Thanks, I really like the tint ramping feature, I wish there was some better hosts/driver though, it would be great in something like a D4V2, or maybe a fireflies E07 or E12, with E27A for a large CCT range.
Yes it’s 5000K+2700K, I didn’t have any 5700K at the time, with 5700K or even 6000K (if the tint is good enough) it would have been better, estimation with sliced 5700K :
I originally thought I would try it on an AA Tool, but quickly discovered that the reflector places the LED too far from the lens. The aspheric lens only works up close to the LED.
Good, straight file works almost as precision ground flat stone - removes protrusions from the surface and leaves it flat. When the surface is already flat, it just slides back and forth without material removal.
Using sandpaper rolled around such a straight file can give some visible improvements in material removal rate.
What’s the best way to sand down a CU board in thickness evenly?
This comes up often but I almost think it’s easier to source a larger 1mm thick CU board and sand down the diameter instead. I thought the smaller Convoy boards were 1mm but according to their store only the 5050 footprint one is 16*1.0mm
I guess I should not disregard kiriba-ru as if I didn’t see his suggestion about using sandpaper wrapped file. I guess my question is then how to keep it even if that’s the best way. Rotate 1/8 or 1/4 turn for every few passes?
Parallelism or flatness? Flatness can be achieved but parallelism is hard with hand tools. I’ve done it to a noctigon before using wd40 and 80/120/300/800 sandpaper. I double-sided tape in a few spots to secure the paper to a piece of thick glass, and soldered a copper rivet (misc parts bin) to the thermal pad to get a grip on it, and about 45 minutes later I had reduced it to about 1mm and it was pretty darn flat. Due to the heat buildup, I actually drilled a blind hole in a thick dowel rod and used that as an insulator. This was years ago so no pics sorry
Get a SS washer the thickness that you want the Cu star to be, drop it inside (bore out the hole if probably needed), then sand/grind away. SS is harder than Cu, won’t wear away as fast as Cu, so you could probably grind down the Cu to that thickness without going too much thinner.
Flashed a smart plug (Sonoff S31) to use open source local firmware to control some (flickering LED ) Christmas lights:
Solder jumper wires to USB to Serial adapter to flash ESP8266 chip
Flash and setup device, web page is the local device IP with all configuration options. No more phoning home to the “cloud” and works instantly with my home automation (Home Assistant) running on raspberry pi.
Costco LED garland the wife really wanted hooked up to re-assembled plug. My 3yo daughter asked “why does it blink like that?” I guess she is already one of us…
“Driver” is a pretty loose term since they are wired in series to use line voltage. I did some quick googleFu and it looks like I could convert half wave to full wave rectifier but I would need to re-string at least half of the lights (I dont quite understand all this though). If I did that I would end up just replacing the entire string and get a warmer tint along with it.
I can probably live with it as is as long as I keep it away from our other lights.