XHP70 Automotive driver

Looks good enough. You’ll be placing 1 led in place of a square of 4. No idea of the lens or reflector to use, ideally 60-80mm. This one gives you about 2 inches of room/reflector. When stripped down look inside to see if you need to ad any metal connections from the led pad to the finned outer shell. Some of these cheap bars actually use plastic between the two making the fins non functioning or use plastic fins all together. Even in really cold weather that heat has got to get out or things start to melt or cook, like wiring, plastic mounts.

That particular item is a buck converter where the input voltage must be higher than the output voltage. You can use it to drive one 6V XHP70, but I do not recommend driving two XHP70 in series.

Follow the directions provided by the seller on setting it up. Basically set the voltage to the highest forward voltage you expect the LED to draw at the target current. Then connect the LED in series with an amp-meter and adjust the current setting.

If you want the output voltage to be able to swing higher and lower than the input voltage, get a buck-boost type converter.

Another tip is to derate the current and voltage ratings given by the seller. If it says 5A, expect 3A or less. Here is an example taken from one seller’s description.

Did you ever figure out which driver you’re going to use? I’m interested in doing the same thing but I’ve never messed with these high power LEDs before. I’ll be following this thread to check on your progress.

I actually just started a new job that is taking up a lot of my time. So I decided that I would start out by just making a modding a flashlight just to get a feeling more of a feeling for how everything would work. I just put a XHP50 in a Supfire L3. I’m pretty sure that 10 of these together would be very impressive! However I still haven’t come up with a truly acceptable housing for everything. I am thinking of using a piece of 2” or 3” square aluminum tubing, but that would require quite a bit of work with tools that I don’t have to make it work. Maybe you have some ideas on this?

I have seen posts of someone using aluminum in a U shape. I have also seen where someone using aluminum bar and glued everything together with Jb Weld and some type of thermal bonding product. My issue with doing this is that flat aluminum has no cooling fins. on one of them, they cut cooling fins and glued them to the flat bar.

There was a post on pirate 4x4 forum where the guy used some extruded aluminum to make light bars. IM trying to source empty enclosures that are purpose built for light bars.

Edit: here is a link for that 4x4 forum build
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/general-4x4-discussion/1073515-diy-hight-powered-led-light-bar.html&ved=0CBwQFjAAahUKEwjCipGl67nIAhWMpB4KHZm8CMU&usg=AFQjCNGrDCOo0A8xkOFXEskuah-osLZ_7g&sig2=xW3fOIgeLzJtKEkg8VCtgg

You’re post got me started thinking about working on it again. I had ordered a cheapo lightbar off of amazon that I pulled apart in hopes of using its enclosure. I’ve searched high and low for just the enclosures, but all I could find were whosalers on aliexpress. In the end amazon was easier. It turns out that there is only about 3/4” of an inch between the clear plastic and the rear of the aluminum, this wouldn’t give much height for a reflector. (Maybe this one?) However I think that it might be possible to extend the edge height using angle aluminum attached with machine screws and JB weld.

Kinda like this: https://slimgr.com/image/Y5y

This would work out to allowing a reflector that is 75mm wide, (although I think that might be a bit excessive) and whatever height you want. However I’m thinking it might make more sense to use slightly smaller reflectors and more of them (10x?).

Ohhh and just to give you and idea of the brightness of these LED’s I took my light out with a single XHP50 in it and its brightness was somewhere between the low beams and the high beams of a 2014 Chevy truck. I can only imagine what 10 XHP70’s would look like!

I had the same idea with Amazon junkers. I ordered some srq2 look alikes to clamp on my handlebars. The housing is stout aluminum but electronics are junk. I’ve thought about sending cad design to a fabrication place but I don’t think that would be worth the money for a light bar.I’ve seen a few extruded heat sinks online but they look rather flimsy and have cooling fins in the wrong direction to catch the air flow right. I don’t know how much cooling that a 30watt led needs…

Cool idea about buying a cheap light bar and modifying it.

I've been thinking about doing something similar but using a light bar instead of high beams. With 55W to play with, I can easily match ~1500 lm per bulb.

