FREE DIY open source BOOST driver!!! Tested & working!!

LEDed a PL450B myself tonight.:cryyy: Always sucks but it is just part of the deal.:tinfoil:

DTR said:

LEDed a PL450B myself tonight.:cryyy: Always sucks but it is just part of the deal.:tinfoil:

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What driver were you using ?

rhd said:

There's nothing for anyone to apologize for. I'm just conveying my perspective. I'm also cognizant of the fact that while these drivers are named after a member here, the actual drivers everyone is discussing weren't assembled and quality checked by him. That's an important thing to keep in mind. If a Mohgasm driver failed, you wouldn't blame Daedal.

I'm all for putting drivers to the torture test. I generally say that about most things in this hobby, including things I've had some part in creating. That is (or should be) the idea of this hobby. Failure is failure, and nothing irritates me more than when people try to pretend it hasn't happened. That said, the same perspective cuts two ways. When really novice builders blame the equipment or components because they're not willing to believe that they could be at fault themselves, I roll my eyes (and not with an emoticon, I roll the real ones).

I frequently see "vets" (the ones who actually build) owning up to the diodes that they've killed, discussing their pain, mourning their losses, and exploring the sense of emptiness that comes after a particularly bad run. If vets can admit to killing diodes, then why is it so hard for new hobbyists to swallow the realization that they've murdered a diode? The quest for coherance is literature with a lot of dead InGaN. That's life.

Actually, it's not life. It's a wonderful, but completely non-essential hobby, that costs a lot of money, a lot of patience, and a lot of humility to participate in.

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I know that this is a touchy subject, but my "12x killer" was from Moh. I'm not saying that it isn't possible someone reflowed a bad batch, but I think if you step back from your personal involvement you have to consider a few things:

1. There are at least 3 different people making these and they all have coincidental 12x diode deaths associated with them. That kind of tends to decrease the odds of it being bad assembly. Especially with Moh having made some of them.

2. These things are being installed in a lot of 445's from what I've seen posted, and they don't seem to be associated with any deaths there. Now as I understand it, if you take a 445 above its max current, it dims then comes back to life and if you take a 405 past max current it zombies. So that would also seem to me, to point towards the 405 having a weakness that exposes something wrong with this driver.

You say that nothing irritates you more than someone denying a "failure." I agree and I think it would be better to approach it from a perspective of "let's get this thing on a storage scope and see what is happening during the first few milliseconds of startup" rather than just immediately firing back at the people who have discovered/experienced the phenomenon.

In no way do I mean to attack you by saying that, I just think that it would be better to approach it with an open mind rather than going into the testing with the attitude that, "it is probably these noobs soldering them up poorly."

I also think from a purely logical perspective, there is a higher chance that we are going to find an anomaly with the driver rather than three (or more) different builders that have built them wrong and dozens of us "noobs" who don't know what we are doing and killing these diodes.

You mentioned that vets have no problem admitting to killing diodes, but noobs can't admit to failure. I took exception to that because I absolutely came on here and admitted my failure before I had any idea that it might not have been my failure after all. In fact, I had almost forgotten about it when this came up.

http://laserpointerforums.com/f44/rough-day-laserland-73694.html

But I also think everyone needs to take a more understanding attitude towards Ben and RHD on this instead of making it a witch hunt. They weren't selling these and killing people's diodes. They offered a FREE DIY driver to the community and made it open source. So while we need to get to the bottom of the issue (if there is an issue) I don't think we need to play the blame game. That just makes Ben and RHD less interested in being a part of figuring it out.

I am in the process of getting a scope, but I doubt that I will have it in time to help with this. I do have a benboost from Moh that I can send to someone with a scope (Le Quack?) that can test the driver on a test load and see what is happening during startup.

If Le Quack can't do that then if there is someone else who can, let me know and I'll send it out. Maybe we can get a driver from Cilegray, RyanElectro and someone else who has built one that seems to be having compatibility problems with 405's (or 450 single modes) to donate as well. That way we can compare them to Moh's drivers and see if they are different in any way.

