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10W LED "blunty" moving head disco light teardown.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ธ.ค. 2015
- I finally got round to doing a proper test and then complete teardown on this light, which looks a bit like a Sharpy, but isn't so we'll call it a Blunty instead. And this is actually one sweet little light. Even with the relatively low power LED it still packs a surprising punch, and would work well in small dark nightclubs.
The manual makes a valiant effort in Chinglish, but has some errors. It also refers to the dicroic glass filters as diachronic glass which is most amusing.
The light has two internal effect wheels. Colour with seven dichroic filters and open white, and gobo with seven gobos and an open circle. The gobo channel has a shake function for each gobo.
I've included all the data you need to use this light in the video, but there are a few little notes to stop you getting caught out.
The light will not put out any light at all until you have the dimmer channel up and nudge the shutter channel up from zero until it enables the LED.
After a short time the display and buttons will go into standby and initially it appears as if it's locked up. Just hold the menu button in for about five seconds to reactivate the display.
This light was bought on ebay from TomTop at the following link.
www.ebay.co.uk/...
"Take it to bits" has become my new favorite phrase. Thanks for making these videos!
I worked for a pro AV company for a while. Got to watch our production guy setup and operate a huge array of lights for a big corporate event. Complete with some Showguns. This stuff completely fascinates me. In another life I think I would have done lighting like this.
as a young boy, I use to love to take things apart, now I like to watch you take stuff apart. thanks
It's sad when a properly connected ground is a surprising find.
I have a fairly good model train transformer... No ground. Best part? The case was METAL! I'd THINK a metal case would have ground. I mean, maybe there was a reason, but I doubt it'd hurt to have a ground. To be fair though, not one the user if someone gets shocked. I think it's riveted? I don't actually know... Flathead with a hole in the center. That IS a rivet right?
Just what are you going on about?
First.
+bigclivedotcom Damn you!
+bigclivedotcom You sir, are a genious :-)
ha ha ha that's our job!
+captian k'Lang Every night's a windy night where I'm located. One of the primary factors in choosing this particular house location was it being near the sea, but well sheltered from the storms and high enough up to avoid excess flooding risk too. Just as well given what happened yesterday. Possibly some of the worst rain induced flooding on the IOM in history.
+captian k'Lang I wouldn't call it a tragedy, since nobody was hurt. But it it's a very sad thing to happen to the bridge. the bus can be replaced, but rebuilding that bridge is quite a significant task.
When taking things to bits...I use Sharpie markers in various colors to put a little dot on each connector/socket pair to more easily match them later when reassembling them.
But taking pictures is now much easier with cameras on our phones...so I tend to do both as a just in case kind of thing.
I bought a pair of these when I discovered an interest in lighting design. I've bought another two spots, and four double-sided washes...for less than £70 a fixture, they're brilliant. Build quality is certainly inconsistent, but for a newbie LD...they're great. It's looking like they'll get their first gig in May too. :)
Surpriting to see the seller still online.
I take that as an indication of quality.
Rather than the pop-up stores that can't be found a few months after you dismantle the fun stuff .
wow, Ten years ago this was a 500 pound piece of kit..
andy69607 The real things still are, and weigh the same!
Often Italian/euro, and beautifully engineered, but bloody hard to pull apart & repair.
Lotsa fun.
Seen a disco light couple of times and wondering what was inside. Thanks to you, Clive, now I know.
Interesting stuff.
I can compare it with a a two axis, alt and azimuth, gun control ( pointing mechanism I built way back in 1969 as my final year project. It used a bunch of ECC33 ( If I remember right) dual triodes. Only old timers like me can grasp how far technology has come.
Last week I soldered a 100 pin C8051F120 chip on to a pcb ( both from China) for a portable blood Oxygen monitor that I am cooking up. This chip runs at a 100MHZ clock, single clock cycle operation, and is made by Silabs. This is 50x faster then the original MCS-51 chip.
It boggles the mind.
I have always seen these at concerts and never understood how they worked. I mean, I had a general guess that was something along the lines of how it actually is, but seeing this really clear up my mind. I can rest easy now. Thank you.
Lights like these are fairly common in the entertainment world. I work in the theater industry and the big name that we use for "disco lights" is Chauvet. The Chauvet Intimidator is exactly what's in this video, and we use lighting control consoles, usually ETC lighting control consoles to make them do crazy stuff.
