I hand loaded 10 boards for dave in the last couple of days. The board has 36 components on it which means I soldered on 360 parts or at least twice that many solder joints. They all turned on and worked. A couple had minor soldering issues and once resolved they programmed and ran the light calibration routine successfully.

I found a couple more bugs in the night light firmware and am still testing. I should be getting 20 boards for the 4AA version tomorrow and I'm very excited about it. I had to buy a SOIC programming adaptor so I could pre-program them before loading them. The latest revision of the board uses all the I/O lines and I have to disable the reset pin to gain functionality and when I do that I lose the capability to re-program in circuit. I guess it should not be a big issue and in many ways simplifies the board eliminating the pads or connectors and having to deal with the interface or connection to the pins/connector.

All the parts for the SOB are on order and I will be taking the kit hopefully over on Monday after I double check the BOM and verify the kit is complete. The new board will be available in a week or so. The SOB does everything the DB does and more efficiently. It can do 1.5A safely. It still might get hot, but, it won't die. I would still pot or heatsink any high output drive configuration just for the added margins.

I've ordered an air compressor and it should be here next week. I can't stand the compressed air cans any more and need a more reliable source of compressed air to blow off water or flux cleaner off boards. That's the major requirement. I also can hook up low pressure air to the Engraver and to the hobby paint spray system. I still need to get all the plumbing, connector, hoses. I can't wait.

Now that I've committed to having air I'm migrating the a more aggressive water soluble flux for most of my jobs as it makes soldering easier especially since many proto shops are using silver plating instead of solder. Oxidized silver is hard to solder to and so is gold and oxidized bare copper.

I need to update the BOM for daves board and then order any outstanding parts. I have some stuff on hand, but, the quantity changed and I need to review the differences again and place another order for any shortages. I should be placing an order with the CM soon to start the run of 100 boards and need to have material in approximately 10 days. That's the usual turn around time for the raw boards to come back.

Once the SOBs boards are in hand I will be making a batch of Cree LEs with the SOBs. These will not require the wire to connect the outer ring to GND. That's a real pain in the ***.

I'm still digging out doing a customer run of 5,000 board sets for their first run and I should be getting bombarded with parts for their second run of 10,000 board sets. I'm just the go between person, but, it is time and effort to keep track of all the parts, scheduling and delivery.

The 10k run should be completed mid march and that will be a large burdon off my shoulders.

I've updated the Cree PCB footprint to reflect the new dimensions which the old one was in error (IMHO) and I noted that to them. I will be placing a new order of 650 MCPCBs and updating the Gerber files for the 750 MCPCBs that are targeted mainly for fixed lighting. The Cree bar MCPCB will also get updated and I will submit that along with the other updates.

I sourced the a small quantity of the inductor for the low cost Zetex driver, so, now I can move forward and start a run of those boards.

I've got a new development starter kit for a different uP. I need to get up to speed on this new uP series. The part is lower in cost than Atmel and has quite a bit of internal modules. You can get timers, A/D at the low end for the low price. That's pretty sweet. I probably will phase out the one design I did for the customer and phase in the uP to help lower the board cost beyond the initial 15k run.

I made 10 MM light sandwiches. If they all go I'll make another batch of 10 ASAP since I have the next 10 prepped and ready for the final LED load step.

And lastly... The Remora UI will probably be simplified to three levels and latching (remembering last state). In this way the light will turn back on to what it was last used. This will mimic a single stage light. You can still cycle through and change brightness, but, in the simplistic mode you would just click it on.

I have read a couple of threads now on UI and I know I will get a lot of heat not offering some of the other configuration options, but, I also feel that I'll be offering this add on board for a very low cost. The other concern is that the PWM control is limited to 10% to 100% of LED current range. This means the microprocessor can not turn the light down to zero or even near zero.

That means features like flash would be implemented in a less than ideal configuration as the "off" state would be 10% and the high on state would most likely be 100%.

For now it's better I move forward and launch it making it available to those that want multi levele brightness with the Shark converter board. Down the road new code can be developed to add more functionality to the UI and can be independent of the board. Not making the board available now because the advanced UI is not done doesn't make sense. More testing and final tweeking is ongoing. When I feel it's stable for launch it will be made known at that time and I'm sure I'll have more updates along the way.