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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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    although I think these drivers could become very expensive and once the manufacturers start substituting components it’s efficiency could decrease.

    The buck ICs I used are actually not very costly, the inductors are a bit pricey but since there is quite a bit of free space on the board, (and unused stuff for low side sensing because I made it both high/low side sensing) larger cheaper Chinese ones with similar specs could be used and the performance would be unaffected.

    Generally that’s what I would do if contracted for a driver, for example I made my BST21 one sided and 0603 min size for easier self assembly, due to that I used a 70x0 inductor size (~7.5×7.5mm, variable height), which if it was Chinese branded would not have satisfactory specs.
    If asked to design a similar driver I would use a larger 1040 inductor (10×11mm×4mm, common size used in Convoy drivers) that are even a bit better than the Bourns/Coilcraft 70x0 but cheaper, the driver would need to be double sided but produced in large quantities this doens’t have a high cost. The converter IC can’t he be substituted, the only other power component would be the RPP PFET but there are a few pretty good chinese ones like the one used in Noctigon boost drivers.




  • thefreeman@lemmy.worldOPtoflashlight@lemmy.worldDavid and Goliath
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    1 year ago

    The small one dubbed BST15 is a 15mm component clearance/17mm total diameter boost driver, rated for ~40W (6A~6.5V, 3A~13V), with HDR (low moonlight), it’s compatible with e-switch (Anduril) and Mike_C’s OTSM implementation for clicky switch, I made it (with his blessings) so that it is easier to build than his version and added reverse polarity protection , my first version had some issues at high current, at the time I didn’t do too much troubleshooting and left it aside, recently I made an updated version, which is the one I just assembled and it works well. The next step is assembling a couple more to send to Mike so that he can finish his firmware, then I’ll share the PCB/BOM for people to assemble it themsleves.

    The big one is also a boost driver, 1S input, I’ll post more detail once I have finished testing it, I did some partial efficiency test already but I don’t have a power source powerfull enough to test it at max current 😅.
    It’s for a rather popular light so it shouldn’t be too hard guess which.