Here's a link to the Intimidator: www.amazon.com/Chauvet-Intimidator-Spot-LED-150/dp/B001SQAJ8S
I thought it was great to see you actually admire the product for a change. Don't get me wrong, I love to see our western neighbors (I'm American) get an ear-full for their shameless corner cutting, but this is still probably one of my favorite videos of yours.
Great video, well that was a surprisingly high quality item for such a reasonable price. Normally the internal finishing is the first thing to suffer in low cost Chinese items, but it was a nice touch to see the use of metal gears, proper bearings and nice rounded edges everywhere to avoid cable damage.
the ULN2803's are actually quite commonly used to drive stepper motors. Quite many arduino shields and projects use this IC for that purpose. The bridging of each 2 pins is used to double the current (0,5A each) for each stepper motor coil. Some people even stack 2 of those on eachother to achieve the same effect (yes it's hacky and may be unreliable)
Clive!!!!! I’ve been a fan for years and years, so trust me when I say that if you would do more laser and optics related stuff… you would become addicted and absolutely love it! I had the chance to tinker with lasers for years at my buddies electronic salvage yard… But I was more into power electronics, motor drives, and LED technologies. But once I started messing with lasers and optics… HOLY FEKEN CRAP it is so much fun you can’t imagine… And there are incredible things for sale on eBay for pennies on the dollar. It’s the golden age of lasers and optics.
From old military equipment, industrial lasers, medical laser equipment, And show lasers/projectors...... all available for pennies on the dollar on eBay. Shit even the cheapo Chinese stuff is incredible. I mean holy hell I can get ONE WATT OF OPTICAL POWER of 532 mm green laser light for under $100! SERIOUSLY That’s fucking insane. A few years ago it would’ve taken a room full of equipment to get that type of power!
I guarantee if you start dabbling with it… You will absolutely fall in love. Whether it’s show lasers, RGB laser modules, or old used government/medical stuff. TRUST ME!!!! I’m a doctor… And I’m prescribing some laser experimenting fun for you. Even if you don’t share it with us via videos… Do it for your own sake!
Hear hear
I was gently hoping for all the LEDs to be replaced with laser diodes, for a robot-machine-of-blinding-doom.
We recently put in 30 of these into a small club. They where configured as a matrix on the lighting software and they looked fantastic in a big array.
I've got "X Gon Give it to Ya" stuck in my head after watching this. Because he kept saying "DMX." My brain is a circus.
When you decide to start taking photos this video reminded me of something I did... back in 2002 I worked for an electronics repair company (around the beginning of the death of the industry) fixing TVs for a giant retailer in the tri-state area (every non-functioning set was brought to us, around 150-200 daily), mostly CRTs and rear projection styles. A company (who's name is a type of screwdriver), had recently come out with this ultra compact style of projection TV that was one of the first we got that had a computer diagnostic tool... plug it in and it says 'replace board A/B/C' or some component (remember the death of the industry?) and in this case were told it was the 'light engine'. A few days later a travel case, the kind you'd use for a ginormous sound board, showed up with this tiny light engine inside, sans instructions. I'd yet to open the set up as we'd no idea how long it would take to get the part and didn't like half-finished projects laying around... time to crack it open. It was the most ridiculously engineered thing I've ever seen... using 7 diff types of screws (including Allen head, wtf?!), and had obviously been built AROUND the bit I had to replace. By the end of the day, after a thousand cuts on the stupidly sharp and sticky-outtie bits (which was basically everything), hundreds of photos and millions of swears, I'd managed to replace the component... problem was, I had 113 screws left over !!! The TV worked and passed my throttling/shake test so off it went...
Many thanks for this video and the memory !!!
This model is still arround under all kind of names online. Pretty impresive & such low cost you can actually afford buying a bunch to get that real moving head effect in shows!
P.s. long content like this showing your tought process when dismanteling electronics is always a blast!
I always wanted a look inside a lamp like that, but never had the courage to take it to bits (but that is why you do it) just in case I took it to far to bits and could not put it back together again. Very nice and well made, but that will reflect in the price. Nice one Clive!
