O.K People, As i have been saying since the beginning of this post, I already have a 3 year old successful design which uses a Trafo.

My client for whom i designed the product wants me to reduce the B.O.M cost and shipping cost which is directly connected to the Trafo ( Weight + cost). Nowadays, good quality small size line freq iron core trafo's have become a rare commodity and the trafo makers have nearly stopped taking oreders for these type of trafo's, instead they have huge demand for hi-freq ferrite core trafos which are used in SMPS designs.

because of these hurdles my client wants me to change the design to replace bulky trafo with a smaller, lighter, cooler SMPS card.

As for the safety of the enduser, My design does not use any inputs/keys, its an Ir remote Dimmer and the whole circuit is enclosed in a ABS plastic box.

My client has shown a competitor's product which uses capacitive resistance P.S and Direct Mains ZCD and the final product is as heavy as a pack of cigarettes. its been in the market since 4 years and asks me, why can't we do ours on similar lines ?

I feel writing off appnotes of several reputed companies as absurd is not right and many of us have derived reasonable amount of help from these very appnotes and nobody can deny this fact.

This topic has turned into a situation which is similar to where a parent finds it awkward to discuss about Sex education with his teenager and tries to avoid the discussion.

Senior members do not want to divulge on this topic citing safety issues.

How will one ever know the result unless he tries it, isn't that the spirit/essence that a designer should have ?

I haven't worked with a Zilog Z8 and since i feel 8051/2 are its descendants, so their I/O pins structure might be similar.


Regards,

Arun