Day: May 13, 2019

LED Panel Lamp Is A Great Way To Use Protoboard

May 13, 2019 by 9 Comments

It’s now possible to source chip-on-board LED modules that have huge light output in a simple, easy to use package. However they can have major power requirements, and cheaper modules are also susceptible to dead spots.  [Heliox] put together a great LED lamp design the old-school way, showing there’s more than one way to get the job done.

Standard SMD LEDs are the order of the day here. The LEDs are laid out on protoboard in neat rows, making them easy to solder in place. This also makes power distribution a cinch, with the copper traces carrying the power to each row. Power is courtesy of 18650 lithium batteries installed in the back of the 3D printed housing. A GoPro-style mount is printed as part of the case, allowing the lamp to be easily mounted in a variety of ways.

It’s a quick, cheap and easy way to build a versatile LED lamp. With a diffuser installed and integrated USB charging, we could see this making an excellent portable device for on-the-go videographers or technicians. We’ve seen [Heliox]’s LED creations before, too. Video after the break.

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Analog Failures On RF Product Cause Production Surprise

May 13, 2019 by 15 Comments

A factory is a machine. It takes a fixed set of inputs – circuit boards, plastic enclosures, optimism – and produces a fixed set of outputs in the form of assembled products. Sometimes it is comprised of real machines (see any recent video of a Tesla assembly line) but more often it’s a mixture of mechanical machines and meaty humans working together. Regardless of the exact balance the factory machine is conceived of by a production engineer and goes through the same design, iteration, polish cycle that the rest of the product does (in this sense product development is somewhat fractal). Last year [Michael Ossmann] had a surprise production problem which is both a chilling tale of a nasty hardware bug and a great reminder of how fragile manufacturing can be. It’s a natural fit for this year’s theme of going to production.