I've recently put a new roof on my back patio and am looking for options for outdoor lighting underneath the roof. It would be sheltered from direct rain but I think it would still be best to be sealed to some extent.
I've read Relic38's review of the 10W LED flood lights here https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/15647 and am aware of the limitations. I've found those on Amazon for $12.49:
...and could buy a few and mod out, but am looking for other options. I would probably have to either mod or replace the driver circuit, while replace the COB module with a warm-white on a couple as I would be using those while grilling on the patio.
So; has anyone ever found a DIY-type of enclosure that could be used with the 10/20/30+ watt COB modules they sell on DX? I could really ghetto something up with a used CPU heat sink but would like some sort of means to protect the light. I would like to find empty floodlight housings like used in the linked lights but haven't seen those anywhere.
I could just put a couple of 4' fluorescent fixtures under the roof and a couple of incan floodlights on the corners to light up the yard, but that's not how I roll!
Well, I just ordered 2x of these 10W Warm White LED Flood Lights from Amazon for $11.99/each. Super Saver shipping so I ordered a new high speed SD card for my digital camera (16MP, my old cheap card writes WAY slow) to round out the order. Curious to see how well these work. I thought DX or one of the other sites sold the square COB-style reflectors but I can only find the round ones now. I doubt the reflector is that important on these lights though...
I have two XMLs and the 3T6 driver in one of those housings, driven with 4.5A two LEDs parallel…so around 15W
Gets warm(60°C), but I am sure if you would add a fan on the back it would be no problems with 30W to stay cool. I often use a 30-40mm fan from electro junk with a piece of duct-tape on a flashlight to test runtime indoors. Even these little airflow is enough to let it stay cool. So I would go this route.
If you would only use the front with the glass and threw the “driver case” away, grind down the fins and glue a CPU heatsink on the back of the “pill” That would probably work with a lot more power too.
The only disadvantage with a fan is that you would have to think of the watertight aspects, so installed outdoors maybe no good idea…
I just tried this:
Fan voltage 7.5V so it runs very slow, I let it run 1hour and it stayed really cool.
Only the batts got hot lol.
I have 8 of these and they arent driven at 10W. I did Relics resistor mod to bring the drivers up to 1A output (post 33). I also heat sinked the driver diodes to the driver housings to prevent them from frying themselves. Leaving them turned on outside for an hour @ 65 degree F ambient temps yielded a very warm light. Any more wattage and it would have been to hot to pickup. I also have a 10 pack of warm white emitters to swap in… some day.
I have a 24V power supply to convert to XM-L later, but then they would all have to be series wired in a string of 8.
