FearOfTheDark's Modified Light for the 10th Annual BLF/OL Contest

I believe this will be good :+1:

Thanks guys.
Hope it will be good.

“Dead bug” soldering the MCU (The wires may be familiar to you):

:slight_smile: :+1:

Nice work so far, can’t wait to see the finished product. What firmware are you going to use? Anduril for the stepless ramping?

Thanks, I wrote my own FW.
Actually that’s why I only started making progress with the HW in the last few days, I was busy writing the code.
I did not find any existing FW for controlling four LEDs (RGB+W)

I haven’t updated on my progress in the last few days because after soldering almost the whole circuit I couldn’t get it to work :frowning:
I had to desolder all components and wires and repeat everything, step by step, until I realized that the problem is probably with the current regulators.
I couldn’t figure out which of the components is defective so I will replace them all.

Very frustrating. I’ve run into that and now am certain to test the operation many times as assembly progresses. Keep up the good work. :slight_smile:

So it turns out I was just unlucky twice and two defective regulators managed to get into my component pool. I have to stop ordering components from AliExpress :person_facepalming:

After I replaced all the regulators I encountered the same problem again - changing the PWM did not affect the LED and it illuminates constantly in low brightness , even with a cycle time of 0.

I turned to the BLF experts for help, but the solutions they offered me did not solve the problem:
I added a capacitor to filter the noise on the ATtiny’s voltage and even lowered the ATtiny’s frequency.
Unfortunately, lowering the frequency to 128KHz locked the ATtiny to burn and before I realized it, I changed to my second ATtiny and destroyed it too.

I was very desperate because I had no more ATtinys left to replace and I was already considering abandoning the project.

Finally, after some online research, I found a tip to change the frequency of the ISP’s clock and I was able to burn to the ATtiny again but I still haven’t solved the problem with the regulators.

I decided to desolder all the regulators from the circuit again and check them one by one until I found the faulty component and threw it away.

After all this struggle I soldered the working regulators back to the circuit for the third time and now it finally works properly.

Frankenheadlamp! Love it. Can’t wait to see how this turns out.

After I finished with the regulators, I removed all the LEDs I solder for debugging the circuit and FW.
I permanently connected the resistor and capacitor. I had to sand down the capacitor to fit it in the narrow space between the board and the lid

Thanks bobvoeh,
Unfortunately, it takes a lot more time than I planned

Doesn’t most things? :wink: Looking good.

Indeed, especially hardware projects

Just before I put everything together, I wrote a FW that turns on the LEDs randomly to make sure everything works as expected

:+1:

Oh I hope I’ve learned enough by next year to write my own firmware. This looks great.

The last steps always take the longest. But, the deadline is approaching so I have to move forward with the project.

I soldered all the wires, to the button and to the colored LEDs.
I also glued the rubber to protect the button.
Unfortunately the original wire for the main LED is too short and I can't close the light so I have to replace it to complete the light.

Meanwhile I ran it with the random FW to make sure everything works.





Before the end of the competition, I disassembled the LED and r reflector to replace the wire. I soldered a new longer wire and closed the headlamp.
Apart from the new button instead of the charging socket, it is not possible to tell that the entire internal circuit has been replaced.

:+1: