NejTech Evolution - a new BOOST driver - Nearly finished!

I'm interested to know if anything has happened with this too

Well, the development has stopped because my design, other than being simple and relatively cheap, is very obsolete and inefficient. This and Jib's design are much, much better. Seriously. Of course, if any of them let me produce their design, I could make them.

Of course, I have one right now in my hotlights running a 445 at 1A and it works. Sort of. Heats up a lot though, and once it gets overheated or the battery runs low, it starts flashing. Also, my most recent design with a pot has a big design error... It cannot be heatsinked since stupid me put the pot on the same side as "hot" components... Not to mention that they can not be put in parallel... So much for my failures... Is anyone really still interested, in a constant 1A boost driver that heats up considerably for around $15?

When I first saw FlexDrive and its prices, I was thinking, DrLava's work is so overpriced... He could be making over 50%... Now, that I attempted to design such driver, went through all the thinking, cramming, researching, hoping, failing, experimenting and burnt my fingers several times, I must say, that DrLava is a genius.

Is the ground plane constant on your driver out of curiousity?

Yes it is.

Johnyz said:

When I first saw FlexDrive and its prices, I was thinking, DrLava's work is so overpriced... He could be making over 50%... Now, that I attempted to design such driver, went through all the thinking, cramming, researching, hoping, failing, experimenting and burnt my fingers several times, I must say, that DrLava is a genius.

Click to expand...

Glad that you found that R&D is not just slapping a few components
to a PCB and calling it a finished product. The Flexdrives have stood
the test of time...:beer:

Jerry

Do you know if your driver would need heatsinking at 600 mA of current?

I might be interested in one/two.

lasersbee said:

Glad that you found that R&D is not just slapping a few components
to a PCB and calling it a finished product. The Flexdrives have stood
the test of time...:beer:

Jerry

Click to expand...

I have already designed a few boards unrelated to switched mode drivers before, so I knew that. The problem is that, say SPI or I2C chips and microcontrollers are well documented. They say send this data here, conect a resistor here etc. You follow them, and it works pretty well... But that doesn't apply to this stuff. The only info the datasheet gives you is the schematic, which works ofc, but nearly no info on values etc. The inductor could be anywhere in between 2 and 50uH. Where to get most efficiency at given current? Nope, they don't even provide an equation. The only way to find out is grab all of different boards, inductors, shottkys, and try mixing them.

I'm still pretty surprised that these guys with Texas chips managed to pull 1.2A "with minimal heating" out of the blue. Oh well, I need to finish Brandon's driver now.