I got this light to take away with me to camp just in case I had to set up in the dark and was great for that. When I used it as a tent light it was much too bright and decided to put some type of dimmer in it. I used the PLEX board to control the LED with a push button to choose the brightness. The dimmer uses a MOSFET with PWM at 33%, 66% and 100% duty cycle to dim the LED. A capacitor was added across the push button to minimize the debounce of the switch which makes the program not jump multiple brightness with one push. Each time the button is pushed, the brightness increase by 33% until 100% where is decrease back to 33%.
Now this light will work nicely in the tent as well setting up. I'm going to add a USB port for charging and maybe add a solar panel to help keep the battery charged.
This light also funny on what information they provide about it self. On the back it saids that it has a 8800 mAH battery at 3.7V but when i open it up it uses 4X 2200 mAH batteries at 3.7V each. I think a pair is in series and then parallel with each other which means its a 4400 mAH battery at 7.4V. Them saying that it has a 8800 mAH is not a lie but it makes it seem that it has more power than what it really has.

Camping Light Dimmer

<p>I got this Novation Launchpad Mini on eBay a while ago and have just got around to getting it apart to see whats wrong. The item was marked as not working so I messaged the seller to find out what is wrong with it. Ends up the USB had just come loose. Knowing that I&nbsp;could probably fix it I and use it, I&nbsp;brought it a lot cheaper than a new or even a used one.<br>
The problem with the controller was that the USB had become ripped off the PCB. If it was any other type of USB it would have been easier but since it was a micro USB it was very hard to trace back the tracks and soldering a new USB to the board. I tried a few times and could not get it to connect. I used a different type of USB to find it the controller it self-was working and it was. Then went back on to soldering the micro USB. After a while of&nbsp;procrastination from studying for my exams, I got it working. I mounted it back into place and reassembled it and now works very well.<br>
I hope that it does not fail again. If it does&nbsp;I&nbsp;will probably convert the controller into something else. I would like to find out what the gold pin tabs do.</p>
<p><strong>do you have a Launchpad?</strong><br>
I get a lot of questions about this repair and if I would walk through how I did it. I want to get another Launchpad or other broken equipment to make a video and teach you how to fix them. If you have broken Launchpad or other equipment <a href="https://tinkersprojects.com/about/#contact">contact me here</a>.</p>

Novation Launchpad Mini Repair

For a while i had no network storage but as I got a new server I would also like some storage to go into the server. A while back i got a device controls up to 5 different SATA drives and can raid them in different configurations. The device used USB3 to communicate with the server and is just a PCB. I need somewhere to hold all 5 SATA drives and the device so from an old server (which had 5 hot-swaps in the font), I created a unit that holds the drives and slides in my network rack. the power supply is the old supply that was used in the server and was rewired to support the new configuration. The case need minimal modification&nbsp;and work really well as a storage unit.

When I can, I will upgrade it to a faster unit but for now it works well.

Raid rack

This board was made as an interface board which can be programmed to control almost anything. On the board, there are 16 buttons which 8 of which&nbsp;are encoders. Each button has 2 LED. The outputs can be to&nbsp;an LCD&nbsp;and control board. The control board is how the interface board interest with the world. A MIDI control board can make the interface board&nbsp;into&nbsp;a musical instrument and a keyboard control board can make it into a custom keyboard. The control board can have 2 buttons with 4 LED on each or 1 encoder with 2 LED. These controls control the interface, making the board have 16 inputs (8 encoders and 16 buttons) but 1-16 different configuration. The will give 256 different inputs (256 buttons and 128 encodes) which only 16 shown.
<h4>hardware&nbsp;specifications</h4>
<ul>
 	<li>ATMEGA2560</li>
 	<li>8 push buttons</li>
 	<li>8 encoders</li>
 	<li>32 LEDs</li>
</ul>
<h4>software specifications</h4>
<ul>
 	<li>Arduino platform</li>
</ul>
<h4>Inputs and outputs&nbsp;specifications</h4>
<ul>
 	<li>LCD</li>
 	<li>Data in and out</li>
 	<li>button, encoders and/or LEDs</li>
</ul>
<h4>Control boards</h4>
MIDI: This board turns the interface into a MIDI&nbsp;musical&nbsp;instrument.

2.4GHz Wireless: This board turns the interface into a wireless device.

Bluetooth: This board turns the interface into a wireless Bluetooth device.

DMX: This board turns the interface to control different lights.

Keyboard:&nbsp;This board turns the interface into a custom keyboard.

serial/Programer: This can program the board and have USB serial input/output.
<h4>Further development</h4>
<ul>
 	<li>Fully programmable.</li>
 	<li>Programmable names.</li>
 	<li>SD to save and load data.</li>
 	<li>Quick and easy replacement of the control board</li>
 	<li>RGB LEDs</li>
</ul>

Tinkers Projects

Tag: pcb

Camping Light Dimmer

Novation Launchpad Mini Repair

Raid rack

Universal interface board V1