ACL Strobes - Interest post

AAH said:
Surface mount device compared to through hole device. SMD is smaller and cheaper and costs less to have loaded onto a pcb.
Click to expand...

Could it be possiable (with aussiephils permishion , since he holds the board design) to enquire how much the ACL strobes would cost to get smd preloaded (minus transistor an led)

as i guessing there would be enouth intrest for at least 1000 of them.
 
I'm sure Alan can come up with a board layout at least as good as the previous one.

Chinese assembled SMD boards would be the best solution IMO.
 
smartalec said:
here is a image of them being soldered decently
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and
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photo's supplied from "lights on the ridge" and "lithgow lights"
Click to expand...


Lol - that was my first crack at SMD soldering.
Its not that difficult if you have the right gear.
But as Alan and others are suggesting, a pre-loaded board would be the best option.
 
I'm interested in some strobes. I liked the ACL strobes just for the fact they looked more random than a simple string of strobes. I have a few open spots on a DC controller that would be perfect for some strobes on the house, Ill throw in what I would like to see :)


12v DC
 
Name: Kane
Complete ACL (fully loaded): approx 135 (assuming 45 in a panel like last time)
Ray Wu String: I've got some sitting here unused if anyone wants them - they're useless.
Country: Australia
Timing: whenever!

Here's a link to the last bulk buy for reference - I got three panels last time (135) - total cost including shipping, assembly, programming worked out at around $2.80/strobe.

http://auschristmaslighting.com/forums/index.php/topic,2064.0.html
 
Name: Rogerdc46
Complete ACL: 90 (and)
PCB only: 10
Ray Wu String: N/A
Country: USA
Timing: September/October
 
Name: bdt
Complete ACL approx $250 worth
PCB only: 0
Ray Wu String: no
Country: USA
Timing: when they come
 
I have started knocking together a revised design today after thinking about it for a while. The plan is to get the smd stuff on the board loaded and all that's required to assemble the strobes is to fit the led, a through hole resistor which is selected to suit the led (2 ohm 0.5W axial 0.4" for the 0.75W 8mm leds) and 2 wires in and out for wiring up into strings. To simplify the design I've taken away some of the features of the original ACL design as 99% of people probably didn't take advantage of the flexibility.
The original design had the following
-the facility to run 3 5mm leds or 1 8mm one. I'm changing to suit 1 8mm only.
-each board had to be plugged into a pic programmer and programmed. I'm looking at getting the boards loaded with a new "randomer" firmware already installed. All boards will have the same firmware but a variety of different flash rates and cycles will occur.
-the original board could either run the pic based strobe firmware or could just run whenever the board was triggered. I'm changing to a design that whenever there is 5V the strobe free runs flashing away merrily
-the mounting of the wires will be made easier for novice solderers and hopefully making the strobes easier to waterproof

At this stage I'm expecting the price to work out quite similar to Eddys bulk buy in 2012 of $AU2 each for a panelised pcb, a led (0.75W 8mm white), the resistor to suit and a strobe cover (c5 or omething like that). A reasonable portion of this cost is the cost of getting the boards loaded as well as freight and the more boards are loaded the cheaper this gets. Last time I checked there was interest for about 1000 strobes (22'ish panels).

I hope to have a couple of working prototypes in my hand withing about a week and after that I'll look at ordering boards.

The individual boards are pretty tiny. It's looking like being about 0.4" x 0.5" compared to the original ACL strobe design that was about 0.5" x 0.7".
 
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