Ok, you are maybe right. I enjoy of progress which make thefreeman last two years with that drivers. I hope only in future if that some of manufactures like Hank or Sofirn to use some of these drivers for mass production. In that case we all be happy because we will have better drivers at cheaper prices. Also in the moment biggest problem it is shortage of components.
i have no opinion about whether or not this project should be open source. his project, his decision.
but i don't remember him ever stating that it was open source.
Any chance of this being shared with Lumintop or Firefly? It seems like this is reliable enough to be part of a "special edition" flashlight from one of the Chinese makers and would flow some money back to thefreeman.
In particular, I would be super happy to see this in a Firefly PL09 variant.
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I support this!
any update?
My man thefreeman made some real nice drivers for my Convoy and it's a massive upgrade. Here shown is M21C with XHP70.3HD 6000K 90CRI
Turbo is nuts!
Moon at 10cm because Opple couldn’t pick it up at 1m
Turbo at 6ft (2m)
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Oh wow, I was hoping to find a better driver for that exact host!
Looks great, its also exactly what I’m looking for!
id30209 Is that driver custom made for you or it is part of already developed drivers from thefreeman?
It is freeman`s test drivers he made to see how it will run and as a test bed.
For more details please ask OP
How many amps on turbo?
Sorry for the lack of regular updates.
@icpart I only made a small amount to test BST18 shown here as render : thefreeman’s HDR Anduril 2 high efficiency drivers - update : FWxA boost driver - #296 by thefreeman
@Ryzbor 6A ~40W, same as BST21 with efficiency measurements shown in the link above.
The HDR FET availability has been pushed back (again…) to Mars 2023, so I tried to find alternatives, I tested two 2.5V Chinese FETs from LCSC, WSD3070DN and HSCE2530, the first one is worthless, but the second one is quite good :
The important points since the FET is inside Rsense are consistent RdsON between samples, low change with Vgs (Vbatt) and low RdsON so all pretty good, RdsON is a bit lower than DMN22M5UFG but maybe close enough that they could be both interchangeable without having to modify the ramp table, which is one of the reason I didn’t to go with SISS80DN (it’s also more expensive).
I’ve been considering having a production batch assembled by JLCPCB since they seem to be the most affordable, especially for single sided drivers, so I’d prefer to start with that first. That could be BST21, or a 6A buck driver (BCK18), but I don’t really know which total diameter size to go with.
_
Aside from that I designed a AA/li-ion cascaded boost+buck with 3V output, which would be more practical for single LED lights than the boost only driver shown on the previous page.
Looks great right ? Well it doesn’t work. Or rather it does but only above 2.8V, below that the boost IC doesn’t start up, even though it says that it can start up above 1.8V then function down to 0.5V, it’s powered at all time at 3V or more so it should work, but it doesn’t, I’m quite bummed because I was pretty happy with the layout 
So anyway I designed another one with the MP3432, I know this one works well on AA :
Unfortunately it’s larger and requires more passives so I had to use 0402 ones, on the other hand it will be more efficient and powerful, so it’s not all bad 
Eagerly awaiting an interesting AA/14500 driver
Hi. Which boost driver IC you used for cascade driver? It will interesting to see datasheet. For MP3432 are you used additional boost converter to startup and power the main boost chip?
The main boost IC in the non working driver is a TPS61022 .
The small boost IC used to power it (or the MP3432 in the other one) and the MCU is an XCL101 , so glad I found that one, it’s small at 2x2.5mm, has an integrated inductor, various fixed voltage options and only require input/output capacitors. Its light load efficiency is very good with ~50uAin at 1.2Vin with the LED OFF.
Nice find about XCL101. It seems to be very interesting high integrated chip. Interesting also I read that when input voltage is above 1.8V DC/DC converter must start. With what load are you test TPS61022 at 1.8V. Most of that low input voltage DC/DC converters doesn’t start at all at that lower input voltages if the load which is connected is to high.
Also there are Ti forums where experts read that forum and help to customers. It will be interesting to see what they will tell us about that problem with non start TPS61022 at low input voltage. Here is the main power management forum:
https://e2e.ti.com/support/power-management-group/power-management/f/power-management-forum
Yeah I saw the forum and I should definitely expose my problem on it.
Well I tested at any current really, as you know the minimum current of my drivers is very low, virtually zero, so I don’t think the load is the problem. I should still test with the buck driver removed and see what happens.
I just assumed it would work as well as the MP3432, which works excellently at low voltages, as long as its Vin pin is >2.7V.
Hey @thefreeman, any chance you will order a small production batch of drivers that are compatible with FW3X/FW3A host?
Well there are several points that makes it more complicated :
- it’s double sided so the setup fee is significantly higher, increasing the price per driver in a small batch. Because it would be produced by a fab I could use 0402 passives to save space but that wouldn’t be enough to make it one sided.
- for the FW3X, since it’s a boost driver, it would be configured to 9Vout (3 LEDs in series), and the MCPCB would have to be modified to 3S like I’ve done several times on different MCPCBs, but are people willing to do that ? That may decrease the number of people interested in the driver.
- physically it’s the same driver in the FW1A, potentionally increasing the demand, but then it would be different Vout/Iout variants, which require a couple of different resistor values. For example 6Vout for B35AM and XHP50, 12Vout for XHP35, technically there is the B35AR (12V) but the availability is not as good, and the XHP50 can be wired in 12V with adequate MCPCB, the problem is that they are often non DTP, or if they are DTP the middle connection goes through the middle pad, shorted to ground, meaning shorted to batt- , it’s a problem that people tend to not be aware of and end up with a non functioning modded light.
The fab can’t do several variants in one batch, so there is a new setup fee for each variant.
What I could do is order one configuration and modify for the other ones myself, it’s just more work, still much less than fully assembling the drivers myself.
- because the driver cavity is only ~2.5mm, the inductor choices are only XAL6020 or XGL6020, both of which can’t be sourced with JLC, which I considered as 1st option since they have the lowest setup fees. I would have to reflow the inductor myself.
So that’s why I would prefer to go with a single sided driver for a first production batch, a buck driver would have only one configuration, which would be simpler.
I did not expect that there will be so many hurdles to implement a suitable driver for the FW3X/FW3A type host.
I must apologise to you for taking up your time to explain the technicalities of the drivers to a person like me with zero knowledge on electronics.
Interested to know what existing flashlights can fit the one sided driver?