While looking for stuff on Gearbest last month I came across a FET driver strongly reminiscent of the EAST-092 in their flashlight parts section. It was less than $5 and I’d already tried Fasttech’s generic FET driver [2.6A].
So it arrived today. It comes with 22/24ga silicone leads pre-soldered. I fixed it to a leftover XM-L and bench tested it inline with a HF multimeter and a Sanyo 2250 greenie.
4.6A
So yeah, it’s a good one. _ I put the battery in a cradle, put a clicky switch in the circuit as well [and 6” of 22ga wire] and tried to see the mode spacing. With that setup current dropped to just over 4A on high. Medium was 1.7 amps, and low was .33 amps. So medium and low are a bit higher than optimal, but its still a workable driver. At $4.47 its much cheaper than a pre-assembled MTN driver, but at the same time, you’re stuck with flashy modes and suboptimal spacing. For someone who can’t/doesn’t want to solder small parts and [like me] balks at the idea of paying $14 for a 17mm driver, this is an option.
(Richard, I’mma still buy boards and bits from you, this is simply satanic advocacy for the community’s sake.)
I have to go to work in a little bit so I don’t have time to load this thing into a torch or reassemble my test rig and test memory, but that will be done tonight or tomorrow.
[EDIT]
Retested with a XM-L2. Same setup, Sanyo 2250 in a carrier, clicky, HF DMM in series.
That's not a bad deal, and it's single sided! I am also interested to see what it does into an XM-L2. I remember early on that people were saying that the vF wasn't that much different between the two, but it is way different. I see up to 2A difference direct drive with good cells between the two, both on Noctigons, on the same heatsink.
If you're going to be a a big consumer of the FET drivers, it would probably pay dividends to learn how to "roll your own". For small quantities they can be hand soldered, but at the end of the day a ~$50 hot air reflow station is also a good investment if you're into modding lights since they can be used for a lot of stuff. You can build one for around the same price, with higher performance. It's only about $20 to get set up with a good SOIC clip (Pomona recommended!) and the USBAsp programmer. The tools and information are all out there now, so it's time to step up your game! Figure that after about 5-10 drivers you'll break even...(but you'll end up building more stuff, so you probably won't save money, but you'll have more fun! )
The 092s work GREAT in a customized version of the Home Depot light! Heck the east driver works great in about anything I have tried it in. Just wish they’d kill the &&^%& blinking.
It IS warranted, I for one have never seen this driver and now I’m interested in it to help with some builds who need more amps than the classical 2.8A Nanjg.
Unmarked save for a tiny divot in the upper right hand corner. Appears to have the exact same footprint as an Atinny, and there’s also a capacitor, a diode, and three resistors, one 1000-ohm and two 10,000-ohm. There is also ‘East-092’ in raised lettering over the FET, but under the paint, so it wouldn’t show well otherwise.
It might be worth buying one and seeing if a flashed MCU from Richard would solder-on. But then if you can desolder and replace the MCU…
I have yet to stick it into a flashlight, I’ll see about temporarially installing it in the T08 tonight. OTOH, I do have a couple 20R’s arriving tomorrow, could give some real numbers then.
Yes, they have pretty atrocious visible PWM in the lower modes.
The FET is good, at least on the good drivers, but I think someone a long time ago poked around at one with a 'scope and found they don't use 100% PWM on 'high' mode. Memory is off-time. So, some good & a not insignificant amount of bad. None of the good parts are better than the BLF drivers. After all, the BLF-17DD was specifically built to eliminate the east-092's bad points.
Figure that after about 5-10 drivers you'll break even...(but you'll end up building more stuff, so you probably won't save money, but you'll have more fun!