LED drivers and Accessories you want, but don’t exist

For e-switch lights, firmware will probably be relatively simple. I’ve been making a UI toolkit which abstracts out the hardware details, so pretty much any UI should be able to run on pretty much any hardware. When there’s new hardware, patch the toolkit to add support, and then every compatible UI should work with little or no changes.

Or that’s the idea, at least. So far I’ve only actually tried it on the D4 and Q8 drivers.

A 17mm 3.7v input 6-12v output boost driver to put xhp series leds in a S2+ or C8.

Edit: or mtg2 leds

It should be roughly the same as the xhp70 tests with a bit lower Vf.

At 6V it should need around 10A to reach 6000 lumens. Pretty normal for an XHP70 in a flashlight. Some are driving the .2 versions to almost 20A.

As a general rule we like to drive each die of an LED to 5A and as high as 10A. Less then this is not in great demand on BLF but there are cases where people would want this.

Big, 4 26650 touching for 2S4P
Haven’t measured it but 46mm would be nice for compatibility.

There are a few that I want.

1. 1S Buck-Boost Driver for 2.8-4V LEDs which does up to 5A, but it configurable down to 3A. Controlled by eswitch with many low modes (like Zebralight), overtemp and overdischarge protection. Maybe also a version for clicky switches.

2. Buck driver with 7-8A for 3-4V LEDs and 2S-3s input. Should have all the usual features.

3. 30-50A Buck driver for 3-4V LEDs with flashlight compatible form (round, diameter not more than 50mm). Battery input should be 3-4S (with very low internal resistance). Must have overheating protection for driver and also LED. Must also have additional, small buck circuit for much lower modes. I know this one is rather difficult, but as long as it stays under 100$ and is actually useable it would be great. It would be used with Luminus CBT-140 and CFT-90 LEDs.

4. Boost Driver for 6V or 12V (preferably 6V) with 30W output, lots of low modes, eswitch, and all the other usual features.

A twin button e-switch driver with miniscule queissant current draw, as I’m tired of button pushing!

Edit for spelling correction(s)

As a Buck-Boost, one option would be the TPS63027 usable, maybe up to 2A for UV LEDs.

The more you step down voltage, the less efficient the driver is. So a 2S config for 3-4V LEDs would be better, or 4S with 2 3-4V LEDs in series or one 6V LED.

Agreed, it would be foolish to input 4S and output 1S at 50A. There is no single LED that can handle that so you are better off running multiple LED’s in series. It makes things much simpler and more efficient.

Remember, voltage is easy, you pay no penalty for voltage other then needing to make sure your components can handle it (very easy up to around 30V).

On the other hand you pay BIG penalties for current. A 50A buck driver would be very difficult, I know as I am working on a driver that needs 30A and we ended up needing to split it into 2 separate 15A drivers to get the features we wanted.

I need a 17mm boost driver to run a Nichia 144A at around 3 Amperes from 1 cell.
It would be nice to have a boost driver like that with the option to set the current, like from 3 to 6 Amperes.
Optional e-switch would be nice too.

I haven’t yet seen ‘synchronous’ buck or boost drivers either.
Those are more efficient (iirc)

There is a boost driver floating around using this design and would fit your goals except for the firmware. It uses custom firmware instead of Narsil / Bistro like we are used to.

The firmware is one of the bigger issues. We need good workign firmware for the latest MCU generation then some good base Buck / Boost setups. After that we can combine them to fit whatever we want.

My wish is similar to Jerommel’s, but a 2S input would be nice too, so buck-boost.

Input: 1-2S
Output voltage: 144A or 3x 219B/C, so 5-10 volts
Output: three modes is enough from 100mA to 3A

The Luminus LEDs which I mentioned are rated for a max of 28A. They will probably be able to take a bit more. So 30A is the absolute minimum here to make a driver interesting in this case!
The new Luminus CFT-90 is the one that is really interesting. It is much more efficient compared to older models. It is as bright as an XHP-70, but it’s factory de-domed and the DIE is only 9mm^2, the XHP-70(.2) should be around 14mm^2 when de-domed and 28mm^2 with dome). It also probably doesn’t have the 3D-Die of the Cree LEDs and will probably have a very high luminance (so very high throw with very high lumens). There is nothing on the market that matches it.

Please tell me more about your 30A project. You can PM me if you like.

5s buck driver. I have some black+decker 5s2p 4ah packs I would like to use to drive 12v leds, but can’t find a suitable driver that will accept 20+ volt input. :frowning:

Easy! The German company pcb components offers this. There are different variants. Two for up to 3A LED current:

https://pcb-components.de/led-abwaertswandler-buck-step-down/micro-2800ma-5v-28v-detail.html

https://pcb-components.de/led-abwaertswandler-buck-step-down/black-power-v3-2800ma-3000ma-5-5v-50v-detail.html

and one for up to 11.5A:

https://pcb-components.de/led-abwaertswandler-buck-step-down/ampere-5000ma-oder-9000ma-7v-25v-detail.html

The US company TaskLED also has some: http://www.taskled.com/

quite pricy LED, but like 6000 OTF lumens from 9mm² might be possible, which would even beat a very hard driven XHP35

Interesting, never heard of the Luminus CFT-90. The last gen models were so inefficient I wrote them off. This latest version is still inefficient but it is not that far off of what we drive other LED’s to here.

Still going to be a tough job to make a buck driver for that, it will need to be quite large to fit the components needed, even a 46mm driver could not be big enough for everything depending on what components are used.

The project is kinda floating right now, not gonna say too much till I know if it is going forward or being dropped.

Basically it is a 6s6p input that needs to provide 18V at ~30A output to some LED’s.

Some math can give you an idea of what the results might be.

This maybe?
http://www.international.mtnelectronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=67_115&product_id=846
2-4S input.

Luminus LED are 3-4v and use 30A+ current.
Take a look at some of the datasheets, it’s insane.
As with most LEDs you can drive them at even higher currents for more output as long as you give them enough cooling.

Let’s assume one wants to drive it at max allowed Tj (150C)
They rate Vf vs temp up to 120 degrees, let’s use that.
27A (this is the max, not 28) * 3.52 V = 95W.
Thermal resistance between PCB and junction is 0.45 C/W.
Let’s assume 30 degrees max ambient temperature. You need your host to have under 0.8 C/W. So even stock output will not be thermally sustainable in a passively cooled flashlight. Which is not always a problem. :wink: