Seriously Bright 10W LED White Strobe

[realpastaman]

This is a picture of my mini quad with its 10W strobe light which is visible at a distance in full sunlight. 10% duty cycle so it doesnt use much power. I';ve seen many posts concerning putting a disfuser etc over the NAZA Led by in my experience they do not show up well in full sunlight! This LED is seriously bright! Ive used a modified LED driver and 555 IC for the 10% flash duty cycle. It flashes around 1Hz and I have it so it can be turned on and off by means of a Hobby King solid state relay on a spare rc channel.

[pheasant_plucker]

Good work.
If you use something like an Arduino nano you could program a flash pattern and directly turn it on and off from the receiver or even have a selection of flash patterns depending on the transmitter channel.

Gerry

[realpastaman]

Good work.
If you use something like an Arduino nano you could program a flash pattern and directly turn it on and off from the receiver or even have a selection of flash patterns depending on the transmitter channel.

Gerry

Thanks Gerry - You must have read my mind! -

[Cloudbuster]

What are the silver things on your sat aerial ???? Hope they arent metal bolts which is what they look like !!!! If so this could really screw ur compass !!!

Regards rob

[flybywire]

Look like magnets to me! Holly s***!

[teslahed]

Look like magnets to me! Holly s***!

Any excuse to post my favourite video on magnets;

http://youtu.be/wMFPe-DwULM

[powerlord]

Excellent video from RF.  I';d not seen that one before.  I often get into conversation like this and it';s difficult as you can literally spend an hour following back things to first principles to explain to people.

Arduino wise -  use a mini pro.  It';s smaller and cheaper.  Overkill when a 555 does the job but what the hey... I love arduinos.  They are great fun.  And once it';s there you can do all sorts of the the stuff with it... You can feed it a pwm signal straight out the receiver and easily code it to do different stuff for different frequencies. 

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

[realpastaman]

What are the silver things on your sat aerial ???? Hope they arent metal bolts which is what they look like !!!! If so this could really screw ur compass !!!

Regards rob

Yes rob they are metal but high grade non metalic stainless steel 

[realpastaman]

Here is a picture of the led driver -  The particular IC on this driver has an unused pin that allows for brightness / on off modulation - with some careful soldering onto this pin ive managed to use it by connecting it to the output of the 555 (the 555 circuit uses a diode to get the positve required pulse of 10% duty cycle) in this way the led requires no cooling).

[realpastaman]

Look like magnets to me! Holly s***!

Stainless steel magnets 

[realpastaman]

For the electronic geeks out there its worth removing the protection diodes on this driver module and then it will give full power to the LED using only a 3s lipo 

[kilby]

I love that non metallic stainless steel, or is it non ferrous or non magnetic

Beware the nickel content as nickel is magnetic

[realpastaman]

I love that non metallic stainless steel, or is it non ferrous or non magnetic

Beware the nickel content as nickel is magnetic

Yes i always check using a sensitve compass and see if its bearing is changed by the stainless steel screw first! I dont like the standard Naza GPS / compass mast as it looks kind of silly on a small quad and not necessary if not close to the power distribution board.

[realpastaman]

DC DC converters also push out some serious magnetic flux - not only at the switching frequency but also constant flux that can upset the compass -  that';s why they tend to use a gapped core to cope with the high flux levels. Moral is not to place DC DC converters or modules that use them near the compass.

[DarrenG]

I dont like the standard Naza GPS / compass mast as it looks kind of silly on a small quad.

Double sided tape?

[realpastaman]

Double sided tape?

Well my use of the stainless steel screws did follow a pile driver crash (due to a faulty esc) which cracked the NAZA patch antenna and seriously damaged the plastic dome housing! After replacing the patch antennal i bolted it back with screws!  Not a bad repair me thinks! 

[kilby]

My temporary gps/compass mount for the borrowed Pixhawk I';d truly hideous so you won';t hear me complaining about the screws

[flybywire]

Talking of bolts

[kilby]

I was once described as "the guy with a bolt through his ear"

Though I also described the speaker as needing to be on the receiving end of a captive bolt gun.

Image of the atrocity that is the temporary GPS mount