Repairing a Neewer 660 Studio light - How Hard Can It Be? -- Episode 594

You could perhaps look at adding:

• wireless control that allows individual or group adjustments
• DMX interface so as they can double up as party lights
• preset store/recall option
• display on the back
• strobe feature 

If you plan to re-lamp them in the future, then you could do RGB / white and then some colour temp control options.

Might want to verify that the LED and driver side is still working before jumping head-first into a new microcontroller though. Something killed the microcontroller. 

However looks like a good fevive for 'upcycling' as a lot of the tricky bits can be reused as is e.g. case with yoke attachment, barn doors attachments, battery holders, diffuser slot, rails for LED strips and so on. The single PCB looks like it could be traced and a new custom one dropped in to replace it. Perhaps all that is missing on that particular model is a cut-out for adding a LCD/OLED display.

Do the rotary pots control the LED driver directly or are they analogue inputs into the microcontroller which are used to control the PWM to the driver ? Also, is there  a charging circuit for the camera battery pack portable power ?

I think we posted the same thing at the same time, nice work!

I think I beat you to it by 4minutes 

lol I don't know, I blame vernit! 

If you are connected to different forum instances, then two people can think they were both first to reply, but when things finally sync up, you realise you were beaten to it and now look as if you have just plagiarised the previous post

I know posting the same idea 4 minutes later makes me look like even more of a goof than usual! 

But yes, I would be interested to  know if the MCU is bringing anything interesting to the party. Or is it just doing basic telemetry to for overtemperature and battery SOC shutdown... 

At first sight, the MCU appears a bit overkill for just dimming the LEDs. However perhaps they have just standardised on parts as some of the other models have to drive a small display screen.

I was wondering what killed the MCU though. Did a failure in the driver dump 12v through the GPIO perhaps, which caused a short which killed the MCU regulator ? Quite often it is the LEDs that fail first as they are often pushed hard to get maximum light output. Chain reaction.

Should have used a 7805/LM317, I'm sure that cheap CMOS LDO got up to no good when the 15V supply is plugged in.

Lots of interesting ideas, in fact the replacement I got for this one is a new "upgraded" version which has a small LCD screen for displaying the brightness and colour temp, and is wirelessly controlled by a remote either individually or you can change all of them in a room at the same time!

The LED side works perfectly, I checked that, but I don't think it made the cut for the video, we almost ended up with a 1hour long video of the highlights!
Definitely will be reusing the external casing, barn doors, LED panel (It's a single PCB).
The pots are analogue inputs to the micro which is then PWM control to the LED drivers, I'm tempted to simplify the circuit and make a drop in replacement PCB which will line up with the holes for the pots, but these will be fed into a 555  (or 556, as theres 2 to control) and output a PWM to the LED drivers.

Lots of interesting ideas, in fact the replacement I got for this one is a new "upgraded" version which has a small LCD screen for displaying the brightness and colour temp, and is wirelessly controlled by a remote either individually or you can change all of them in a room at the same time!

The LED side works perfectly, I checked that, but I don't think it made the cut for the video, we almost ended up with a 1hour long video of the highlights!
Definitely will be reusing the external casing, barn doors, LED panel (It's a single PCB).
The pots are analogue inputs to the micro which is then PWM control to the LED drivers, I'm tempted to simplify the circuit and make a drop in replacement PCB which will line up with the holes for the pots, but these will be fed into a 555  (or 556, as theres 2 to control) and output a PWM to the LED drivers.