ~0.77mm, not the skinniest ever but smaller than silicone and assuming it’s legit should withstand high temp. Will investigate more as my drivers get closer.
In the detailed information, the following is noted:
“Max Turbo is done with a DD-FET, but the current path does go through the sense resistor, adding 20mR in the path. This reduces slightly the absolute max brightness. It’s possible to ‘fix’ this with an additional FET to bypass the resistor, but I’m not sure if it’s really worth the effort. This however can be beneficial for some kinds of lower V_fwd LEDs (marginally).”
So in a sense, that makes this driver even better for 219B’s, and I would think it should be fine for a single XP-L.
A related note, the FET is not PWM’d. If I understood right, the other components interact with it, and the resulting rise time of the FET is somewhere in the ballpark of a full millisecond. So the firmware works normally up to max regulated current, and then the FET 100% on / full turbo only.
I’m a little curious what the effect of trying to PWM it at high frequency would be - might it smooth the output at an intermediate value with ripple at the PWM frequency, or would it risk burning something out?
i have some 30 AWG solid wire-wrap silver-plated wire with Kynar insulation, measures 0.5mm OD, wire diam is 0.25mm. 50 in a pack, 5” long with 1” on each end already stripped off. i doubt this wire is being used to carry any significant current, it could be used as a fuse in a high current circuit.
I’m sure it’s a non issue but I’m pretty sure mcpcb can be higher than 100c but the wire (insulation) will likely never have good enough contact to cause issues. I only had down to 28awg silicone so just decided to get PTFE
I wanted a set but the $8 shipping killed it for me sadly. For $29.90 I can almost buy another whole FW3a with free shipping which makes it unjustifiable.
I installed one of the drivers I received yesterday. It is definitely not the easiest but doable.
1) start by filing down the pcb cut marks.
2) My FW3A had a flat lip on one side of the PCB, but Lume1 did not. If you don’t file it down, the driver does not sit properly. The circuit still works fine, but you will have a 1mm gap once you screw on the tube. I filed it down to the inner ring on the pcb, and then it fit just fine.
3) I used 0.3mm (28awg) enameled wire for RGB wire, marked them ahead with sharpie dots to distinguish later.
4) You absolutely have to have the original mcpcb. I had a noctigon mcpcb with sliced dogfarts, and did not have the right wire routing for secondary PCB to sit properly. So I switched over to original FW3A mcpcb with SW45K flowed.
5) It is a major PITA to make sure that the secondary LED pcb sits properly. It does not need to be flush with the mcpbc (I was not able to), but it needs to be as close as possible. In then end I had about a mm of gap and the optic sat nicely.
6) By the time I got to wiring the secondary LEDs, the sharpie dots were already cleaned out. However, it is ok if that happens - put together the battery tube, and test out the primary LED. Once you verify it works, turn it off and then start probing the secondary led wires with a voltmeter, you will find that one pair has some voltage between them on the order of volts. Between those, the (-) polarity is K on the secondary PCB, and the remaining three wires are RGB. Now, the modes are cyclic, so I honestly think it is not important how you wire between RGB wires, all permutations are valid, they just change the blinking order. I wired them randomly, and the flashlight seems to be working quite nicely so far.
In the end, I have a FW3A with a buck boost driver supplemented with a FET for DD and SW45K. It is the almost the same size as my SW45K SC64C LE (not McBob version, my DIY version, but definitely inspired by him) and a similar efficiency for most lo-mid modes, but with a much more powerful hi-mode. Honestly, this is quite the holy grail for me, thanks lone ocean.
Next, I’ll switch over my FW3C to Lume1 and the sliced dogfarts which are another favorite of mine for when I prefer purer white of sliced LH351D over rosy 219B.
We already went through the pcb variations with Lexel’s boards, even the OEM ones have like 3 versions. If you have to you can scratch off a new pos or neg pad if you really want to.