Hopefully those will be good starting steps towards determining if there is a current or voltage spike on startup or if there is a problem with the build quality on some of the boards.

I have a scope if someone is willing to send me one. I ordered one from Moh long time ago (didn't receive it though it got received by someone else) .. stupid posts. I would have tested it earlier but since I don't have one on hand, I cant . If anyone willing to send me one to scope I will gladly do it

Let me check with LeQuack first, he's closer. If he doesn't think his scope is right for the job or he isn't up for it then I will send it your way Tom.

Sure thing :beer:

rhd said:

What driver were you using ?

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I was trying to do a test to see what percentage of light will reflect off the mirrors out of the projector optics kits I have @ a 45 degree angle for a customer. I had the unit in my MAXSINK desktop heatsink and being driven @ 100mA by my bench supply which uses alligator clips. Did the dead on test and was getting a rock steady 86mW then I went to turn the heatsink to do the mirror bounce test the wires bound up bringing them both in contact with the heatsink shorting the power supply. When I quickly pulled them off there was a flash and then LED.:cryyy:

tsteele93 said:

Let me check with LeQuack first, he's closer. If he doesn't think his scope is right for the job or he isn't up for it then I will send it your way Tom.

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My scope is an analog one. Not a storage one, though the spike would still be evident when you turn it on, with the trace bumping up high really quick and then setting down. DMM's can't see it because it happens far too quick, but any oscilloscope ought to show you what's happening.

If someone is willing to scope one of these drivers (and report on it), let me send you one of the drivers that I've reflowed.

Not withstanding what you've said tsteele, what I can tell you is that:
1) I'm using one of these drivers on a 12x without problems.
2) I sent one to a vet (won't toss their name in, but it's someone that everyone would accept as knowing their stuff), and they emailed me a few days ago to mention that their driver is working fine on a 12x also.

I should probably clarify that when I say "these drivers", I mean "this circuit". I don't use the same PCB that Moh fabricated. I never added the Mosfet to my version, and I generally use 22uF instead of 10uF ceramic caps.

Regarding you taking exception to my comments.... I didn't direct them at you tsteele. I don't think I even mentioned you, once, anywhere. In fact, I'm not even sure that you were part of that other thread that we were talking about. I'm not sure why you took exception to anything, but as a general comment, this isn't nearly as dramatic as your reply would suggest it to be. I'm a big kid, Ben's a big kid, we can take some criticisim, and as far as I'm concerned, if there's a problem, it should get sorted out. Or even better, maybe one of the members with a 2A capable boost can toss their design into the open-source arena, and take inspiration from mentality that spawned the Open/Ben boost.

That said, I'm not sure I'd approach it the same way again myself. I love the idea of open source hardware, but that concept only truly gains its power when you have a community contributing back to the project. We've had some of that with the Open Boost, and I'm really impressed and happy with what we have seen, but it hasn't been quite the two-way street that I (perhaps naively) thought it would be. I knew that the driver would get produced, and sold, and passed around. But I didn't expect to see 1,300 of the first public-version PCBs manufactured before there was any meaningful testing and feedback from actual users. That makes it tough to iterate the design quickly and effectively if you've got over a thousand of the PCBs to get through before thinking about a revision.

I guess the reality was that the $25+ rip-off Flexdrives had pissed people off to such an extent that nobody wanted to wait a minute longer than they had to to get an affordable boost driver. I get that, and can relate. At the same time, I had always figured that 50 or 100 of the drivers would get sold to real cautious enthusiasts, hammered on, improvements suggested, designs iterated, another 50 or 100 produced, etc etc etc, rinse and repeat. That hasn't really happened. We've had a lot of people using the drivers, and not a lot of actual feedback into the design.

So perhaps the world can appreciate the frustration that is felt when someone like RyanElectron capitalizes on the inexpensiveness of the driver, so that he can cobble together cheap lasers to sell for lots of money, doesn't contribute back to the actual project he's profiting from, and then on top of that complains about it.

