Toykeeper Appreciation Gift _ Hardware Upgrades

Nice Tom E.

Sorry, I hope things calm down soon. Life has been a roller-coaster lately.

Any suggestions for a decent hot-air tool?

I believe you are correct, sir. :slight_smile:

For some reason, I feel like a kid in a candy store…

with the owner out to lunch. :wink:

Seriously. I took a shower and all I could think about was how to implement a new easier-to-modify e-switch firmware base. Maybe also a ZL-like UI as an example of how to use it.

Ok, I also had some major issues. lost a few critical hours. Started on testing the new drivers - here's a couple pics:

I was goin nuts - the computer would not even recognize the USBASP - no red light, nothing. I did tons of things, power rests, tried other USB connectors, order a cable and new USB hub. Stupid me left in the driver all this time. I removed the cables form the USBASP and it recognized the dongle. Eventually tracked it down to the one driver board. Lok carefully at the MTN driver in the lower left - see anything wrong?

Well, there's actually 2 solder grounds - right side of the cap, and where the "3" is in the upper left -- there's actually 2 small pads solder over in a blob. Fixed the shorts, and all works now. Also tricky is the Schottky diode above the MCU is tight to the 85 pins. On two of these boards, I actually had to hot air reflow the diode again and give it a little nudge away from the MCU. I can't blame Richard for this, because the 85 is quite a big chip, and even with bending the pins practically under the chip still barely catch's the pads.

For the hot air reflow station, I bought this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XTK1JMG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1. $46 shipped is pretty good. I use it on the lowest fan settings. I prefer it separate from the soldering iron. I only move it to be work area when needed. Dunno if this is the best way, but I would never trade down from my Hakko. There's no way I can solder as well as I do without that Hakko.

Anyways, in the detail pic above, you can see where my replacement parts are. I think RMM nailed the design for stable performance from the 24/45/85's. With the tiny 402 FET gate pulldown, and the addition of the zener, I believe he greatly reduced the spikes going in to the MCU, I believe caused by the FET gate.

I also like he gave us a pad (tiny one) off of pin #3, which I use for the indicator LED.

Ohhh - I ran out of SIR800DP FET's, and getting low on 85's, so got in my order with Richard before they went out on vaca -- glad I got that in. Also just had to add another SupFire L5. They apparently changed the switch since the last ones I ordered - it looks much better. Like to see how good it is. The old L5 had a small switch that was a hard press - the new one looks easy, more like an SRK -- I'll see soon enough.

Richard going on holidays?
Your pictures dont do justice to how small these components are. For those that dont know the small components are really really small.
Nice problem solving Tom.

I’ll 2nd the Hot Air station that Tom E linked above. I have a lot of hours on mine & it’s still kicking.

Even the crazy dude gives it a good wrap.

Just mailed out two assembled and tested ATtiny85 drivers to ToyKeeper. Both have the latest Narsil version, so TK can at least use it as a confirmation the drivers work ok when installed. One is an SRK style/size - our original BLF Q8 V1 (https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/BjPlsgMu) that I've been using in a 4X SRK clone for quite some time now. The other is an RMM 17mm FET+1 driver - the MTN17DDm v1.1, with parts upgraded.

The SRK style should be like this:

The MTN17DDm driver, bought here is this:

pm'ing TK now with the tracking #.

Thats kind of you Tom. I’m sure we will all benefit from your generosity and Toykeepers abilities.

It took me a few days (busy week), but I got the larger driver installed in my SRK. It’s the gold one in the site logo.

I’m really looking forward to messing with the code on it. :slight_smile:

With Narsil installed, it defaults to the ramping UI and the ramping is buttery smooth. It goes super-low, super-high, and so many steps between that I can’t see where the changes happen. I just got it soldered together a few minutes ago so I haven’t gotten through all the modes and settings yet, but the Narsil manual should help with that.

Oh, also, it’s a pity it won’t be seen much in a finished light, but it’s really nice how the “Q8” vias let light pass. Put the driver in front of a light surface and it shines right through. Clever and elegant design there.

