Thank you! 
With a >=8 pin package I probably would have gone with dead bug style.
But this was surprisingly easy, just needed a calm hand, a Stanley blade and a couple of minutes. 
If you cut in a slight inwards angle, the copper delamiates really easy.
The tiny84 lines up real nice on the proto board. Who would have thought cutting the pads in half? not me, great job.
Thank you! All those 1.27mm pitched packages like sop fit nicely on splitted pads. Speen and noise are no issue in this build, so why not use a piece of prototyping board? 
Only a few days left, I hope I can finish the build on sunday, probably just in time.
It’s astounding how fast a month goes by when a deadline looms. You guys making your own drivers deserve a separate catagory based on the time you have to spend on it.
Yes, time runs quick when you need it the most. 
I don’t know, doesn’t make a difference to me if the invested time is used for electronics, software or mechanical work.
Nice going dave_. I take my hat off to anyone that can solder, especially those miniature weird looking electrical thingys let alone understand what they do.
Very cool, Dave! You guys give me so many ideas watching what you come up with for this contest. I really like this little light you came up with. ;)
@MRsDNF
Thak you!
I always enjoyed soldering. Takes a little bit of practiceing for the small stuff though.
@JohnnyMac
Thank you too!
I will finish the last work tonight.
I hope I can find a dark enough place to test it and make a short video if my phone cam is able to produce anything better than noise with some shapes in it.
Great progress Dave, looking forward to seeing the finished light!
Well, time is over now, and it’s more or less done.
I didn’t got enough time today to finish the build as I wanted and additionally busted it a little in the last minutes, but yeah, that’s life.
I even forgot to add a front shot of the completed light, so I’ll do that when the contest is completed.
In conclusion, this was a lot of fun!
I rarely build mechanical things, and if I do, they are usually not made of metal. So I had the chance to learn quite a lot here! (At least that I still have to learn a lot. :P)
I am also pretty sure I never shared anything I built in a forum which makes this also kind of a novelty to me.
It was a lot of fun to read all those build threads and look at all the cool stuff. That alone made it the most fun time I had in a forum for a long long time, thank you all for that!
Any chance you could do a thread on how you built your driver? There were parts like the gas guage that I would like to understand more how it’s used and what it does. Right now it’s like watching Bullwinkle say”Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat”, I see it happen but except for really basic stuff like linear drivers it’s all Greek to me.
I dropped most of the various parts of mine at one time or another but I think if I dropped the whole thing now it would either blow up or make a hole in the floor(it’s really heavy and solid). As with all the other mods in the contest I’ve really enjoyed reading about yours and the thinking that went into it.
Thank you very much!
Sure! I’ll have to catch up with the work I am actually supposed to do (:D), but I think I can get a little time in the next days or maybe on the weekend.
That gas gauge is very useful and not hard to use if there is already a microcontroller in the driver.
I guess the best thing is to attach it to a different controller with uart and show the actual data coming from it on a PC.
I am quite good at dropping stuff, especially if it is somewhat fragile.