Let there be ESK8 lights

Battery_Mooch · November 16, 2024, 1:55pm

Nice prices!
Will be great to see what do do if you move forward with this.

ShutterShock · November 18, 2024, 12:32am

I did this a long time ago with a dual buck system, 50.4 down to 12, then a 12v to 5 at the front of my board

I used XHP50 chips and some premade aluminum housings with some lenses from mouser. Worked amazing until I switched to my bigbeems on that board.

ShutterShock · November 18, 2024, 12:34am

It’s not really R&D of the lights that you pay for, it’s the work I put into the mounts and testing them

I could add a send us money button but I have never had anyone that wanted to do that lol

b264 · November 18, 2024, 4:22pm

There was a custom batch made for this specific purpose and I bet a custom batch of XT90 could be made if folks were interested in the highest reliability.

BenjaminF · November 18, 2024, 4:36pm

Good luck with that. Amass operates on the scale of “millions of parts per quarter” orders. They would not even respond to a request of a couple hundred custom XT90’s. There’s no amount they could charge that would make it worthwhile for them.

The situation with the custom QS8 connectors was very different, as that’s a much smaller company. They make connectors of various sizes though, so they might be willing to do another custom run, this time of smaller XT90-sized connectors.

Pecos · November 18, 2024, 4:37pm

I added modifying an xt90s to my list but it will be a bit before I get to it. If you want to start a group buy ill be down for 10 assuming the price gets reasonable

tipsy · November 18, 2024, 7:35pm

Too bad they are not angle adjustable

ShutterShock · November 18, 2024, 8:06pm

They are provided with multiple angle mounts that cover a number of different truck installations

I do have plans to make some adjustable ones at some point though

CarelessAquarist · November 18, 2024, 9:25pm

Thanks @ShutterShock thats a nice job on those LEDs.

And about the anti-spark XT90s it’s possible to replace the resistor yourself. I have done this but for different reasons.
You make the bullet connector bit hot with an iron and pull it out, then drill a hole on the inside side of the bullet connector to fit the resistor.
The resistor doesn’t have legs but rather a cap or ring around each end which solders straight against the connector bit.
The antispark pin is just a ring a little further out connected with the resistor.
Solder in place the new one, make sure the ring and connector are lined up this is impossible without something to hold it in place.
Pushing and pulling it back in is tricky you will have to heat it while not melting the solder.
All in all didn’t take too long just test for resistance and plug in/out a few times to check it’s strong.

This was my first try so it’s a little messy

janpom · November 25, 2024, 1:53pm

The lights arrived (purchased from here: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006243151602.html). Well, turns out the “decorative button” indeed doesn’t do anything. When powered on for the first time (after a long enough delay), the lights start in the red mode. Then one can toggle the following modes by quickly turning it off and on again:

red
yellow
white
flashing

I may use it as the red tail light. For a front light it would be pretty annoying to use since one would need to turn it on 3 times to get the white mode.

If it wasn’t for this, the light would be nice. The build quality is decent and it indeed works with 60V input. I tested various input voltages. 9V is minimum but the light is very dim. 12V-60V there’s no noticeable difference in brightness. It seems to be more efficient with higher voltage input. At 12V it pulls ~9W, at 60V it’s ~6W.

It does get fairly warm quickly. It’s not too bad though. Probably 50-60 Celsius. It’s a bit too hot to hold but you can keep your hand on it for a few seconds without getting burned.

I also ordered the version where the button is not supposed to be decorative (hasn’t arrived yet) and I hope that one will be more useful.

I briefly tried to disassemble it to see if any obvious hack could be done to the PCB to get an “always white” mode. It’s a bit tricky since one needs to desolder the LED in order to get the PCB out. I will probably try anyway since I bought 3 of these lights and they are pretty useless with this stupid mode switching.

janpom · November 25, 2024, 2:24pm

So I took it apart…

It looks simple enough. The driver PCB connects to the LED PCB with 4 PADs labeled:

L+
W- (white?)
Y- (yellow?)
R- (red?)