I dont mind sending out a couple drivers either I have 10 made sittin in front of me. I have some small amp ones too like 105ma 158ma 172ma etc. if that would help.

It just occurred to me that while I've been writing these posts, I've been staring at a Lipstick Laser build I did with a PL450 diode and an Open/Ben Boost. It's working great.

rhd said:

Regarding you taking exception to my comments.... I didn't direct them at you tsteele. I don't think I even mentioned you, once, anywhere. In fact, I'm not even sure that you were part of that other thread that we were talking about.

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I THINK that I am, if it is the "pesky benboost" thread. I'm not sure since there are several threads now.

The only thing that I felt was directed at me was the comment,

RHD said:

I frequently see "vets" (the ones who actually build) owning up to the diodes that they've killed, discussing their pain, mourning their losses, and exploring the sense of emptiness that comes after a particularly bad run. If vets can admit to killing diodes, then why is it so hard for new hobbyists to swallow the realization that they've murdered a diode?

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I just wanted to point out that as a "new hobbyist" I had most definitely "owned up to the diodes that I've killed and swallowed the realization that I'd murdered a diode." (Who's being dramatic now? )

I'm not sure why you took exception to anything, but as a general comment, this isn't nearly as dramatic as your reply would suggest it to be. I'm a big kid, Ben's a big kid, we can take some criticisim, and as far as I'm concerned, if there's a problem, it should get sorted out.

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I certainly wasn't trying to make it dramatic - but if you feel like that I am doing that then I'll kindly STFU and step out of the thread other than to share my data. I'm pissing off both sides so I'll just shut up.

I dont mind owning up to my stupid losses.. It's all part of the game. For the record. 3x pl450b's, 1x mits500, 1 m140 many lpc's and phr's 808's etc.. same time I now have 10 working builds some of which were quite difficult builds for me. I just started hearing that people were having problems so I was interested to see it there actually was an issue or not. If there was this is the place to address the issues if there are any and deal with them. I just baught a bunch of 22uf caps so I will try them to start. All my boards I use I inspect first if I am even slightly concerned about a solder job I toss it in the to fix pile. Actually now I have become quite good at reflowing these. I allmost dont even want to put that PID controler in to the oven dont really need it.

tsteele93 said:

The only thing that I felt was directed at me was the comment,

I frequently see "vets" (the ones who actually build) owning up to the diodes that they've killed, discussing their pain, mourning their losses, and exploring the sense of emptiness that comes after a particularly bad run. If vets can admit to killing diodes, then why is it so hard for new hobbyists to swallow the realization that they've murdered a diode?

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Ok. Well it wasn't. Did you think I was capturing you with the phrase "vet" ? or the phrase "new hobbyist" ? I'm still not really sure where you thought you fit in to that comment of mine.

Regardless, I wasn't talking about you. I hadn't even seen your name on that other thread (though I now see that you jumped in on the 2nd or 3rd page).

I was talking about the new 2012 kids, who say things along the lines of "Why did my diode die at 480mA, when I've seen others run them at 500mA?" while listing lasers at price tags on par with what a quality build from someone like Lazeerer, DTR, Wannaburn, etc would sell for.

It must be noted that there is a difference in a Professional Product
(for example a FlexDrive) that is guaranteed to specifications because
the legwork ( R&D & field tests) had been done compared to a Data
Book copied and modified "Open Source" hobbyist circuit that hasn't
been fully field tested.
You can not expect 100% results from the latter.
As time goes on criteria will surface as to what to add and what
not to add to the Open Source Driver to make it acceptable and
safe ( transients/spikes) to use safely.

It just hasn't been tested fully enough for even myself to feel
convinced of it's capabilities...

I think a lot more field testing is needed before we can say
this is "The Driver"...


Jerry

You can contact us at any time on our Website: J.BAUER Electronics

I totally agree with you Jerry! I'm still buying new drivers to play with couple from foulmist his fmt drivers and just baught a couple blitz bucks. I would have a flexdrive if it was available. etc. I want some xdrives! I wish moh was still making his linear drivers I liked them too.