It was dark and stormy night on the Australian East coast. We had just finished a dinner of home made pizza when CLICK.. blackness. A few seconds later Flicker... then blackness again. Somewhere a branch had fallen on the power lines in this hilly and heavily wooded suburb and taken out the power line circuit breaker. The attempted re-close failed to clear the short so the power stayed off. With no moon the house was essentially pitch black.
But wait Torch fanatic to the rescue.
On my desk was Tesla-6 I had been using as a test bed for my Long-Life controller. Feeling my way to the office I located the torch. This was made easier by its size and the glimmer of the silver finish. I would not want to be looking for a small black torch under these conditions.
Press the modified momentary switch and behold there was light. A bit dim for a Tesla-6 but more then adequate. A few seconds later two flashes. Battery low. 10 seconds later more double flashes this time closer together. The torch was going to switch itself off to prevent the over discharge of rechargeable batteries. Fortunately I had the torch loaded with Alkalines for testing so I could just press the button to override the battery low shut-down.
The torch was looking dim because I had already been it running on this set of Alkalines for 32 hrs over the last 3 weeks doing an add hock battery life test with the Long-Life controller. However even after 32hrs there was still more then enough light to easily find my way around the house and locate the candles (yes blackouts happen often in this suburb).
This was a good real life test of a number of the features of the Long-Life controller I have been designing. It is a high current controller, up to 6A, so it can easily handle the 3A of the Tesla-6. It is a linear buck controller so as the batteries go flat the torch just gets dimmer but keeps going for a long long time. It has a low voltage switch off that you can override when you need to and it draws zero current when switched off so you can leave the torch loaded with Eneloop or Alkalines for months and not have to worry about the controller flattening the batteries.
It has a number of other cool features not demonstrated above. It is user programmable with 1 to 3 levels plus momentary Xhigh. Each level is selectable from 25 pre-set logarithmic current settings from 1.5% to 100%. The current doubles with each 4 pre-set steps
You can program over 12 different modes from Momentary only to 1 to 3 levels plus Xhigh(momentary) to a single variable level which remembers its setting when you switch off. The levels can go High, Med, Low or Low, Med, High and any other way you choose. The modes with a momentary level use clicks to change levels and a press to jump to the momentary level. In the modes without a momentary level, clicks and presses do the same thing. These modes are good for anyone whose fingers aren't agile enough to manage clicks.
You can set a default mode and then program another mode for temporary use and quickly reload the default mode when you are finished.
The PCB is 17mm wide x 25mm long and fits in a 25.4mm circle (excluding the Fet). The Fet needs to be mounted to the led heat sink. The drop out voltage at 6A is less than 0.15V. The input voltage can range from 2.35V to 16V
I am not finished the programming yet and don't hold you breath as this is definitely a part time hobby, but I will post when I am happy with the result.
The power came back on about an hour later, but the torch still has many hrs left in its flat batteries.
matthew
But wait Torch fanatic to the rescue.
On my desk was Tesla-6 I had been using as a test bed for my Long-Life controller. Feeling my way to the office I located the torch. This was made easier by its size and the glimmer of the silver finish. I would not want to be looking for a small black torch under these conditions.
Press the modified momentary switch and behold there was light. A bit dim for a Tesla-6 but more then adequate. A few seconds later two flashes. Battery low. 10 seconds later more double flashes this time closer together. The torch was going to switch itself off to prevent the over discharge of rechargeable batteries. Fortunately I had the torch loaded with Alkalines for testing so I could just press the button to override the battery low shut-down.
The torch was looking dim because I had already been it running on this set of Alkalines for 32 hrs over the last 3 weeks doing an add hock battery life test with the Long-Life controller. However even after 32hrs there was still more then enough light to easily find my way around the house and locate the candles (yes blackouts happen often in this suburb).
This was a good real life test of a number of the features of the Long-Life controller I have been designing. It is a high current controller, up to 6A, so it can easily handle the 3A of the Tesla-6. It is a linear buck controller so as the batteries go flat the torch just gets dimmer but keeps going for a long long time. It has a low voltage switch off that you can override when you need to and it draws zero current when switched off so you can leave the torch loaded with Eneloop or Alkalines for months and not have to worry about the controller flattening the batteries.
It has a number of other cool features not demonstrated above. It is user programmable with 1 to 3 levels plus momentary Xhigh. Each level is selectable from 25 pre-set logarithmic current settings from 1.5% to 100%. The current doubles with each 4 pre-set steps
You can program over 12 different modes from Momentary only to 1 to 3 levels plus Xhigh(momentary) to a single variable level which remembers its setting when you switch off. The levels can go High, Med, Low or Low, Med, High and any other way you choose. The modes with a momentary level use clicks to change levels and a press to jump to the momentary level. In the modes without a momentary level, clicks and presses do the same thing. These modes are good for anyone whose fingers aren't agile enough to manage clicks.
You can set a default mode and then program another mode for temporary use and quickly reload the default mode when you are finished.
The PCB is 17mm wide x 25mm long and fits in a 25.4mm circle (excluding the Fet). The Fet needs to be mounted to the led heat sink. The drop out voltage at 6A is less than 0.15V. The input voltage can range from 2.35V to 16V
I am not finished the programming yet and don't hold you breath as this is definitely a part time hobby, but I will post when I am happy with the result.
The power came back on about an hour later, but the torch still has many hrs left in its flat batteries.
matthew
