September 7, 2019
New firmware for one of my Convoy S2+ flashlights
This project started back in August of 2019.
The original idea was to flash new firmware onto my Convoy S2+ flashlight.
The project has expanded since then (through various problems I never could have predicted).
It is now late October, and I am still not finished.
But I am making progress each time I pick this business up and work on it.
Just to summarize, I started by taking apart my Convoy flashlight and getting to
where I could look at the ATTINY13A chip on the PCB.
I had a special clip that I couldn't believe would actually work, but it actually
works quite nicely -- but I need some gadget to serve as an ISP programmer.
I wasted a bunch of time trying to use an Arduino I had laying around.
I hate Arduinos and the whole Arduino game.
I went through two rounds of purchases and ended up with the following.
- two USBasp dongles from an Ebay seller.
- one USBxx dongle from vendor A on AliExpress
- one USBxx dongle from vendor B on AliExpress
- ten ATTiny13A chips in DIP package from AliExpress
- 25 ATTiny13A chip in SMT package from Digikey
- ten ATTiny13A chips in DIP package from an Ebay seller
I bought the second batch of DIP package chips when I was unable to get the
first batch to respond at all. When I discovered the need for the slow SCK jumper,
all of this began to work -- so now I have 45 of these litle microcontrollers to
find things to do with!
Feedback? Questions?
Drop me a line!
Tom's Light Info / tom@mmto.org