The Evione BLOG will be moving to www.evione.co.za

Hey everyone

After many great months of sharing my electronics experiences and projects with the world on this blog we are officially moving to our new home on the internet. http://www.evione.co.za

I will be making regular video tutorials teaching from the basics of electronics and power supplies right through to interfacing ARM based processors with your electronics projects.

I will also be doing many video blogs explaining and showing exactly how to do many different things.

So lets take this to the next level. I hope you will continue to follow me as I take you to new heights in your electronics.

See you soon over at www.evione.co.za

The Mad Scientist.

Evione Production model PSU first sneak peak images.

Hey everyone.

We have been working around the clock to design and build some really nice quality bench equipment for those that do not have loads of cash laying around. Attached is the first few sneak peaks of the production model 20v 2A variable PSU.

This power supply features:

• Main Output Variable between 0 and 20V DC.
• Main Output can output 2amps max current.
• Main Output Current can be limited to anything from 0 to 2amps.
• Secondary Output is a 2amp 3.3v or 2amp 5v output for digital work.
• Full Colour Display with 2 x digital storage memories which can be recalled at anytime.
• Output Signal output On/Off Control.
• Accurate and Reliable Switch Mode Regulators which produce far less heat.
• This PSU can be powered from 230vAC or from any DC battery source up to a max of 23volts. So yes you can power it off a 9v batter if you like but please bare in mind that the requirements for output is that the input voltage must me 2volts higher than the output voltage that you would like to get.
• We Also can install an optional LIPO battery inside this unit turning it into a portable prototyping Laboratory grade PSU.

If you would like to know more or have any questions please feel free to email info@evione.co.za

This item will be in the Evione Store over the next few days. www.evione.co.za/cart

Evione’s New Logo Ready for Use

Well after getting a little stuck with what sort of logo to create, Liz came in and hand drew up something awesome. It was of coarse my job to make it happen on PC however the concept and graphic idea are all Liz’s.

What do you guys think?

Seeing as Evione specializes in photographic lighting and LED lighting in general you can see where the concept and idea comes in. Evione will continue to offer its services as electronics design engineering and IT Support and solutions however we are expanding our photographic lighting services and have started offering repairs to existing photographic and studio lighting. If you need something that is not available over the counter please do not hesitate to contact us.

 

Until next time. Have a happy Easter Everyone.

Evione Lighting LAB upgrade.

Well what can I say.

After many loaners and loads of help from a friend I have finally completed my Lab using all my own gear and some of my gear has been upgraded.

I have upgraded my soldering station to a full digital temp controlled unit and a SMD reworking station which allows me to work with smd and modern lighting equipment including pocket wizzards and the like.

I also have acquired an XProtolab oscilloscope for those odd little experiments or times that I need one to analyze a circuit.

I have assembled a 6 Channel Logic Analyzer which is PC based and am in the process of assembling a PC based O.Scope as well.

My bench PSU’s have grown to 4 after building 3 very specific units for the work I do.

I have also acquired some decent quality Digital Multimeters which is awesome as the one I was using was a sub R200-00 cheapie. :-P Hey it worked well.

Evione is ready to undertake any repairs that you may need to your photographic lighting. 

Evione Light Sabre V1.0

Wow. After much experimenting and trying various forms of controlling output of high powered LED’s I have finally completed the design and am in the process of building the final unit.

I will be demoing and making use of this prototype over the next few weeks for my photographic work to test the durability and battery of these lights. Thereafter they will be produced for sale market.

 

Specs as follows:

• 10Watt High Powered LED.
• 4400mah 11.1V Lithium Polymer Battery. (Gives a run time at full power of 4.5 hours)
• Super High CRI rating of 98% +
• Daylight balanced at 5600K
• Flicker Free for use on video and photography
• Variable Digital Power Control in 25 steps (Allows greater control of lighting)
• Super Diffusion material and Bouwens Mount adaptor so you can mount all your accesories.

Photographs of this light will follows soon as well as sample images taken with this light.

Designing A Drive & Control Circuit for High Powered L.E.D’s

Well it has been a crazy few months with editing weddings and such however I have still managed to find time enough to design, develop and write the program for the microcontroller for my version of the now famous Ice Light.

The Design of my light had a few things that needed to be met:

1. It had to be adjustable in steps such as how photographic lighting works.
2. It had to be over 1000 lumen to make it usable on camera equipment that did not have great ISO performance. Also the light would be put through diffusion which would weaken it.
3. It had to be portable and re-chargeable and the batteries needed to be light and readily available.

Now I also did some homework and have improved considerably over the Ice Light design by using even higher quality LED’s. CRI rating of the LED is even more important than the temperature of the light. CRI is your colour rendering index and most LED gear is below 80 CRI. The Ice Light is 90 CRI and above. I have located and been testing a 98+ CRI LED and the results are outstanding. It is a 5600K 98+CRI 1 Watt LED module. You must remember that Colour Temperature can be corrected in camera or post however lack of certain colours is a little harder.

The light produced by these modules is fantastic. The colour rendering is amazing in comparison to any other artificial light source I have ever tried.

Then the project began on how to drive these LED’s as they are current sensitive devises and just throwing power on them will mean a short life for the LED. You have to limit the current to the max level that the LED specifies. In my case with test LED’s it was 12V and 900ma max. I did some testing and found the difference in light between 900ma and 700ma was marginal but the increase in heat was a lot. I therefore decided to limit myself at 700ma.

I have been building and testing various drivers over the last few weeks and have finally found something that I enjoy using. It really does simplify my task.

Then there was the LED control circuit. Sure I could just throw a variable resistor on a mosfet and use that to vary the power of my light but I wanted to make this thing better than any other light out there and one of my pre requisites was that the light could be controlled in steps. The reason for this is you could easily set two light at the same level or adjust ratios as you have preset levels.

Dont get me wrong as using logics I can give said light around 255 levels which would make it almost analogue but this would be a pain to manage for the end user.

I made up my mind to use at ATMEGA 328-p as they are readily avail and easy to program. I also used the Arduino platform to design and test but the actual end unit is a standalone ATMEGA controller with a few components around it. Why waste an entire Arduino board after all.

I ran into many many issues while playing with these circuits and also due to lack of sleep managed to blow a ATMEGA CPU and a few other bits and bobs so if you want more information on how I got this lot to work WELL. Drop me a message and ill help you out.

 

Cheers for now

 

Dionne

The Engineer is Reborn.

After spending many years as a RF Radio / Cellular engineer for various companies and doing my time as a site technician as well as bench repair technician I pulled away from the IT and Electronics fields as most in the RF game where not enjoying the hours and work. Don’t get me wrong the learning was amazing but I could earn more money on other fields which where not as intensive.

Now just a little history about me. I studied electronics and digital systems engineering at Tech after finishing my schooling at George Campbell Technical High. I have since a very young age always been a tinkerer. This is probably due to my best mates dad being a Ham radio operator. Hell at 9 years of age I was stripping our ICL Elf 8088 PC to see how it works.

Yes photography has always been something I loved but electronics seemed the logical way for me.

Now many many years on after completely dropping my electronics I find my Professional Photography field and electronics coming together and I have lately started developing my own lighting and electronics which will assist me with my photography career.

The engineer has been reborn and maybe just in time. More Blog posts to follow.

If you would like to know more about my photography please head on over to www.dionneswart.com where you can check out my photography work.

Cheers for now

 

Dionne