The original plan was to remove ALL components from the original boards, both through-hole and SMT, except for the Constant Current Driver. This proved to be impossible as the SMT parts are all glued on! So instead, I decided to isolate the driver IC by milling away the track and the SMT parts in the area around it!
This first board you can see the result of attempting to remove the SMT parts with the heat gun!
I also decided to keep one of the fuse holders in place for the 12v feed to the Buck Converter. Using the original track on the board allowed short bridge wires to be used to connect the module, with a bit of hotmelt glue to hold it in place
The 10 turn preset for setting the output voltage seems to have far too many turns than required - it took a fair bit of 'screwing down' to reach the 3.9V required. Next step is to connect this to the Driver IC, add any other required parts (bypass capacitors etc), replace any poor output LEDs, and wire it all up. An on/off switch will be added to the casing.
Although I do have a lot of 5mm white LEDs, Ive also started to salvage the ones in my now failed Black & Decker LED worklight.
As Sam is becoming a very competent programmer, we've also decided on another Arduino project. As I obtained a couple of HB100 10GHz doppler radar modules some time back, we are going to build a speed gun!
On each blog post I will be including the following link -
£50 credit if you switch energy supplier to Bulb Ltd
This is my own personal referral link, not an advert! I am with Bulb for gas and electricity. Do your own research, but if you decide to switch to them, do so via the above link, and we both get a £50 credit!
