this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
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Because you could design all of those feature in analog, and make custom boards for every change or have one board you update every few years based on supply, cost, and maybe power performance, but make and adjust features on a minute by minute basis if want to.
The driver, power source, etc can all be more easily separated from the logic too. It could be tiny, or massive. Same software, same controller.
Its a flashlight, not exactly a field in raging development.
Honestly I'm thinking it's because it's cheaper to have programmers doing simple FW programming for things than it is to have engineers design the required circuits. There are so many things with microprocessors in today that just does not actually need it but it was the lazy option. It opens stupid avoidable avenues of vulnerabilities.
…. I don’t know. It’s just what came to mind when I thought of household appliances being hijacked.
I love it,keep up the good work Scotty!
Cheaper components and manufacture to use a dedicated microcontroller to run PWM to dim the LEDs than something like a 555 and transistors to change its logic/capacitor path to vary brightness.
They even may use the same micro for charging lipo batteries, not sure since there are dirt cheap chips for that too.
The fact that people have bothered to modify such basic firmware is pretty funny though.
Or you use one GreenPak device and OTP it based on the model and have it cheaper and more reliable, any supporting circuits like drivers, FETs, bulk capacitance, etc.. Would have to be designed per-model anyway on MCU based design.
Is there are particular GreenPak device hobbiest can use? They look interesting personally
SLG46826V-DIP SLG47115V-DIP SLG47004V-DIP
These are the breakout boards of their respective chips.
These chips are the 3 "multiple time programmable" chips in their line (if I have the right ones, I put them in my mouser list a while ago). Which means that once you program them, they aren't burned in with those settings and can be reused.
There is also a "debug mode" where you don't program them at all but program all the settings after boot so that the settings are cleared again after the chip is repowered. I have never used it, but that is what the renesas rep told us during our technical call at work.
They are super handy at getting rid of all of the logic needed for amplifiers, CC/CV circuits, etc...