Convoy L6... XHP70 Beast!

It should still work with out the bypass…unless the bypass touched earth (ground)!

Then it might have fried the driver, maybe…

Well, goes to show you how much I know. Maybe the driver is fried or something, but I never smelled anything when I used it in the beginning to test it.

I don't see that the wire touched ground anywhere. It was hanging loose in the middle.

Now that I think about it, wire could have touched ground when the batteries were in and the spring compressed. Are there any tests I can do to determine for sure if the driver is fried?

This usually happens when batteries are too long and the springs bottom out, breaking the bypass, like I said usually. could be a weak solder joint ,who knows?

The IC or Buck is pretty tough, some are, they can take a bit of abuse to a point, depending how long or how HOT is got during the ground short. IF this is what happened? Can you pop the driver out and take a pic of the other side?

Ok, Will give it a try now and pull the driver and post a pic. Might take a little while as this is my first time doing that.

I need to go to the hardware store and get some ring tool as the driver is really tight in their. Will post a pic tonight if I

can get it out.

Well the saving grace is by the looks of your pic, the bypass is still contained within the spring, so lets hope for the best! Not knowing the history of what has been done or tried to the light to get it to work?

It could have popped in and out of the spring during the attempts to get the light working?

It could be just a bad switch wire? I’m looking for the stock driver in the meantime, should have a bunch of them some where? :person_facepalming:

I didn't do much to get it work, just today a few minutes switching battery tubes and tail caps that's all. I also have another driver sitting in my box that I ordered from Simon for the L6 so if all fails, I can try that. Tonight some time I will have it all apart first and see how it all looks. Maybe it is just a bad switch wire in the head.

Cool check your switch wires! I found a couple of the L6 stock drivers. And going by memory and what I see on the stock driver is the Black lead going to the LED is really close to the ground ring. Now if the driver cavity pocket is oversize and the retainer ring is a bit sloppy, IT could be Possible that the Black lead going to the LED might be grounded out and the driver is not seeing the signal? A possibility….

That could explain why sometimes it would work and sometimes not possibly. I never used that particular L6 more than just testing it a few times if it would work. All of a sudden in the past it did and I thought everything was fine. I do remember someone helping me out before as I had the wrong end of the battery tube screwed into the head and they noticed it from the pic I posted.

It also could explain why the driver spring bypass is broken, bottoming out the springs puts force on the driver pcb, could have moved the driver/retaining ring over while twisting everything together. I don’t really know until I have the light in my hands, and I could test it, but I have heard of, done/seen some pretty strange/un-explainable things and shit happens! :smiley:

I did some new stuff

I made it possible to run a tail light board for the L6
Best is to use very efficient LEDs to keep the bleeder and tail board parasitic drain low

But for the sage Rainbow is also possible

Also side switch LED Board like this available now

I have 10 colors of LEDs it is possible to mix all kind of them as each LED has its own balance resistor

You got me thinking there so I whipped out my digital calipers and the tail end inner ridge to the end of the threads is 11.50mm and the head end of the tube measures 12mm, so there would not have been any extra pressure on the driver, just a little less and when I insert the batteries with the tube switched, they still protrude the same amount past the tail end.

Very nice Lexel, do you have part numbers yet so we can order?

There is no parts list, I will sell those for a fair price
I spend a lot time to make it work that way and designing the boards
I will make them with a max current and option for 2 potentiometers that can tune about 30-100%

The boards are the easy part, tuning the LEDs was quite time consuming

Biggest thing is you literally need for each LED and each max current of the bord different values
I measured this to find the right values that took a lot time

The LEDs are from various chineese shops and likely not all the same
of course if you do not get the same LEDs the resistor values wont match

First I tried it on my regular 6x tail boards with conventional 6 Balance resistors and a 1kOhm Bleeder
Main Problem was that with low battery voltage the higher voltage LEds (Blue, White, pink, ice blue) get dimmer tan the low voltage ones (red, yellow, green)

I came up to enhance this idea with a voltage regulator, but had to do some steps to make it work

first get the voltage and resistor value for each LED at the same brightness

Then I made some calculation to get fixed current draw versions
But when I made the prototypes I saw that this is pointing in the right direction
but a lot manual changes were needed to equal them out on different board currents

It is also possible to use this with side switch lights like Convoy L6, as I can get the parasitic drain for the 18kOhm bleeder down to 0.4mA when the tail board has 0.15mA for the LEDs

Now the first 4 Prototypes
I did quite some measurements and tests to even out the brighteness of them
Firt L6/L2 prototypes are build and successfully tested on my bench, modding the lights will follow

One tme i skipped the very current hungry Emerald green for a warm white

The tail board itself uses a voltage regulator so the brightness is constant down to 3V cell voltage and can be fitted with 1S or 2S voltage regulator
The 2S Voltage regulator has a 0.1mA higher drain

I haver also ordered fitting 3x3mm trimmers so that the brightness of the board can be adjusted for 2V and 2.5V LEds in 2 groups
On the other hand I can also build em with a current draw from 0.15-1mA with the balance resistors without trimmers

The rainbow LED boards have one drawback which are the inefficient Emerald green and yellow LEDs,
so their brightness is lower than green or white LEDs at the same current

The LEDs are all measured by me and trimmed to equal brightness
The thing is adding the tail cap cover I also saw some colors do not get equally through it, so again minor changes were needed

Lexel, after reading your post, I think I can confirm that I am still in the dark ages when it comes to electronics. You sure put a lot of research and work into this project to make it work, hats off to you.

The simple Layout without a voltage regulator is shared on oshpark

Those work great with 2-3 colors that have about the same LED voltage or you will see one LED type getting dimmer with droping cell voltage

you can find them here as well a lot other shared stuff

The ones with balance resistors for each LED are better

Here is the driver. I don't see anything out of the ordinary as to why the light doesn't work?

BTW, I unscrewed the star with the LED on it thinking I need it to expose the driver more. Now I know I did not need to do that.

Anyway, the star came off the heat sink with some silvery grey powder residue. I assume I need this paste before putting

the star back on?

Good the Leads and switch wires are still attached, I have had LED leads/Switch wires either break or come loose due to cold solder joints.Can you hook up a 2S 8.4v battery set up to the driver and see if it works, now the driver is clear.

I probably could but I don't know how

I have a quite a few good 18650 Laptop pulls so I soldered 2 in series and then soldered leads to the ends for quick portable Brewster Projects home boy testing. :smiley:

I like your setup, good old fashion engineering Is there any easier way for me to test the driver though?