… and each of the negative pads has a transistor. So I guess I just desolder all the transistors, then short pads on the W- ones and then I have white-always-on. Right?

What confuses me though is that the pads on the LED PCB are also labeled and it doesn’t align. For example the, W- on the LED PCB connects with the Y- on the driver PCB. This will probably require some experimenting. Good that I bought 3.

janpom · November 25, 2024, 2:33pm

LED PCB labels are correct. I connected 9V directly to it to verify.

janpom · November 25, 2024, 3:03pm

Hacked PCB:

aaand…

It’s doing the right thing! Yay!

Bigdaddyhawk · November 26, 2024, 2:42pm

How are you mounting these lights? Are you happy with the ones that they come with or are you doing something custom?

janpom · November 26, 2024, 2:46pm

I haven’t started using them yet. These are for my ebike so I think I will just use the mounts they come with. They look decent and should work well on a bike.

@ShutterShock has a lot of different mount options for these though:

janpom · November 26, 2024, 3:52pm

@hatman PMed me regarding the details of the while-always-on hack. Let me try to write up instructions publicly in case more people are interested.

Step 1: Basic disassembly. Unscrew the 4 bolts. After that both the front and back cover can be removed. There’s a cutout on the side where you can push against the back of the lense to get it out as well.

Step 2: Desolder the driver PCB. There are two PCBs:

driver PCB
LED PCB

Initially, they are soldered together at these 4 pads…

LED PCB:

Driver PCB:

I managed to separate the solder joints just by heating them up with a soldering iron. I didn’t use any solder wick or a solder sucker (though that might have made things easier).

Step 3: Desolder the MOSFETs. There are 3 MOSFETs that need to be desoldered. I did it with hot air and that worked really well. Soldering iron will probably also work, though it can get a bit fiddly.

Step 4: Short the pads. You will want to short the pads where the MOSFET for the white LED originally was (or red or yellow if you prefer other color). Now, this is where things get confusing because the pads on the driver PCB are labeled incorrectly. For white, short the MOSFET at the pad labeled Y-:

I soldered a small solid core wire to create the short. This was super fiddly with an iron. I would have probably been better off doing this with hot air.

The labels on the LED PCB are correct:

So as a verification, you want to create the short at whichever pad that aligns with W- on the LED PCB (it was labeled Y- in my case).

Step 5: Put it back together. Be careful not to flip the driver PCB when putting it back. L+ should align with L+ (that one label seems to be correct on both PCBs). Then add some fresh solder and solder the 4 pads back together. (Probably best to do all 4 to make sure everything sits in place nicely though only the L+ and W- are critical for things to work correctly.)

I’m not sure if I’ll be doing this again to create some more pictures of the process but if anyone else does it and wants to contribute the pics, please let me know. I’ll be happy to add them to the post.

janpom · November 28, 2024, 11:48am

So no luck in getting the light version with an on/off button. The one I ordered which did specifically claim the button is a real button and not just a decoration turned out to be a very wrong item description.

Now I have 5 lights that I don’t need.

@Skyart Do you have any pics of the correct version and/or supplier links you could share? Is the on/off button any good?

I’m trying to decide whether I should try to find the version with the button or I should just add an DIY on/off mechanical switch, which wouldn’t be too hard.

Pecos · November 28, 2024, 1:26pm

Thanks for the detailed breakdown on this, i might have to get a couple of these to break and add to my boneyard.

I wonder if there is a way to make mode switching happen manually. One problem that comes to mind with the original design is when two lights get out of sync- if you done have a method of power cycling one of the lights independently it is quite a pain to get them synchronized back up.

I might swap out the amber motorcycle lights on my tomiboi with these modded. I don’t know why but i jus like running amber lights at night unless im pushing a lot of lumens.