[Satiagraha] let us know that Texas Instruments(TI) has given out a neat “LED Reference Design Cookbook” PDF. The document contains 17 some odd little projects featuring different TI ICs and ways of using them to control LEDs in things from backlights to torches to solar lanterns to advanced PWM control! Sure the document is biased towards using TI equipment, but that shouldn’t stop you from recreating, modifying, and generally just having fun with their designs in your own productions.
This was nice HaD. Thanks. Not strictly a hack but, nice. More like this – less blinky Arduinos.
Definitly very useful, I’ve seen the buck boost LED controllers and they are all SMT and not very easy to understand for the average hobbyist. Having a few example circuits definitely helps to make them more approachable. Thanks for the link.
R’s touched on a key point — TI has, unfortunately, one of the least hack-friendly portfolios of anyone. The overwhelming majority of their parts are small, even as SMT parts go.
I wish they had about 2000% more of their “ez”-line of devtools/boards, because noone else is doing them — whereas there’s no shortage of affordable Microchip and Atmel modules and mini-boards. And everyone else (ST and NXP, anyway) is beating Stellaris to our CortexM3 dinner table, which is also a shame.
Heavy TI sigh.