Roche F6 hacking

I want to see it first (yeah, so I have 'commitment issues', lol), I'm sure I'll have questions. Like, what's required in the FW to make the voltage warning indicator work? I have no clue about that stuff, if it can't be fixed with a soldering iron and a hammer I'm lost. J)

[quote=comfychair]

The Banggood F6 has totally different internals than the FT F6!

There are two different F6ā€™s on Bangood, one listed as ā€œupgradeā€ with upgraded switch, which one are you comparing?

Link in post #43.

And the 'switch' they 'upgraded' isn't the switch, it's just the stainless button & bezel, the switch is inside and soldered to the driver PCB.

F6 from Fasttech measures 108.5mm overall, Banggood F6 is 111.1mm (edit: actual measurements from the two lights, not just quoting what's listed in the descriptions).

Never in my life have I found something than canā€™t be ā€œfixedā€ with a big enough hammerā€¦

hahaha ASUS Repair Kit :smiley:

Yup, thats fixed real good now!

Looks tasty! :)

OOOOH SNAP!

It's also got two battery level indicators with separate limiting resistors, run by MCU pins 3 & 5... though I have no clue how to alter the code to make them work. :shy:

I think the switch pads are set up to work with either the SMD or thru-hole switches though I haven't checked yet. I have both switch types on hand already.

Helios would have to ā€™splain

Well I understand the PCB layout, the indicator cathodes are both tied to ground, and the anodes come from the resistors. So outputting voltage on pin3/5 will turn the LEDs on. It can use the original Nanjg voltage divider for sensing, and the rest is all in the code for how fancy you want it to be. With the two LEDs both shining at the little faux-fiber optic pickup thing in the light you could even get a third color by turning on both pins at the same time.

I have one assembled and working after more than a little frustration. First try, I relocated the capacitor to between the B+ spring pad and the tab on the frame of the switch... it didn't work. A short press would give the shortest, dimmest blink from the LED, it'd do that once every time the switch was pressed. A long press would give 100%, but then any press of the button of any length would turn it off. I went poking around with the DVOM and found the switch frame isn't ground, and there's really no practical place to put the cap where it can connect to B+ and ground anywhere on the board without blocking something else. So, I tried the cap-in-parallel-with-D1 version... still didn't work. More poking, checked the cap with the meter, found I somehow picked a 1uF cap out of the little parts organizer bin instead of a 10uF. D'OH! OK, so swapped in the correct cap and... guess what? Still didn't work!

I eventually got it running, but only by putting the cap back in the original spot (after the diode) and using the stupid 130 ohm gate resistor. It's stable like that, which I guess is better than not working at all. Blech. :sick:

Ignore the ugly, this is the first one built ever and it took more than one try.

Nothing at all to see here, which is kinda neat. :)

XML2 T6 3B, 10* TIR (disassembled until the mucking around is finished), .020" thick x 7.5mm centering ring. Blue thing is a .028" thick spacer to go under the original o-ring, to bring it up above the top level of the TIR holder. Backside of the stainless bezel needs to be shaved down by around .025" to get it all fit together right - unless I can find a thinner lens, haven't checked that out yet. Stock one is 24mm x 1.54mm.

Iā€™m still tuned in and watching this, I simply have little of value to add.

I read your post, but Iā€™m not 100% clear. I know it may not fit in the light this way, but did you try to put the 10uF cap between BAT+ & a real GND for testing?

To do that would require connecting one side or the other with a wire. Or maybe easier, use a wire to ground the frame of the switch, then put the cap back where I first tried it, on the battery side. Or put it on the correct pads, but cut the trace and tie it onto the other side of the diode. I'm not sure it would work anyway, since it didn't work with the cap+diode piggyback method that worked fine on the other boards.

Gotcha. I think I misunderstood something about the layout when I glanced, and I donā€™t have more time than a glance right now ;-). For now itā€™s useful just to know exactly what you tested (which youā€™ve clarified for me, thanks).

The layout is pretty good, there's not really any one thing that blocks any other thing or makes any part of it too difficult. There's even just enough room for the programming clip without removing the LED wires. But there's not any spare space for moving things around, either.

I wonder if Helios will issue a Version 1 update with the capacitor moved before the diodeā€¦if he does that then he can remove the gate resistors all together actually removing all the components from the battery side