Like a mystery?

I’m cannibalizing two identical bicycle LED strobe units for my MOB
pole. The circuit boards have a push button that cycles between
Flash – Steady – Off but are set up so they are ON and flashing as
soon as power is applied such as when you first put the batteries in.
I want flashing so I’m just ignoring the switch and switching the
power to the boards.

As I’m sure you know, soldering little things like this isn’t for the
faint of heart so I’m testing at each step. The first one came out
perfectly. The second won’t go on. I tried with just one battery
(running out of ideas) and it goes on! It’s flashing although at half
brightness. With one and one half volts, it works. With the proper 3
volts, nada. The first one also works with one battery at half
brightness.

What do you think gives?


--

Roger Long

hi roger,

my only thought on this is that if i were doing it i'd probably use a
PIC processor instead of the little circuit board. you can get a PIC
that would do the job for under 1$us and it would be very small with
just 6 pins, 2 of which are for power and ground, so it's very small.
of course you'd have to already have the programmer and things to do
it. using a PIC and programming it you could also control the speed
that the LED blinks at and you could put in a wait at the beginning of
the code so that it'll idle until the internal clock stabalizes on
power up, etc. would still operate off of 3 volts.

as for your board's problem, i don't know. i'd try a ferrite bead near
the circuit board on the wires you inserted between the LED and the
board and see what that does, maybe those long wires are feeding
something weird into the controller chip. could test that too by
insuring that the board works the way you want it to on power-up
without the wires attached, with just the LED touching the leads. just
a thought.

Thinking back, I remember that I was interrupted by having to take kid
somewhere. When I did the second light, I just plunged into it
without putting it together and testing it first. It might well have
been defective and I could have returned it. Too late now.

I was so focused on testing at every step that I forgot to test at
step 1

--

Roger Long

Yes, there is the little circuit board you can see he

http://home.maine.rr.com/rlma/MOB.htm

If you put the voltage directly to it, it is steady.

I think it was probably defective before I started tinkering with it.
I forgot before I posted that I hadn't tested it as it came out of the
box.

I just determined that one board handles two LED's so I'm just wiring
them up in series. That will actually be better. The other way would
have provided some redundancy but the light wouldn't really have
appeared to flash but just change intensity. This will be much
clearer.

The LED's are very bright but the beam is focused. I'm going to aim
them both up the pole, one on each side, for 360 degree coverage. The
side lobe will be plenty bright on a dark night and the focused beams
should shine on the white shaft and up to the flag making the while
thing quite recognizable and visible.

--

Roger Long



"Larry" wrote in message
...
"Roger Long" wrote in
news:qI%Tf.25276$jf2.5039
@twister.nyroc.rr.com:

What do you think gives?



Are there any external components to make it flash or do they just
reverse
the polarity on the LED, itself? Some LEDs have their own IC
controller
built right into them.

What's usually wrong with these types of devices is simply the
Chinese
slaves ran them through the solder pot too fast and the biggest
pins, the
ones on the LEDs, themselves, didn't get soldered properly,
resulting in
intermittent operation after the cold solder joint corrodes.

A friend of mine gave me a clear plastic jumbo LED at breakfast the
other
morning. He said to just put 6V to it and see how I liked it. He
bought
them directly from China on some webpage for 50 cents each. MAN!
That
thing is twice as bright as a two cell flashlight and nicely focused
into a
flashlight beam! He had a smaller one from the same place that
wasn't
quite as bright but in a much smaller LED standard package. Both of
them
have amazing intensity on two little Lithium button batteries in
series....
I housed the big one in a little plastic box with 4 AAA alkalines
that
should run it for a long long time. Whole thing hides in your hand.

Roger Long wrote:

Yes, there is the little circuit board you can see he

http://home.maine.rr.com/rlma/MOB.htm

If you put the voltage directly to it, it is steady.

I think it was probably defective before I started tinkering with it.
I forgot before I posted that I hadn't tested it as it came out of the
box.

I just determined that one board handles two LED's so I'm just wiring
them up in series. That will actually be better. The other way would
have provided some redundancy but the light wouldn't really have
appeared to flash but just change intensity. This will be much
clearer.

The LED's are very bright but the beam is focused. I'm going to aim
them both up the pole, one on each side, for 360 degree coverage. The
side lobe will be plenty bright on a dark night and the focused beams
should shine on the white shaft and up to the flag making the while
thing quite recognizable and visible.

How will you make it waterproof?


--
Stephen

-------

For any proposition there is always some sufficiently narrow
interpretation of its terms, such that it turns out true, and
some sufficiently wide interpretation such that it turns out
false...concept stretching will refute *any* statement, and will
leave no true statement whatsoever.
-- Imre Lakatos

Stephen Trapani wrote:
Roger Long wrote:

Yes, there is the little circuit board you can see he

http://home.maine.rr.com/rlma/MOB.htm

If you put the voltage directly to it, it is steady.

