Oshpark Projects

[wight]

@DBCstm

I too was merely thinking out loud as it were. Neat that y’all are figuring a way around an existing problem. Who knows, if it were that easy maybe I’d have to adopt it and start doing things differently.

I find that quite a few lights I use have a retaining ring that accounts for the driver being grounded well. With this ring many of the new boards have too many components very close to the edge. How are y’all getting around that? I’ve been cutting a relief in the inner ring to keep it from contacting the components, thinning down the outer area where the ground contact is made.

Didn’t mean to come across as argumentative, I know that I do more often than not though. Sorry.

Hardly anything to apologize for. As for the component placement thing… do you have specific examples? I understand the basic problem, but it would help to know what you are running into specifically. As a point of reference, my 17mm QX5241 is supposed to have at 0.5mm+ clearance on both sides. That wouldn’t be enough for a retaining ring, I haven’t really gotten that far in my plans yet. I’ve been planning on just kludging something. On the other side of the story I specifically laid out the 22mm 17* board to have the retaining ring land on top of components.

@WarHawk-AVG

Problem with it is, the Zilog only uses 4 pins for programming, the ATtiny will require 6…and that is if nothing is tied into the pins where the data is fed

I agree, that is an issue. I’m not sure how big an issue, but getting 6 connections into good spots doesn’t sound super-fun. I haven’t sat down and worked on it, but I think with some thought and maybe small concessions (arranging pins in a well considered pattern) that it may be doable.

@comfychair

The topside of the current-gen 17DD is awfully crowded on the top, seems like moving the MCU would solve several problems at once without creating any new ones. I think it’s kinda unrealistic to discount a design change because the clip won’t fit through a battery tube, removing the pill is rarely much of a big deal but unsoldering a driver from the pill just because the moonlight really needs to be a ‘3’ instead of ‘4’ gets old real quick.

My personal goal was already to eliminate clips. Sticking the contacts for ICSP somewhere accessible for programming the driver while it’s installed is just a bonus from my personal perspective. I do understand that your priority is specifically to be able to program the chip.

I’m not discounting your idea only because a clip can’t be shoved down a battery tube or past a retaining ring. It’s still one consideration though.

EDIT:
sorry, I meant to mention this: Yes, I absolutely agree with the bit about removing a driver just to do a small tweak being lame. If that can be prevented it will be good for everyone.