Anyone worked with either of these drivers from Lightmalls?

They finally arrived.

Can anyone tell me where the +/- emitter leads go on this one:

http://www.lightmalls.com/16mm-8-4v-5-mode-3a-led-circuit-board-for-2-cree-xm-l

The driver is labelled “HX-1163C”.

Thanks,
Jim

If you make a picture somebody could probably help you…
I can barely see two spots on the pictures from LM, have you checked theses.

By the way I have the other driver in my stlv6 with mtg2 slightly resistor modded and it works fine on two cells, has also voltage protection if I remember correctly…
http://lygte-info.dk/review/DriverTest%20XM-L%20Multi-cell%203A%205.5-12.6V%20UK.html
http://lygte-info.dk/review/DriverTest%2019mm%20CC%203000mA%20LED%20Driver%203%20Modes,%205.5-12v%20UK.html

Werner,

Sorry about that. Yes, I can post some hopefully better than the LM pics later tonight.

Thanks,
Jim

EDIT: For the record, these drivers (2 each) took just under 30 days to get here from LM. Shipped ~6/20, arrived 7/16.

EDIT 2: Pics of the smaller driver:

I guess the two pads are the right ones.
The one next to the FET (probably -) and the through hole next to the coil(probably Led+)
Maybe you should check continuity to bat+ and bat- from both pads, often one is connected to one of them.

I am curious to hear your results.

Those (other than the polarities) would’ve been my guesses also. I’ll give it a test in a bit.

Jim

Werner,

You were correct. The + lead goes to the pad with the through hole, and the - lead goes to the pad that’s partially under the corner of that other chip.

I only setup and tested one of the smaller drivers, both with a pair of XM-L emitters in series and with an MT-G2, and at least from my testing, I’m underwhelmed/disappointed in it.

For this testing, I was using a 5 amp/30V bench supply, and both with the 2xXM-L in series and with the MT-G2, it looks like I can only get to about 8V-10V and current at the input of the driver maxes out at ~1.0 amps. If i try to increase the voltage to the driver (the power supply stays in CV mode throughout) beyond ~9-10V, the current to the driver starts to drop.

So I think that that would be about 10 watts max?

Maybe the description is wrong. Are you brave enough to try with a single emitter? (and risk poofing it)

Sure. What did you have in mind with a single emitter (i.e., what are you looking for with that?)?

EDIT: Reason I asked is that it seems like the driver is limited to 1 amp. Are you expecting/thinking that with a single emitter it’d take more current?

That’s the thought. I’m definitely not expecting to see more current, but certainly the driver is labeled incorrectly in one way or another. Maybe it’s labeled 3A when it’s actually 1A, or maybe it’s labeled for a 2-emitter Vf when it’s actually meant for 1 emitter. I think sometimes current drops a lot when you go beyond the maximum Vf or below the minimum in/out delta of a buck driver. You’ve already eliminated the delta consideration (by increasing Vin), but maybe Vout is just too high.

I think it’s worth a try.

Does it have modes as described on the page you bought it from?

Will you take the inductor off the board and get a clear picture of the board without the inductor?

Yes, it has the advertised 5 modes.

And yes, I think that what is happening is that when Vf of the emitters is > Vbat, then the current starts dropping. That was what it looked like when I tested.

I’ll try the single emitter test. I’m not sure if I will remove the inductor, but I’ll consider it after all the testing. I may have to do that anyway for one of the two drivers I got, because I can see a solder bridge between a couple of the components on one of the drivers.

Thanks,
Jim

You measure the input current so the led current is higher but anyway 10W on two XMLs are only 1.5A or so…which is way to low. But this could get better with a resistor mod.
The really bad news is that it doesn’t deliver full power on a slightly higher battery voltage than the forward voltage, areasonable mtg2 driver should drive until around 6.5V. I am also interested on a coil free picture.
Glad you have ordered the other one too, this will work way better.

Have you followed one of threads with the hx1175b drivers, it seems to be a really badass one.

I’ve seen that other thread, but haven’t really followed because I think those are larger (diameter) drivers? I’m more interested in smaller drivers.

Hi,

Ok, I measured with a single XM-L (on Noctigon). The current at the power supply (Vbat/Vin) topped out at about 1 amp, about 4.5V. If I increased the Vbat/Vin to higher voltage than that (I went to about 5.2V), the current at the power supply would start dropping. I didn’t go much higher than that voltage since it was only a single emitter.

I think that the bottom line seems to be that this driver is about a 1 amp driver, rather than a 3 amp driver as “advertised” :(… Disappointing after waiting for so long for shipping from LM…

I agree, the driver is likely not capable of the advertised 3A. It sounds like you have unfulfilled needs though, so IMO we’d better make sure! The next step is a resistor mod until you reach the desired current or it fries. “random resistors” is a game those guys sometimes play, it’s possible that the sense resistors the driver came with were a mistake.

4.5V for single emitter is really useless, I guess it is a buck driver so it should be able to drive a XML with 8V…
Increasing voltage->decreasing current that is normal for a regulated driver.
Just the emitter current stays constant, but I guess in this case it is 1.5A or so.

I didn’t mention this earlier because I wasn’t paying much attention to it, but I had a clamp meter on the emitter lead when I was testing, and it was in the same range current-wise. What I mean to say is when I was increasing the voltage at the power supply (and watching the current drop at the power supply), the emitter current was kind of going the same way (i.e., it wasn’t increasing).

Can you tell which resistors might those be? I’m assuming that that was why you all were asking to pull the toroid, but I’m not sure when I’ll have time to do that, so I don’t mind doing some random resistor shorting in the meantime to see if I can get the current bump :)!!

I always discourage people from shorting resistors. When I say resistor mod, I mean changing resistor values or stacking resistors, not shorting resistors. I understand that other people may have a different perspective and that that’s confusing. Shorting sense resistors on either buck or boost setups normally fries stuff. Only certain specific drivers have extra limits which prevent that.

The sense resistor(s) is under the toroid. I see one right next to the 1165c silkscreen. You’ll definitely need to pull the toroid order to do the mod. Pulling the toroid shouldn’t take you more time than shorting resistors would have? In order to work on the driver more efficiently I’d recommend removing the toroid, attaching LED+ to one leg of the toroid, and attaching the other leg using a short wire of appropriate thickness to BAT+ (or wherever it was connected to start with). This will let you do work without moving the toroid on and off of the driver.

There are other things under the toroid we want to see as well :slight_smile:

As you increased Vin the emitter current was

  1. Staying constant?
  2. Dropping?

I’ll let you know tomorrow…