Sold/Expired *Closed* Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sales thread

[chrwe]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

In my world, the stock switch is useless and melts too easily ...

What translates into: "I have some superior solution and I'm just holding out on you."

So?

 

[chrwe]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

If someone find this unacceptable, we will gladly repay your money, no questions asked.

Haha, you want to keep 'em for yourself don't you? No way I let go of it! It will fit somehow...:naughty:

 

[winny]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

Well, it did strike me that if I sold all of them, there wouldn't be any left for me.

It's no secret. It's the switches I ordered for my MonsterMag 1 but haven't received until now.
Switch
It says -30 to +70 degrees in the datasheet, but it's made out of stainless steel so it should be able to take some abuse.
Once the first 80 regulators are off, I will start selling these, RGB modded with a special PIR 1 that can use all colors in a nice, hopefully drop-in body.

 

[cnjl3]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

I see on the first post that an illuminated switch is mentioned
under available custimizations.

I assume you mean for the m*g switch?

can anyone shed some light on this feature/option?

thanks,

carlos

 

[winny]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

I'll try to.

I realized early on that it was not only me who wanted to use an illuminated switch, like the Bulgin one from the link, and those people would want to use the LED in the switch for indicating everything, rather than a LED on the regulator, so I included it as an option.

If you don't have an illuminated switch, you might still want to use external LEDs for some reason, like drilling a hole and gluing a 5 mm LED in the body somewhere.

 

[andrewwynn]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

the 3mm extra is not a huge problem..

1) toss the stand offs from the KIU kit..
2) use the nuts meant to hold the socket down as a spacer below the ceramice socket
3) use some 3mm shim to hold the KIU metal up higher from the plastic on the magswitch.. also some could be sanded down to make a little more space.

So.. it should work out ok to fit 'inside' (in quotes 'cause you'd see the PIR in the 3mm gap between the metal and plastic)..

I didn't look for mounting holes.. looks like they wouldn't line up with the standard KIU socket holes, so you'd have to get creative... not exactly sure how id' solve that... it does look possible that the holes could be drilled throuh the PIR to make it happen.

Winny.. do you have any assembled boards yet.. with double-sided.. typically you have a thickness of about 2mm + 1.6mm + 2mm = 5.6mm.. so i'm betting most of the 10mm height is from the big caps.. which i had planned to relocate into the hollows in the mag switch... what is the size of the caps, i could work on my computer model to help determine if that's possible.

I will also mention.. KIU is made of ALUMINUM.. a very easy to machine material.. rather than try to route the wires around inside the KIU..

DRILL A HOLE through the kiu and route the wire OUTSIDE the KIU and directly down into the PIR! I just saved a bunch of people some major headaches who go this route!..

I designed hotdriver with both bulb connections right in the direct center to line up to avoid that problem.. but it's really not a problem AT ALL for the wires to be outside.. it only gets up to about 120C inside there.. and those wires can handle direct heat from a soldering iron.. over 300C!

With the right alignment it looks like the bat- can go directly down through the plastic to the ground return and the bat+ if you use the outer hole for the feed and the inner hole for the lamp.. you can like-wise.. drill straight down, but you'd have to fish the wire a bit around the circular switch mechanism.. the hotdriver has the + feed way on the outer rim so it can go directly through top to bottom.

It looks very positive to fit this into KIU.. only with a minor gap around.. if i can figure out a way to use the stock holes for mounting i will use some spacer .. maybe just 6mm nylon with 3mm center hole as standoffs inside between KIU and PIR and between PIR and magswitch.

So.. i hope those ideas will put people's minds at peace about how to wire them up..

-awr

 

[winny]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

awr,

I actually got a PM from someone here saying that if I had any questions about the Kiu-socket and its applications, you where the one to talk to.
Can you elaborate on your solutions a little?

There are two small holes in the PCB for centering the drill. It was expensive to make a 4 mm hole from factory and it posed some problems as well so we decided to do it ourselves. The reason why we did the redesign was the lack of holes for fixating the Kiu-socket.

I don't have any pictures yet because I haven't received the components yet. They should have arrived this Friday but they didn't so they'll come on Monday... Hopefully...
The big and tall capacitors I think you are referring to are probably the old electrolytic ones you saw on my first alpha-regulator. We are now using D sized tantals so they are only 2.8 mm high and the D2PAK transistor is 4.5 mm high so we are looking at a total height of 8.9 mm if I didn't forget anything.

Drilling two holes in the socket is a very good idea. Generally, I can derivative (is that the noun?) or transform whatever mathematical function you want, but I'm terrible at finding simple solutions for simple problems. Thanks!

 

[andrewwynn]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

I didn't look close enough to realize you used D2PAK.. the hotdriver used DPAK.. so i can have it 1-sided.. they are only 2mm tall..

I'm the 'grand master' of mutating a KIU to fit my needs.. it was my suggestion that made it go from 4mm to 7mm deep in the first place.. to fit my hotdriver of course! thanks to Litho123 for interfacing between me and KIU to make it happen. Ironically.. i need less height now, and there will be a 3rd generation KIU that is much shorter inside.. i want the top inside to touch the top of the transistor for more heat-sinking..

moving on.. for your soluition.. i would try to find an alignment where the stock holes in the KIU will fit.. to drill a couple 3.5mm holes to fit the 3mm screws.. they do NOT have to align perfectly because the screws can go at a slight angle.. they are going to self-thread into the magswitch plastic.

drill through the magswitch directly aligned with the holes on the board.. (it might be very nice if you figure out where those holes should be and if they would work.. pre-drill the boards before putting on the components.. it'll be a LOT harder to drill after the fact.. i wouldn't use a drill in-fact i would use a dremel 'end mill' 1/8" bit to carve a notch out from the side if possible. oh.. fantastic.. i missed the part about the small holes for aligning the drill!

