Convoy L2/L6 modding thread

I use thin wires on the XHP series LED’s to reduce the power. Generally no thicker then 24awg. Max lumens are going to be seen between 8-10A

When I built my triple XHP50.2 I stole the UCLp lens out of my L6. So my L6 now has the glass lens that came in the S70. (I know, right? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: ) I’m only seeing 7072.5 lumens out the front now. Need to get another UCLp lens from Chris…

Edit: Some clarification… When Chris ships the UCLp lens it has a blue plastic covering on both sides for protection. When I pull a glass lens from a light and install the UCLp I usually put the blue plastic on the old lens and mark on the plastic what light the lens came out of and the date. Well, when I stole the UCLp for my own custom build and tried to re-use the original glass lens the blue plastic pulled off AR coating in patches, ruining the lens. Hence, the S70 lens in the L6.

Hey TA, look… Jason got the square ATTiny85’s as well. lol

I was trying to use a regular resistor at the switch for these SMD LED’s, the little metal end cap pulls off easily, breaking the connection every time I try to put the light back together. So I need to source one of those inline components like Jason used, the blue with rings on it for ID?

Edit: Or I can spend a bit more time and JB Weld it sealed so there’s no pull on the wire. I have a new tube of Water Weld that’ll set up in minutes, should I go that route. Was using a 22K, might go with a 24K and use the JB Weld…

That’s close to my maxed out factory driver (using a wire across the sense resistors). I got 7.7 amps, also with Liitokalas. That’s all most folks need.

I don’t have a light box to measure lumens so I can’t help you there.

I think a FET driver is the only way to go brighter. I haven’t put it through the paces yet. After a typical 40 hour work week I’ll check the batteries. I’m usually at 3.6 to 3.8 volts. I think the FET drivers start out bright then get noticably dimmer as the voltage drops. Constant current drivers tend to be more consistent with output as the voltage drops. I’ll have to wait and see how this FET driver acts.

The other reason you might want to swap drivers is for the ramping firmware. I have to admit, it’s pretty sweet. Plus I can finally program out the blinky modes as well. One click on and one click off with the side switch is what I always wanted with this light. Plus I have the lighted side switch to help me find the button. Just perfect! :slight_smile:

You’d better contact Lexel quick if you want one of these drivers as he’s about to start making the next, and maybe last, batch.

MTN Electronics also has a FET driver, but it doesn’t have ramping, just brightness modes.

A 3rd option would be like DB’s driver. A FET that he flashed with TK’s ramping firmware.

What I should have done was solder the led power wire to the driver and the switch and put the resistor in the middle of the wire and cover with heatshrink. It’s kind of difficult getting the switch in the hole with a big resister soldered to it.

The resistor is your basic “through the hole” type component that was used before smd. The color banding tells you the value. It’s easier to use a multimeter, though. They are way tougher than smd resistors.

I got 2 big variety packs of them at Radio Shack, which was closing down. They were liquidating parts. The carbor film resistors were all gone, but they had these metal film style left. Normally $10 a box, I got them for $1 each. :wink:

I could send you some 5k and 10k ohm ones if you want.

Thanks for the info. I used 20 ga silicon fm driver to xhp-70 on mine. My cheap meter says not to run load more 10-15 seconds, so I’ve been only doing about 5 seconds.

May be time for a new one.

If your using a multimeter your never gonna get accurate results. Clamp meters are the way to go. Most folks on this forum use the Uni-T UT210E. There were some coupon codes for it at Banggood for $28, but I think they expired. I ended up buying mine on Amazon for $38. It’s a great ammeter, but so so voltmeter. It’s got the features I need like auto turn off so I don’t run down the battery. I hate that!

Here’s a 300 piece kit for $1.53 on eBay. http://www.ebay.com/itm/172555310586

Here’s mine.


