The E-drive (V3) + PDF

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

Wow, that looks amazing. +1

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

Looking great!

Tom, your post reminds me a lot of my experience with the benboost. I have about 50 board files in that project folder Many of them were never ordered, but most of the ones that I did were already a few revs old by the time I got them! Speaking of which, now that you have poured in tons of work, money, and a few months of your lives are you willing (crazy enough) to give away the designs for free? The forum could always use more open source drivers!

I have a tip for you that I wish someone had given me early on. Go into design rules and change thermal isolation to zero! (it's like 2nd or 3rd tab from the end) Ground plane flows much better that way, especially when you have thermal pads on it.

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

If you do decide to go opensource do what ben did, include the donate button. I will be donating for sure. And perhaps it is worth looking into some opensource licenses that will protect your intellectual property and will allow you to have a steady gain from your invention.

Ben, I have a question for you in benboost thread (last page among the off-topic), could you take a look at it at your earliest convenience please?

Thanks you!

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

First off, thanks to everyone for the kind words and well-wishes. And special thanks to Ben for the tips on how to improve things!

LeQuack has informed me that I have a couple of errors on the preview board that I posted. Nothing major, but I didn't want someone to look at it and scratch their head thinking, why is THAT component THERE?

I did not have a fully working version on hand last night, (LeQuack does and has been testing it on diodes, o-scopes and I think his tongue!) so I soldered up one very fast. Unlike LeQuack, I use a cheat sheet that I create from the board files and print out and I think that I crossed wires on one version's build sheet and that board, so I will do a more careful one tomorrow and post the correct version. My main intent was to let you see the basic layout and size of the board.

I ended up staining a wood fort for the kids (my wife tricked me into helping her!) and I wasn't able to get started until later in the afternoon than I intended and I was rushed. I just wanted to make sure that no one thought there were any games being played. I just wanted to get a picture up ASAP.

So that might best be described as a mockup. That is an earlier revision board, but it is not an actual working copy. I will try get one posted tomorrow.

And a note on R15, that is a pad that can take two 0805 resistors, but we found that often we could get by with one single value rather than paralleling two, so that is why it is on a large pad.

As to the open source idea, I think that is really cool! BUT I also am a big believer in capitalism and I think LeQuack has been very dead-set on making this a very flexible and powerful driver at a VERY affordable price. That was a very important thing to him. He made it clear from the start that his main goal was to provide a driver that was way cheaper than the flex, which this will hopefully outperform in EVERY way.

And as some of you know, he has already provided a free/open source Li-ion charger:

http://laserpointerforums.com/f67/open-source-li-ion-charger-board-77267.html

I think as a "starving college student" it would truly be better for him to make a little cash in this endeavor so that he will;

A. Be inspired to keep up with it and be motivated to continue with this and other projects.
B. Have funds for other projects that might benefit us all in the future.
C. Have funds for college activities like eating.

I'll let him answer as well, but he and I did talk about that and I honestly encouraged him to make some profit and he was very insistent that it only be a MODEST profit as his goal was to provide a flex alternative/improvement AND provide an affordable driver.

Unfortunately, this driver uses an expensive main IC and the op amps and inductors are no bargains either! It is not an inexpensive driver to build. I PROMISE that his pricing is aggressive and that was his goal!

Also, right now the price of the drivers is very much a work in progress. These drivers use one of the TOUGHEST IC's for a hobbyist out there. At least in my humble and frustrated opinion. So if he is able to get production to flow smoothly and usable boards versus DOA's stays high, then price could come down further, but if overall cost per board stays high, then price will have to remain where it is for now.

You would probably (except Ben and a few other designers) be amazed at how many parts you go through just getting these things to work and then death testing and mistakes (I was the one who pushed very strongly for reverse polarity protection ) and you kill an easy thousand dollars just bringing one of these to life. So the first builds are all at a loss anyway. I did defray some of that expense, but it still took a lot of time and effort to get just this far.

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

tsteele93 said:

As to the open source idea, I think that is really cool! BUT I also am a big believer in capitalism and I think LeQuack has been very dead-set on making this a very flexible and powerful driver at a VERY affordable price. That was a very important thing to him. He made it clear from the start that his main goal was to provide a driver that was way cheaper than the flex, which this will hopefully outperform in EVERY way.

Click to expand...

Without going into too much here: opensource is not about freebies it is about cooperation improvement and innovation. Here is a couple of good reads :
Open source: It's about capitalism, not freebies | The Open Road - CNET News
Slashdot | Feature:Open Source and Capitalism

Ultimately it is ofcourse up to the authors and creators Thanks for bringing one more drive into our hobby!

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

Looking good!

Does it have a continuous negative?

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

Fiddy said:

Looking good!

Does it have a continuous negative?

Click to expand...

I completely forgot to add that to the features!

Yes, it is indeed continuous negative.

And, I'd rather not make this open source. I do need money, and this is going to be my "job" for now, as I enjoy doing it and it doesn't exactly require hours. I can basically go and make these whenever I wish to, which by the way is fantastic!

And having money is going to be awesome... I haven't expanded my laser collection in a few months and my violet died, along with my green, so I'm down to just my blue and red. :/

That and I'd also like to help pay for parts and boards for the drivers as well, as well as pay for other smaller projects I have of my own.

ALSO;

Elasti-drives For Sale;
http://laserpointerforums.com/f39/5-elasti-drives-sale-77534.html

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

Le Quack said:

I completely forgot to add that to the features!

Yes, it is indeed continuous negative.

And, I'd rather not make this open source. I do need money, and this is going to be my "job" for now, as I enjoy doing it and it doesn't exactly require hours. I can basically go and make these whenever I wish to, which by the way is fantastic!

And having money is going to be awesome... I haven't expanded my laser collection in a few months and my violet died, along with my green, so I'm down to just my blue and red. :/

That and I'd also like to help pay for parts and boards for the drivers as well, as well as pay for other smaller projects I have of my own.

ALSO;

Elasti-drives For Sale;
http://laserpointerforums.com/f39/5-elasti-drives-sale-77534.html

Click to expand...

Thats how rkcstr did it I believe now he is an M.D. good for him...and you:wave:

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

Le Quack, you should have called it Quack-drive, would have been more funnier! And if you make a boost and buck later they would be quack-boost and quack-buck respectively

Anyway, I think I'm just still too sleepy here at work.
Good Luck!

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

Great work on this accomplishment guys, this is awesome!! I'm very interested in several of both these & the mini's

:beer:

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

OP was updated with the sale thread information at the bottom.

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

Le Quack, just saw this. I'm stoked to finally have a do-it-all driver available for a reasonable price. I have missed the flexibility of buck.boost operation. This is large step forward for the hobby, and I can't wait to keep building lasers without having to research the 12 drivers we have floating around here. Great work! I think I'll get a new build going to celebrate.

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

FYI, I haven't forgotten to do a new version of the board, but it turned out that I am out of a capacitor, so I need to get that. I may throw it together with a different capacitor (assuming you guys can't read cap values on screen... ;-P) just to show what it looks like, but FWIW, that is pretty much the earlier revision board, just with a couple of scrambled parts.

It was a hectic day but I will get it done I promise.

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

gillza said:

Le Quack, you should have called it Quack-drive, would have been more funnier! And if you make a boost and buck later they would be quack-boost and quack-buck respectively

Click to expand...

I second this.

Also...
One thing I usually consider when purchasing a driver is efficiency.
I don't like my drivers to make a lot of heat since I usually try to make things as compact as possible.
Can you give us an estimate % efficiency?

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

I need to do efficiency figures. But from the few times I HAVE actually calculated efficiency, I got anywhere from 83% to 90%. It also depends heavily on what mode you're in (buck or boost wise)

Re: The Elasti-drive Intro (V1 and V2)

I would add that the chip is capable of doing better than 90%, depending on the mode but we need to do more testing to see what our actual design is getting.

That is a GOOD question and one we will answer when we run more tests on the next round of boards that come in. We have been concentrating so hard on ripple and startup spike that we haven't spent as much time on efficiency.

I don't want to say too much now, but that (ripple/startup) is an area we worked very hard on and hopefully we will be able to show some pretty impressive results in those areas!