I think it was probably defective before I started tinkering with it.
I forgot before I posted that I hadn't tested it as it came out of
the box.

I just determined that one board handles two LED's so I'm just wiring
them up in series. That will actually be better. The other way
would have provided some redundancy but the light wouldn't really
have appeared to flash but just change intensity. This will be much
clearer.

The LED's are very bright but the beam is focused. I'm going to aim
them both up the pole, one on each side, for 360 degree coverage.
The side lobe will be plenty bright on a dark night and the focused
beams should shine on the white shaft and up to the flag making the
while thing quite recognizable and visible.

How will you make it waterproof?

Good question. That's exactly what I was thinking!

Dennis.

Dennis Pogson wrote:
Stephen Trapani wrote:
Roger Long wrote:

Yes, there is the little circuit board you can see he

http://home.maine.rr.com/rlma/MOB.htm

If you put the voltage directly to it, it is steady.

I think it was probably defective before I started tinkering with
it. I forgot before I posted that I hadn't tested it as it came out
of the box.

I just determined that one board handles two LED's so I'm just
wiring them up in series. That will actually be better. The other
way would have provided some redundancy but the light wouldn't
really have appeared to flash but just change intensity. This
will be much clearer.

The LED's are very bright but the beam is focused. I'm going to aim
them both up the pole, one on each side, for 360 degree coverage.
The side lobe will be plenty bright on a dark night and the focused
beams should shine on the white shaft and up to the flag making the
while thing quite recognizable and visible.

How will you make it waterproof?

Good question. That's exactly what I was thinking!

Dennis.

Curious to know why you didn't just leave the bike light intact. They are
reasonably watertight and weigh practically nothing.

Dennis

All will be revealed he

http://home.maine.rr.com/rlma/MOB.htm

I was originally going to just attach the light to the pole with some
silicone caulking to beef up the seams but I'm trying to make the
upper part of the pole as light as possible and maximum ballast
(batteries at the bottom therefore) so that it will stand up in strong
winds.

Crew loss is most likely in rough weather so what's the point of a
pole that blows flat in the water?

--

Roger Long



"Dennis Pogson" wrote in message
...
Dennis Pogson wrote:
Stephen Trapani wrote:
Roger Long wrote:

Yes, there is the little circuit board you can see he

http://home.maine.rr.com/rlma/MOB.htm

If you put the voltage directly to it, it is steady.

I think it was probably defective before I started tinkering with
it. I forgot before I posted that I hadn't tested it as it came
out
of the box.

I just determined that one board handles two LED's so I'm just
wiring them up in series. That will actually be better. The
other
way would have provided some redundancy but the light wouldn't
really have appeared to flash but just change intensity. This
will be much clearer.

The LED's are very bright but the beam is focused. I'm going to
aim
them both up the pole, one on each side, for 360 degree coverage.
The side lobe will be plenty bright on a dark night and the
focused
beams should shine on the white shaft and up to the flag making
the
while thing quite recognizable and visible.

How will you make it waterproof?

Good question. That's exactly what I was thinking!

Dennis.

Curious to know why you didn't just leave the bike light intact.
They are
reasonably watertight and weigh practically nothing.

Dennis

"Roger Long" wrote in news:YE2Uf.25288$jf2.11613
@twister.nyroc.rr.com:

http://home.maine.rr.com/rlma/MOB.htm

See those solder blobs on the PC board? Notice how they go out then taper
back in to get to the solder pads on the boards? Cold solder joints all
over this thing. A good solder joint looks like a little tapered building,
tapering from the end of the lead poking through it and wider at the base
where the solder pad is, and shiny. These blobs aren't soldered. Wriggle
the components around and one of 'em will move the blob on the bottom or
the lead inside the blob.

Larry wrote:
"Roger Long" wrote in news:YE2Uf.25288$jf2.11613
@twister.nyroc.rr.com:


http://home.maine.rr.com/rlma/MOB.htm


See those solder blobs on the PC board? Notice how they go out then taper
back in to get to the solder pads on the boards? Cold solder joints all
over this thing. A good solder joint looks like a little tapered building,
tapering from the end of the lead poking through it and wider at the base
where the solder pad is, and shiny. These blobs aren't soldered. Wriggle
the components around and one of 'em will move the blob on the bottom or
the lead inside the blob.


I had a problem with cold soldered joints on a higher end JVC TV right
after the 3 year warranty ended until I gave the thing away last month.
Most days I had to whack the thing upside it's case and the herringbone
pattern disappeared. When we upgraded to HDTV, the wife gave the JVC to
a co-worker who's husband fiddled around with TVs.
Took him half an hour to find problem area & re-solder.