Been thinking of getting some of these for my rig, but have hesitated a little as they are a lot (for something from China). Your review has stopped me being worried and I will be ordering a couple of these real soon :) Thanks BC.C
It is quite surprising how simple a lot of these head LED light fixtures are there's pretty much nothing in them but yet the create an impressive light show for the size and quality I've just recently bought to myself after seen one of these running before on a video I may end up buying another 2
I have one of these, but branded as a QTX Synohead. It's slightly better built, has a fan on the back and seems to smooth slightly smoother. But I must agree, these are lovely little heads and I'd recommend them to anyone. They're essentially ADJ Inno Pocket Spot's :)
i personally own about a dozen of these particular fixtures, and I love them for playing with at home. in a small room, you don't notice their small size at all.
one thing worth mentioning: it actually does matter which "manufacturer" name is on the sticker. there are several of these fixtures that have been rebranded under different names, but each rebrand has different software, a different DMX patch, different dimming curves, and sometimes even different color and gobo wheels. the brands I can remember are Lixada, U-King, E Your Life, and Ovation, but may favorite is Lixada, because they're the only ones to use flicker-free constant current dimming, the blues are deeper, and the dimming curve lets you go suuuuuuuuuper dim to the point where you almost can't see it. dimming on the Lixadas is obviously granular, but at lower intensities it's not too bad.
ONE THING TO WARN:
Some of the Lixadas have a problem where changing the "LED" setting will actually cause the power supply to blow up. i have no idea how this happens, but each time I change one of them to another setting, the light resets twice, then blows sparks out the back. i replaced the PSU's and compromised by simply putting a piece of gaff tape over the display and using a silver marker to write the address on the tape.
awesome video Clive!
I didn't know about the self destruct mode. That's awesome.
como asim modo autodestruição do noving head
Takeaway food containers make great temporary screw/parts storage. ;)
White poster-paint pen or tip-ex pen is good for marking connections.
Bought four of very similar lights some years ago. They all popped within a 30 minute window. When I opened them up, three of them had blown resistors in the power supply unit while the fourth did the same on the control board it self. The supplier sent replacements for the items but I still haven't really fired them up again except when checking to see if the replacements worked. Just haven't been that curious to see whether they'll pop again or not 😅, so they just sit in storage waiting for something to happen (the cases they came in however have been very useful for other fixtures that actually work 😛)
Friend, you should consider examining one of those Chinese Beam 230 Sharpy clones! It would be 😎fantastic😃
Hi BigClive. About the 512 DMX channels, this is a standard. You would normally link up multiple lights in series, to be able to control them all you have at maximum 512 addresses.
keep thinking i got a wire in front of my monitor
Just bought two of these and agree very impressed..in fact I'm buying two more for sure ...excellent review.
the build is really nice and with quite alot metal parts. I could see me buying this as a base for all sorts of diy microcontroller projects: BB gantry, DIY gimbal....
Keep doing Moving Head openings, they are so awesome! I love it! :P
That cooling fan noise reminds me of the battery charger for my wife's power chair!!
those stepper drivers are so quiet. very nice
I've never seen one of these. Obviously well made. I have a basement full of Disco lights, audio ( about 5000+ watts) etc.
Waiting for it's comeback. So equipment prices go up and I can sell it ! I'm not carrying it all out though. oooomph.
My dog would love this! I mount it on the ceiling fan, and I just have it fast, randomly around the room. Shes just like OH IMA CATCH IT! I sometimes call her a cat :3
Our cat, Wasabi will fetch sticks I throw but not bring them back.
I find it amusing how many comments there are about "how good" this light is. To me as someone who works on the big, real-deal ones as part of my job I can't help but think of how much of a toy this is.
I will agree, I'm impressed with the steppers for how super cheap the rest of it is built.
The pan motor will almost always be larger since it has to rotate more weight than the tilt plus it has to be able to oppose any forces generated by the tilt motor moving the head at the same time.
+mwiz100 As someone who spends a significant part of my year working with PRG and "pro" lights that cost tens of thousands of pounds each, this video is in context. For £80 ($120) the build quality and functionality of this light is very good. In fact the whole light costs much LESS than most small components for a VL3000, PRG Bad Boy or almost every other touring fixture. I regard this light as a great toy, a useful tool for a small club and definitely a very useful teaching aid in the theatre department of a school.
+bigclivedotcom Oh shit PRG, well then! Hah
Indeed, parts for most of those are more than this whole thingie. Hell the lamps for most big brand movers cost more than this whole fixture! True, context is everything. Given I was just working on a mover earlier today before coming home my recent reference frame was a totally different class of fixture.
Given the proliferation of Chinese made lights it's fairly surprising at times what you can get as an off brand that almost certainly comes out of the same factory as some of the brand name stuff.
+bigclivedotcom Speaking of, I did search and this *exact* unit can be purchased as the American DJ Inno Pocket Spot "12W" LED light for $260 USD!
"Always take pictures as you go" .... you're recording video lol. You have thousands of pictures and if you play it backwards it's an assembly video :D
It's amazing how he can just see a chip ID and know immediately what it is
It is not hard - for example all ULN's are transistor arrays, no matter what the numbers are after. The ARM's are processors. And so on...
If you were to come into possession of a Robe Robin 1500, I'd love to see a teardown on that!
We have a whole box of those power supplies. They're over the shelf. ^^
Been waiting for this teardown for a long time :)
This, if beefed up, could be used as a little base for a homemade robot.. Maybe stack two of them for 4-ish axes?
It's all-metal, so the hardest part would be replacing the motors with something much stronger.
Or perhaps a camera PT(Z?) head.
the STM32 has quite advanced timers on board, so I guess they can do the whole PWM shebang in hardware.
Love that stepper motor sound
I sometimes dabble with stage lighting, having gone to scollege for such. The school I do the spring musical for recently upgraded to an all LED systen, with (6) vl2600's and numerouse PRolightlt Ellipses, and a plethora of Vl800's. I'm still in the process of learning the ETC Ion boad that was also part of the upgrade, as it's the first board outside the Express/Expression family I've had to work with.
Im a stage hand and i play with the BIG ONES .
this one is a lil cute guy that id never see in my field , i have seen something like it but bigger and i giggled
Claypaky & Robe?
I've been inside enough of the Pro ones to know that they are all modular, makes replacing a bad part in the field and the shop much easier (especially when you have a sacrificial unit).
Of course, it still takes way too many screwdrivers to pull the whole thing apart.
Hmm, label on the outside of the protective film? So, I guess you could say its /an off brand/ light?
Your vids are always informative to watch, I love taking stuff apart too, keeps your brain Active : )
Would love to see a side by side tear down of one of these and a adj inno pocket spot....
i just can't believe you'll be able to put it back together
+Ezbz Pop It went back together no problem. Much easier than some of the professional versions.
Nice to see apparently proper grounding!
love the video....!!! wish u did more moving light videos lol
Surprised to see these are still available from the link you provided. Also surprised to see they cost less than £60 with free postage.
Saw exactly same Poundland screwdriver in the local Less-Than-10$ shop called Daiso, which was 2000KRW. I opted in for the slightly more dodgy one instead because it came with Torx screws and longer handle, but with no way to store bits other than the default stash block.
Summary: Next screwdriver I will get will be that one.
Oh, plus I saw the EXACT same Laser bike light there, along with solar powered one which has 45mAH rechargeable Ni-MH button cells soldered together.
Bought one and gonna change the battery to 120mAH one, but I have no idea if it will ever store charges.
highlarious description from the linked eBay auction: "2 in1 Hair Straightener Curler Styler Negative Ions Curling Hair Curlers Tool UK. Lighting Effects : Pattern Gobo(s). Built-In Program: Standard Voice, Self-Propelled, Master-Slave, DMX. Mini-Pattern Moving Head Light, Compact Structure, The Output Is Good, With A Variety Of Patterns, Easy Installation, Easy To Carry, Moving In Light Weight, Projection Accuracy, Good Effect."
hey clive love the dmx stuff please do more
It is actually nicer than the ADJ version, it actually has switches for homing. I wonder how hard it would be to change the lenses to get a beam fixture.
Anything that doesn't get the Clive seal of approval is good enough for me
I have a Tom shine 80W moving head I enjoy it very much I hope you enjoy yours
Thanks for the in depth tear down, that was awesome and I just subscribed! Do you have a link to the manufacturer of the little mover?
couple questions:
1, why don't the discs have 360* motion? Is there such a thing as a 360* stepper?
2, Why is it common for this kind of thing to come apart in sections (split housings), is it to help with field servicing?
Great video as always
+Slot1Gamer Might want to double check but I'm pretty sure steppers are generally able to rotate continuously. Perhaps it made the design easier, but it is strange.
The stepper motors can rotate continuously, but it uses a very simple technique to get an exact reference position for the colour and gobo wheels at power-up. The wheels have a physical end limit, and by running the motors for more than one full revolution they hit the end limit and the motor just skips against it. That means the controller has an exact reference to the position of the wheels without needing a sensor to detect the position.
That, and the fact the wires going up in the yolk would twist around and get damaged easily if they had unlimited 360 degree motion.
+Slot1Gamer The spilt housings are pretty common. All they're doing is hiding a metal substructure and blocking any light spill from in the head. The fact they separate easily to give access to the insides is something that has pretty much always been done with theatrical moving head fixtures. It helps make maintenance much easier.
+Nitrxgen Slot1gamer was referring to the colour and gobo wheels as opposed to the pan and tilt movement.
Awesome teardown & review. Really appreciate your time and expertise. Keep up the great work.
I like how he called it a Blunty as supposed to Clay Paky's original Sharpy.
As a retired VL operator programer I was wondering if parts are available to buy . O you video is great. Keep them coming.
My small movinghead is a white 60 Watt U'King Mini moving headspot looks just like that one but mine is snow white color and it does have a decent good big size cooling fan inside it. Different gobo icons though and i do love this light alottoo. At somepoint on i'm gonna be getting a much huger size moving head light like the 7R 230 Watt Shehds or Sharpy moving head lightthat legit goes in night clubs lol. i also do DJ EDM aswell. That little LED light lens there inside at the back inside atthe LED chip, it looks like an eye ball lens / eye lens lol. The Pupil lens or the entire front of eye lens. Cat eye lens have that like half ball shape eye lens
Some sellers on ebay rate these by the power rating of the LED, some mislead you by quoting the Mains power consumption in watts.
Those are made a lot cheaper nowadays. That thing looks really high quality compared to mine. The ones made today have cheaper plastics, electronics, bearings, and slower movements.
Hi. Did you find out what the power supply values were? I would like to run this from a 12v car battery :)
When using those TI stepper driver chips, or clones thereof, for 3D printing or CNC applications it's normal to glue a little heatsink on to them.
Dia-Chronic: Something you take Imodium for????
This reminds me of one of the first festivals me and my friends broke into when I was younger and I was presented with this giant spot light throwing its weight around - the engineers (or maybe the marketing wankers) had called it the G spot fury.
Yeah, the G-spot is a thing. And the PRG Bad Boy too.
When you see it from the top you see it doesn't even line up straight when it goes to the default position.
Looks like its packed with programmables though. Maybe use it to create something else.
Neat toy! Good video, I appreciated directing the light onto a white background to gauge the colours,would this work for the small LED fairy lights? I noticed the best colour rendition in the last "fairy light showdown" video was when they shone on your hands. Mostly they seem to swamp out the camera. Thanks for the videos.
I bought four of these. They had mixed screws also.
If you had 10 lights on the DMX bus, and wanted separate control of each, that would be 110 channels, so you could easily use all 256 channels for a large stage set.
A DMX universe is 512 channels. But some modern lights can use massive quantities of channels.
5176B in SO-8 is the SN65176B RS485 driver IC. Edit: Ok, I should have waited for the end before commenting ;)
WHite lithium grease on the squeaky parts sir. It will do well in the temperature differential and it doesn't tend to attract dust and dirt.
Varilight never had a tilt drive as good as that.
And their " 'smart' repeaters" were anything but.
I do love a good teardown! I have a DMX question! I've got an old Purelight Phantom PL181 MKII which seems to be so old, no-one has ever mentioned it on the internet ever! My question, other than trial and error (I have tried and I was erroneous), how can I get the DMX channels and ranges. It has a AT89C55WD chip. Don't suppose there a generic arrangement ?? Any clues? TIA
Great video. I was looking to see if there would be a way to do a custom GOBO for my wedding. I guess you could glue a piece of clear transparent film with writing on, over the hole in the GOBO for the straight-through (no GOBO) effect?
You can get LED gobo projectors designed to take laser printed transparencies. Or alternatively, use a video projector with a short animation loop. Alternatively, depending on budget you can get custom laser etched mirrored glass gobos.
I wish there were an army of EEs dedicated to product teardown reviews like you do; focusing not only on what the product is/does, but how it's made, how well it's made, and the like. There's a dude(s) in China who I'd imagine you'd shake the hand of for designing this thing as robustly as he did. It's things like this.
Maybe someone tried to tell him to replace machined bits with plastic bits, maybe he conspired to sand off he Ti numbers/logos to avoid some nationalistic pride thing, or maybe he sourced local knockoffs to get it under production cost per unit and knew the functionlly-equivalent-for-this-task copycat was good enough. Who knows.
