Welcome to Laser Pointer Forums - discuss green laser pointers, blue laser pointers, and all types of lasers

LPF Donation via Stripe | LPF Donation - Other Methods

Links below open in new window

ArcticMyst Security by Avery

The E-drive (V3) + PDF

Hiemal

0
Joined
Dec 27, 2011
Messages
1,443
Points
63
Hey, hey. I know I haven't posted anything here for a while, and I apologize for not letting anyone know what's going on.

To begin;

The Elasti-drive was supposed to be an easy replacement for the flexdrive while maintaining a good price point, and reliability.

However I've found that ... just, given the circumstances under which I make them, I cannot make them reliably enough (in large quantities) to merit continuing to sell them.

Most of the time it's just because I cannot get the main IC chip to solder on correctly, and thus the entire board goes bad because I can't fix it, and a good chunk of money is just lost because of it.

Another problem is that I also wanted it to be able to be used with one or two cells, and not have the current change; For whatever reason the current sense op amp registers the additional voltage as a reason to increase current thus causing major issues for those who wanted to switch back and forth between one cell or two cells. I could never figure out the problem with that and it was extremely frustrating for both me and Tom.

Not to mention that Tom never really got back much from the entire process either; I feel so bad because the project kind of fell flat on its face after school kicked in for me, and the frustration of not having several drivers not work and the money, and the time required to make even a small batch just started to become too much for me.

Thus I kind of gave up on it, because of the number of problems that came about trying to make these easily accessible, while also giving myself a small profit when I was at school.


As for where this heads, I don't know. I'll email Tom and just ask him if I can release the project files as open source so you guys can fool around with it and maybe try making them yourselves, and maybe fixing the problems that were presented to me that I couldn't solve on my own.
 





Hiemal

0
Joined
Dec 27, 2011
Messages
1,443
Points
63
Well, I decided to release it as open source. The OP has the files and information necessary to get started on it.

I really hope you guys figure out how to solve the problems that it has!
 

gillza

0
Joined
Jul 26, 2010
Messages
583
Points
28
Well, I decided to release it as open source. The OP has the files and information necessary to get started on it.

I really hope you guys figure out how to solve the problems that it has!

Jared,

You have my deepest respect! Hopefully the collective intelligence here will be able to figure out the problems you have seen and suggest a fix. Thank you for making the files available to us.

Igor
 

Hiemal

0
Joined
Dec 27, 2011
Messages
1,443
Points
63
A long overdue bump on this thread was needed, I think. I'm really sadden to see no one ever gave a crack at this again.
 
Joined
Aug 14, 2013
Messages
2,655
Points
63
Current monitor ICs can be very quirky.
Just be glad you didn't try the ZXCT1050
first because it would have made you give
up. (Or did you?)
 

Hiemal

0
Joined
Dec 27, 2011
Messages
1,443
Points
63
Current monitor ICs can be very quirky.
Just be glad you didn't try the ZXCT1050
first because it would have made you give
up. (Or did you?)

No, actually. Been using the INA139 (first it was the LT6106) and it gives a plethora of issues.

Namely, two specific things.

1. When you set the output current via potentiometer, the current output actually changes based off of the voltage drop of whatever you're powering.

Aka, if you set it to 200 mA, at 3 volts, it'll become 350 mA at 5 volts.


2. When you use two batteries, this also applies, and becomes noticeably worse.



Hoping that maybe switching the current monitor out for the ZXCT1008 may fix these issues...
 




Top