Then i would mark where the + and - bulb connections are on the KIU and drill straight through the top with about 3mm drill (1/8th).. and wire up the socket from the outside, straight through... the wire is very high-temp and won't care about being exposed to the heat below the lamp.

I figured that most people would have tried to wiggle the wire through the inside of the socket rather than take the easy approach i figured out, hope i saved a bunch of headaches!

the phrase would be 'take the deriviative'. some times it's very good to share ideas.

-awr

 

[Tronic]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

winny,

I`m also interested in this Regulator.

Are there any left?
I have seen on the first page of this thread thad you have already 77 piece sold of this 80 batch.

tronic

 

[winny]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

Yup! Three left but the 45 V regulators are sold out.

 

[pertinax]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

So... has anyone actually installed one of these boards in a Kiu socket and maglite yet?

I'm getting the impression from AWR's post that the answer is "no".

Pertinax

 

[andrewwynn]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

I believe the answer is no. The production boards just came in a few days ago, not sure if any were built-up yet. the beta board is too big to fit 'inside' a KIU but i'll sandwich the one i have in anyhow by cutting what i have to to make it fit.

It should not be too difficult to make it fit and work in conjuction with KIU as described by my earlier post.. i'll put the score in the hotdriver column for ease of fitting in a KIU since the KIU was modified to fit around the hotdriver, kinda a gimmie.

I would lean toward a ring of some kind to hold the KIU 3mm from the plastic base.. maybe some 8ga wire wrapped into a circle and soldered closed.. very good news that the PIR actually has index holes where to drill to make it fit into the KIU.. i had suggested i thought that maybe winny can pre-drill those holes before assembly since it'll be a lot easier to drill with the flat boards.

-awr

 

[winny]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

Update again!

Our components have arrived today. Everything was there except for all 5 V regulators. According to our supplier, we haven't ordered them. We are going to order them from a different supplier tomorrow. They are more expensive but time is more important now.

The PCBs fits right into he Kiu-socket very nicely and the holes for fixating them that allows the screws that goes down into the switch seems very centered.

So, you are all asking: "When the hell will I get my regulator? I paid you decades ago!" and the answer is soon. Both me and Alexander (who I'm working with) have our final exams tomorrow and on Wednesday in two courses so I can't work with the regulators 24/7 unfortunately. Furthermore, because we want to test the 5 V supply for each regulator before soldering everything else, we have to wait for the rest of the components. If we would notice that something is not working and we have soldered everything at once, it would be a personal hell to find the error and a lot of expensive components and time would be more or less wasted.

After Wednesday, we are free from school so we have all the time in the world to do everything. I hope we will have everything done by the end of this week so we can start shipping them next week.


So, keep your fingers crossed!

 

[chrwe]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

i had suggested i thought that maybe winny can pre-drill those holes before assembly since it'll be a lot easier to drill with the flat boards.

Whooop! Whooop! Red Alert!

Winny, please, pretty please with sugar on top: Don't do what I just thought about when reading awr's post.

So what did I think? Well, you have to know I'm lazy, very lazy. I think repetitive work really sucks. Therefore I fantasized about a stack of 80 flat PIR1 boards perfectly aligned and a pretty long drill... However: Please don't do that!
:devil:

(Sorry for not contributing something helpful, I just have no clue when it comes to electronics.)

 

[winny]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm as lazy as one can get, but I know the dangers of drilling and I'm used to repetitive work (I planted trees for four summers in a row which basically means doing a 5 second work over and over again for 8 hours a day).
I have to get a 2.8 or 2.9 mm drill tomorrow so I can start working. And don't worry - I will do them one at a time.
Thanks for your concerns!

 

[andrewwynn]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

well i had thought of 2-3 at a time being feasable myself.. but i just drilled the adj. holes in about 40 KIU sockets for the hotdriver last night.. those little self-centering holes and a drill press would make short work of drilling the 160 holes needed.

smart thinking on the stepped phases of making the regulator.. it's very frustrating to try to find the bug when it's all wired up.

When i do the hotdriver for example i leave out the key ingredient to the low-volt cutout ckt.. because of something is wrong with the setting pots.. it will very typically just not start up because of an in/out voltage missmatch... faaar easier to troubleshoot if it starts up but is at a wrong voltage.

I guess with the uC concept no-go with full-range voltage so the 5V reg. was a requirement. I had a temp control ckt that had hysteresis built in, even have some samples and was going to put it into the hotdriver but it also required 5V.. so i solved the problem a different way that uses just an op-amp that can handle any voltage.

The temp control added SIX components! quite a lot considering that the 'mark 1' regulator had only six total components.. the final model.. 20! yikes.

-awr

 

[WhiteHot]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

AWR,
Any testing results yet, preliminary impressions or otherwise?

 

[andrewwynn]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

no time yet.. next weekend i hope

Winny.. use a 3.2mm drillbit.. the screws are 3.0! (plus the holes in the plastic will be hand-drilled and alignment issues make it impossible to install if there is even 0.05mm off center between the metal and plastic!).

-awr

 

[Tronic]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

for 1 Regulator

Thanks!
tronic

 

[winny]

Re: Programmable Incandescent Regulator 1 sign up-thread *accepting payments*

I thought that making the holes a little bit less than 3.0 mm would solve the fixating problem for the regulator. I'll read the Kiu instructions again and do some tests tomorrow...