If I had need for some small movers I'd consider these far more seriously than I otherwise might have, and judging by your review that's either entirely by design, or as likely, by the damn good work of one man somewhere who'll never be thanked directly for not letting this thing be built with parts that'll fail halfway through a show.
Very interesting, do you have more about how "DMX" works in another video?
Not specifically, but I could make a video about the subject.
That's quite a high output for such a tiny LED. Any plans to swap that out for something else?
I wish you would take on more chsllsnges likr this Clive. A bit of both mechanical and electronic explinstion. Cheers.
id like to know if its possible to remove the 10W led and upgrade it to say a 25-50W led.??
Are you saying that if you were to plug this light in without having it connected to a DMX controller, the light would just move about and change colour and gobo as it wants to? If so, is that the case with higher quality, higher end industrial moving spot lights? If this light can just move about and change colour and gobos on its own, then that would be OK for decorative lighting or at parties etc, don't you think?
I just wondered, have you ever looked at cheap china DMX Controllers?
at 3:00 the movement reminds me of the shoddy CGI in the first Terminator movie
+Slot1Gamer There is no CGI in the first Terminator movie.
nrdesign1991 oops my bad
“It will suddenly violently react”
Diarrchronic, the name for the major squits.... :P
One useful thing to have is a bunch of coloured sharpies (or any semi-permanent marker), use them to mark plugs & sockets before disconnecting... :)
Definitely the beginnings of a phaser turret there, just need someone to invent the phaser... :P
I did end up putting coloured dots on the plugs with sharpies.
Very intersting video, thanks for posting
I was hoping to convince the school to invest in a small DMX controller and an end-point 220v distributor box for basic stage lighting, which would make setup/teardown a lot easier, but the school likes to cheap out on the drama budget. So we're stuck with my old rebuilt deathtrap switch/dimmer panel with one 110v cord for every channel running from the booth at the back all the way to the front of the gymnasium where the stage is set up. I used to go through a lot of gaffer tape, lest somebody trip over one of those cords.
Some proper PAR cans would be nice too, rather than these 150w NOMA halogen flood lamps I've been getting by on... And some nice light stands so that I don't have to go up to mount them on the ceiling girders... And while I'm wishing, I'd also like a pony.
if you like this then you'd love the Martin Mac 500 Moving Heads in my friends work
Has anyone replaced the LED module? I have a couple burned out units, and cannot find the module online (P/N LZP-000003-LED on the module. Alternatively, I could solder a new SMD LED, but there are several 10w units that use various forward voltages (Cree XML at 2.9v, others at 12v, etc.). Any suggestions?
Whatever LED module you use would preferable have close to the same voltage/current rating as the original to allow use of the existing driver. It would also have to have a similar illuminated area for optical compatibility with the lens system.
yeahh Thanks! i was looking forward to this review/film
Those STM32 series MCUs have been around for quite some time. But just recently they seem to pop up everywhere. You can get them from 2$ upwards on ebay (or less than 10$ for a dev board). So they don't cost much more than the Atmel AVRs (used in the Arduino for example), but they have *way more features* (32bit and DMA, more RAM/flash/EEPROM, more IO/UARTS/I2C, more timers, and general configureability). There are quite a few projects that maxed out the AVRs/Arduino and moved to the STM32F1 (or the bigger brothers F3/F4), flight controllers for RC crafts for example. My guess: expect to see them more often.
www.st.com/web/en/catalog/mmc/FM141/SC1169?sc=stm32
+superdau ST microcontrollers are extremely popular among Chinese designer (STM8 as low end or STM32). I can guess that is because they are cheap and they will not have problem obtaining them (French-Italian company but registered in Switzerland so in any case they are safe), only interesting is that ST is one of few companies that do not make its silicon products in China (they don't have any manufacturing facilities in China) and they are one of biggest manufacturers in world (by volume they are second after TI)
STM32 are one of better ARM based microcontrollers on market (they have their silicon bugs but no more then others) and for while they are my choice of microcontrollers (and I am not Chines) for anything that need more then 10 IO (they do not make 6 pin microcontrollers).
You can find STM32F103 for less then 1.5$ and you can find simple boards with them for 2.5$ (from China).
What if your gobo’s are not centered like they show half of the gobo what do we have to do to fix it
Have you ever looked at a simple stepper motor driver? Explain how it works?