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A project log for ESPLux - Smarts for your downlights

A circuit you can place inline with your existing low voltage lights to allow for wireless control

mattMatt 07/01/2015 at 02:456 Comments

Howdy all,

I've put my DS1054z over the ESPLux. Here are a couple of screen grabs from it. I think out of all this, I really need more smoothing for the output. Please let me know what you think, I could really do with some input on this one from someone who knows more about what I am looking at than me! I'll put a read more tag in here so that you don't get spammed unless you want to be.


Main Output

First up is the output voltages for the light itself.

8w LED Data

8w LED, full brightness

LED turned on full brightness. You can see I get about 5v ripple current. Ouch.



LED turned on 50% brightness. I don't know why it keeps going below 0v. Help?



Here is 50% brightness at 500us divisions.



35w Incandescent

I didn't expect this to turn out too well, and sure enough, the rectifier and mosfet get pretty warm when I'm running in this configuration.

Full brightness. More than 10v ripple. Ouch.



Here is 50% brightness. Again, whats up with it dropping below 0v?!



3.3v Rail data

Here is some information on the 3.3v rail. This is probably a more important statistic to have a look at. I'm thinking that I should put a bigger cap on the output of the regulator. Please let me know if there is a better way!


3.3v rail with no load



3.3v rail, 8w LED load, full brightness



3.3v rail, 8w LED load, 50% brightness



3.3v rail, 35w incandescent load, full brightness



3.3v rail, 35w incandescent load, 50% brightness



So yeah, I think overall the 3.3v rail looks alright, although with a relatively high load I do get about a 500mV ripple. This probably would be fixed if I threw a bigger cap in on the output stage of the regulator.

Anyway, please provide feedback! I appreciate you all checking out my project.

Discussions

K.C. Lee wrote 07/01/2015 at 09:58 point

No problems.  Even seasoned engineers might not learn how to use their scopes when it comes to high speed signals.
For a switch mode power supply, 100mV peak to peek noise is pretty much normal.  Published power supply noise figures (e.g. datasheet) are typically measured with a bandwidth limit filter on.  (scope menu on right)

Since you have long external wires to LED, that's probably where the parasitic inductance comes in.  Not a whole lot you can do on your board layout there, but now you know why that happens.  The next question is whether or not you need to fix it.

For personal projects, that's fine.  Now if you are trying to sell a product and have FCC/EMC concerns,  then there are things that you could improve upon.

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Matt wrote 07/03/2015 at 11:59 point

Awesome, thanks for the info. I'm guessing that having an ESP8266 will be enough of a challenge with the FCC if I do go down that track. At the moment, the unit is working great, it hasn't reset or had any problems since I first wired it up. I figure that will be a challenge for another day. 

Best of luck with your projects. I'm really keen to see how your Sonar project goes! I see your cover picture pretty much every time I jump on hackaday.io

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K.C. Lee wrote 07/03/2015 at 14:38 point

I thought of something... May be a snubber connected between the drain/source of the MOSFET right across the connector might slow down the slew rates to minimize those undershoots.

Thanks for the Skull BTW.

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Matt wrote 07/04/2015 at 12:59 point

no prob for the skull. I have had a little play with the esplux this afternoon, unfortunately not enough time to do too much experimenting. I have been playing more with my scope than anything else. Thanks for the ideas. I don't have any suitable caps floating around (or snubbers for that matter) so I'll have to get some more parts in. I did however have a bit of a play with some diodes, I didn't succeed with them at all. I put one across the MOSFET, also tried across the output. No dice. I'm keen to try remove that spike still. I put my lab supply (@12vdc) on instead of the 12vac one I have at the moment with no difference, which I guess is to be expected. I'll keep playing! 

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K.C. Lee wrote 07/01/2015 at 04:05 point

First off don't know whether or not you know how to properly use the probe for fast signals i.e. not using the big long ground lead.
http://www.analog.com/library/analogDialogue/archives/41-03/time_domain.pdf

If you have a large ground loop, then the probe might be looking at artifacts - high di/dt + inductor = big voltage spike.  In you case, it is undershoot.  There is also the case for bad grounding and you introduce a parasitic inductance into high current connection or both...

BTW if you want to look at the noise on your 3.3V  rail, there is the AC coupling on the scope - usually a button.   What it does is to show you the AC component part, so you can zoom in to 100mV or smaller and get you higher resolution to see the noise.

I highly recommend that you might want to learn to use your scope...  

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Matt wrote 07/01/2015 at 05:10 point

Hi there, thanks for your reply. Yep, I haven't played around with it much at all yet. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know how to use it properly, which is why I have asked for peoples input. I can look around on the net all day for info, but without knowing that that is 'undershoot' I find it hard to know what to search for.

My understanding is that my probe is calibrated properly, this is the square wave from the scope itself: 

Thanks for the ground loop info, I was using the ground lead that came with the scope. I pulled that off and used the spring instead, unfortunately I still have the same undershoot thing happening. I take it it is either something to do with my board layout, my failure in understanding how to use a scope or a component not acting perfectly. Here is the 3.3v logic level out to the MOSFET:


In hindsight, I should have used AC coupling for my pictures. Here is the 3.3v rail, 8w LED load, 50% brightness one at 50mV divisions. 



Thanks again for your reply. I appreciate your feedback. I will go and read through the document you linked to.

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