My plan was to use 3 XHP70s on 12V sinkpad IIs and power them using one of these 12V Boost Drivers. 12V @ 3A is about 40W power, including the driver. Output should be about ~2000 LM per led (12V 1A). Of course I wouldn't wouldn't leave it there... 55W is a lot of power to play with.

Yeah it’s an intriguing idea but unfortunately the one I bought has no Room. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00GLLW3AM/ref=yo_ii_img?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The “3 watt” LEDs are complete junk. My maglight led without the reflector puts out more light than all six of the cheapies. I almost used them on my lawnmower but decided to pull them apart to look at the insides. I wonder if any of the other Chinese light bar housings would be better?

here’s a website where the guy used 1” tubing to make a small light.

http://bikeled.org/

What are these like practicality wise ?

Check out these drivers from this Russian eBay store. Look like they are built well, can easily handle a few XHP LEDs per driver, cheap, and they have a PWM board to drive them with a dimmer switch which they can configure for you before they ship it. I will be using these or TaskLED drivers for my DIY LED light bar, which I will be using 6 top binned XHP50s, which honestly will be tons of light.

For example:

5–100;

50–100;

1–100;

1–70–100%;

3–40–70–100;

5–25–50–70–85–100.

Your idea of 10 XHP70’s is quite simply ridiculous, first that is too much light, second, too much power to deal with, third, there aren’t any good optics for them for automotive use, IMO… fourth, but not last is the shear amount of heat you will have to pull off that many large LEDs, you need a large enough heatsink that will keep them cool enough for reliability, you don’t want to dump a bunch of money into that many expensive LEDs and them have them burn out because they are over driven or over heat (both).

I think it’s crazy and cool, not ridiculous, but I think maybe someone is underestimating the amount of light just one of these would put out. I’m using just 3 xhp50 s with elliptical tir and I think it’s maybe overkill for my purpose. Just one of those puts out more light than 55 watt halogen I think.

One XHP-50 emits as much light as both a cars headlights combined, when properly collimated/reflected. That is, a top binned XHP-50, as they vary between 680 Lumens to 1120 Lumens @ binning conditions (700mA @ 12v setup), that is a 65% brighter.

yep, you could really light something up with 10 70’s . Take that light bar out in the hills and people would be talking about UFO landings. lol

I’d say. It would have more raw lumens than Baja Designs 50 Inch Onx6 light bar (30 XM-L2 = 32,000 Lumen)

Just wanted to point out they could only handle multiple XHP’s in parallel, cutting down your amperage.

If I ever get the SUV/Truck I want to, I plan on doing a light bar with 4+ XP-L HI’s and 4+ XHP70’s. I would keep it under 200w for sure, maybe 150w. I want to use an existing lightbar shell to start with, but I haven’t found one I like yet.

As far as drivers, with an XHP you have the option of 6v or 12v configuration. I think 12v is out because automotive voltage can vary from 11-14v if I believe, so you would need a combo boost/buck driver for that. With 6v you could use a buck driver, but I think it might be better to use three 6v in series, then use a boost driver to power them.

The automotive system will vary between 12.5+ to 14.4 Volts… no need to worry about even over head. Those drivers I linked would work with 2 6 volt XHP LEDs in series, or 2 12v’s in parallel. No need for a boost driver. However, when the engine is not running, there would likely not be enough overhead voltage to get max power, if that is what you are concerned about. In that case you would run 1 driver per 6 volt XHP LED. But at $5/each, big deal.

I found cheapo light bars don’t have enough room for any optics/LED combo I would like to use, in fact you couldn’t use XHP 50’s or 70’s with the little room there is.

Cheers.

Ok, if it wouldn’t normally go below 12.5v then a buck would be perfect. Good to know.

Yeah that’s the problem I’m seeing. All of these light bars look very tight on space. I found one that I think would be a decent design, but the only place that had them had a MOQ of 10.

Here is my design:

3 XHP-50’s driving 3 67mm Gaggione LLC56N optics which is a 9 Degree FWHM and 17.5 Degree FWTM… this is for your distance spot for high speed driving
3 XHP-50’s driving 3 30mm Carclo Optics Elliptical TIR lenses which have a 43 degree wide by 19 degree tall beam, these are for near field flood

I should be able to fit this into a 10 Inch by 3.5 Inch bar.