I thought I was done with the Tank Light. After spending a week soldering the 123 boards I finally finished all 100 of them. They were too expensive to have the CM hand solder them. I think I computed some 48 solder joints per board or 4,800 solder joints per 100 boards. Then I did a rough estimate of time spent soldering the boards and I came up with a rough calculation of one solder joint every 17 seconds. That includes time to remove the parts from the package and other housekeeping of the parts.

I have 30 loaded with LED and photo sensor. I still need to load the remaining boards with LED and sensor before soldering on the battery holders. Once that is done the boards will need to be de-fluxed and that will be it for putting the components on.

I found the low sensitivity not working, low level was almost the same and medium. Once I started digging into it the photo sensitivity turned into a major re-write of the code. The other issue was high would feedback light to the photo sensor and it would go into a rapid fire mode (self oscillation). I spent all Friday and most of today (Saturday) re-doing the code. I moved from revision 1.4 to revision 1.5.

Now low, med, high are the correct levels. All three sensitivity levels work and the SF menus all work. I put in some new code to eliminate the self oscillation and now it shouldn't matter if the top is clear, clear blue or florescent orange. They should all work now.

I reprogrammed all the AA modules I have around the house and re-programmed the 14 finished 123 lights I had completed. Now I need to test for a day or two and verify there are no additional bugs for revision 1.5.

This revision I lowered the high sensitivity and measure the ambient light level where the light turns on. On my meter I was measuring around 3-4 Lux to turn on and 6-7 Lux to turn it off.

I need to make more cannon tubes and more Turrets. Of the plastic I have I need to join the plastic frame to the top and let the dry before glueing the top onto the lights. I need to mount and glue the turret and cannon to the top as well before attaching it to the light.

The other two projects I need to work on this weekend are a revision of the LV detect board for a customer. I found a bug in the battery voltage measurement and the average of 10 samples is iffy at best due to the method of implementation. I need to correct that. I also need to test the undocumented 2.54 internal voltage reference. I need better accuracy and the internal 1.1V doesn't have a good tight tolerance and is causing problems with detecting the correct battery voltage to trip. Hopefully the other undocumented voltage reference works and has tighter tolerance. It sure seems like it would with two digits of precision specified.

I need to have tested and verified this fix before Monday morning when I meet with the customer who is flying in early Monday.

Assuming I can get to the third project. It would be nice if I can make progress on a job for Larry.

I tested what I thought would be the final layout and changes for the Remora and I need to go back to the two diode version on the input power and dump the capabibility of running the Remora and Shark off two D size batteries. That's a corner case and while it would be nice it's not a configuration that is really needed.

The SOB board is at the CM waiting for us to take over the step down IC and the rest of the shortage for the run and it will be queued up and run as soon as we get the time to go over there.

Dave's new converter board is at the CM as well and the raw boards are back. I've doubled checked the BOM and have verified I have all the material for the kit. That too when time permits will be taken over to the CM to get the boards run.

I'm working with the local CM to get boards made for one of my customers and the run is for 15,000 of my GD boards and a LV detect board that goes on top to give low battery detection capability to the light since the light is using a single re-chargeable li-ion battery and they have tested it and have noticed it just runs and runs and runs till the battery internal low battery detect kicks in and shuts the light off without any warning.

I should be getting notification of the raw boards shipping for the 4AA Tank Light. I'm hoping they come soon as I would like to offer both the AA version and 123 version at the same time. I'm still planning on releasing the 123 version as soon as possible.