I could certainly donate one or two of my drivers fully built, flashed and calibrated if that would be of interest.

Cool! Glad to hear you got it ok, and installed. I've been working on updates to Narsil, some details posted here: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/39069/1709, but I'm still in progress, and still hunting down a bug FmC has been seeing, his mod thread here: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/40493, but dunno if it's hardware or firmware yet - I've been unable to reproduce it.

I know you have, or will have your own plans for e-switch software on a 85, but almost wish you could help me on Narsil. Still have more plans for it. I'm at about 75% used code space, so still a ATtiny25's worth of free code space.

Actually - what am I say'n? You already have helped me with Narsil! I stole (borrowed) quite a bit of your code that's in there now !!

I found this 150 ramping table works pretty well across multitudes of lights, from the pocket/headlamp 14500 Skilhunt H15 to the modded up SRK clones. It doesn't work smooth/well with the the MtnE 7135 based SRK driver, modded out to 50 7135's, because of obvious reasons - he used 380 7135's, so the lower PWM values don't work, and, the transition from 1 7135 to the large bank (49) isn't an incremental step up. This light/driver will require a different table.

I also need to generate a "FET Only" version of Narsil to support LDO based drivers to go in lights like the Convoy L6. From what I understand, the 7135 doesn't work well at higher voltages, and will eventually fail or overheat, so the "FET+1" drivers are not a good choice. Actually it doesn't matter if the 7135 is populated, as long as the firmware doesn't use it.

Your drivers are pretty awesome. I certainly wouldn’t complain about having one… :slight_smile:

However, personal enjoyment wasn’t really the point of getting these Narsil drivers. It’s mostly so I can collaborate on new code for BLF’s next round of FET+1 drivers (which will likely get popular when the Q8 ships), and a new e-switch code base. The driver itself is an evolutionary step along the same lines of BLF’s current FET+1 drivers, albeit a pretty nice step. The Narsil interface is pretty sweet so it doesn’t really need more firmwares, but I’m hoping to make it easier for other people to make custom interfaces too.

For your drivers, they’re less evolutionary and more revolutionary. I think the main roadblocks right now are hardware availability and adoption. The biggest wins will probably come from finding someone willing to make and sell the drivers, which isn’t a thing I’m any good at.

As far as stuff which could benefit BLF, having a Mike C driver would at least let me test more of the available firmwares for repository maintenance purposes, and would become more relevant later if the hardware becomes commercially available.

On a related note, your pin-combining insight has already spread a bit. I hear a non-BLF enthusiast named Paramatrek was inspired by it and is using the same technique for some of his upcoming projects. I’m not sure of the details, since he doesn’t want to say much until it’s working. It reminds me of the early days of FET drivers and 2-channel drivers, where people tested the waters and eventually it became sort of a community standard.

I updated the repo to the latest published version, but that was from last month. I’ll try to keep it up to date as new code becomes available.

Anything specific? (er, should probably be PM or in a more relevant thread)

As for my own plans, I’ve been a little distracted again of late. It might have something to do with *ahem* photon swords. I blame 1dash1 and his army of minions. Will post more below.

As a compile-time option, those things are usually not terribly hard to do. Of course, I could certainly stand to clean up the code I used for similar options in my projects… Anyway, if you want, we can totally put a thing at the top to choose a 1/2/3-channel driver, and to choose a pre-calculated ramp for common types of hardware. I don’t expect everyone to use the ramp calculator and do the subsequent tweaking it usually needs. (each power channel tends not to be very linear at the far low end, but the calculator doesn’t know that)

So, I tried to go into detail about why I’ve been distracted the last few days, and BLF was like…

This is not the forum you’re looking for.

So I guess I’ll just have to link to the details instead: (caution: there be Jedi in these waters)

Saber dueling, sprinklers, bent out of shape claws? We need a video to check fighting style and no unwritten Light Saber rules were broken to prevent further damage. :wink:

I’ve been drooling over the sabers shown here:

Always wanted a custom saber. The ones you have look aaaaamazing.

Latest updates to Narsil released and posted. Details in this 25/45/85 thread post: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/34900/914