This time I covered the resistor in heatshrink for safety reasons. On the 3rd one I build I’ll put the resistor floating in the middle of the wire for durability reasons. I broke the connection between the resistor and the switch getting the first driver out to put the TA driver in. Gotta revise the design. :slight_smile:

Couldn’t we just take power off the #8 leg of the MCU for >5.5V as controlled by the Zener or LDO? Then it wouldn’t take as high a resistor value because the voltage would be closer to the SMD LED requirement. Am I thinking right? I know the MCU has a 5.5V max, so…

Thanks Jason, I think I’ll just use an old pcb and carve a block out of it with 2 pads on it for my resistor to solder to, then I can put it inline on the positive lead and the metal caps on the resistor won’t be holding the wire, the board will. That should work. :slight_smile:

No, this would effect the voltage that the MCU sees since it is simply a 200ohm resistor that is dropping the voltage for the mcu (the zener is there just in case for voltage spikes).

Using a high value resistor is not an issue in the slightest anyways, this is how most LED’s are ran.

You could even use a pot to make it adjustable if you had enough room, in fact on larger drivers like the Q8 that would be a very good idea.

What’s wrong with using a high resistor value? Should be no big deal. 2 LEDs in parallel with a 15K resistor is giving me a 0.4 milliamp draw. The driver itself has a 0.08 milliamp draw. So 0.48 milliamps in total.

On the TA driver I have, does that “power on” positive pad give full battery voltage? I didn’t check. I assumed it did.

When I was doing these lighted tail caps on a Bistro driver with a single cell, each SMD LED took an 11K resistor for the low glow I like. So the pair in parallel would take a 22K, right? But that was single cell, so would I use twice that for the 8.4V supply of the L6 to get a similar result… like 44K? Or to get even a bit lower a 51K?

I cut a rectangular portion off an old driver that has two pads on it, soldered a 51K resistor to these pads. Then I soldered a 22ga lead to each pad, inline, and will either use shrink tubing or a cocoon of JB Weld to insulate it. Does this sound right or way off base? I want a low glow, not even discernible in a lit room but visible in the dark.

Haven’t hooked it up yet, wanted to check here and see if I was thinking right.

Edit: Just realized that on the Bistro with lighted tail cap there was a bleeder resistor off the driver, so the full cell’s Voltage wasn’t going to the two tiny LED’s to begin with and I still used an 11K resistor. Hmmmm…. so what value should I use?

The value totally depends on how bright you want it. 25k-50k is a reasonable guess for 2S input.

I generally find that ~50k of resistance is ok for tailcap LED’s @1s but I have them pretty dim, With 2s input they will be twice as bright, which should be ok.

So yeah, I think a 51k resistor should be a good starting point if nothing else.

You can simply hook it up to 2s batteries to see what it would look like.

What color are you using? The white are definitely brighter than the orange. 50k sounds good for a darker color. White might need 60k or more to give what your describing.

The reason I originally soldered the resistor to the switch was so I could pull the switch out and do a quick resistor swap and not have to pull the driver.

Dang, I should have thought of that. Lol

Thanks Guys! :smiley:

SOOC Canon 1DsMkII w/50mm f/1.4 lens, f/1.4 at 1/15 second ISO400 Medium JPEG.

Edit: The background ambient light looks the color it does because I have 5% Limo Tint on our storm windows from when my wife had Migraines so bad. :wink:
Edit II: Just an FYI, the quilt on our bed was made by a group of lil ol ladies at her church when we got married, 14 years ago. Hand made stuff, just can’t beat it! :smiley:

This seems to be messing with my ramping firmware, holding the switch down to ramp then releasing it the light turns off. Makes it unreliable to shift directions for the ramp or even use the light. :frowning:

Normally, powering up the light at the tail switch gives a blink through the emitter to show power-on, now it might blink or it might come on the last mode memory. So, reliability has been compromised with these led’s on the same circuit as the switch.

Well that’s no good. Where are you getting power for the LEDs from?

One way to fix it for sure is to cut the traces from the 2 leds negative side so they don’t share the blue negative wire. Run a seperate ground wire for the leds. That way they are completely isolated from the switch.

I’ll have to look at the switch some more later because I have to sleep now.

That’s what I was thinking, separate the ground to the switch from the ground to the LED’s so there’s no disruption in the switch circuitry that toggles the ramp… Gotta figure it out cause now I really like that hot pink glow… :smiley: