I just bought my Gf an umbrella with some gimmicky leds so she doesnt step in dog poop etc. Turns out they are just 3X20ma Leds at 3.1v which suck.
So I put an xm-l2 in its place and now runs around 60 lumens maybe. It looks brighter in the pic than it actually is due to my cameras auto adjust.
My question is how many ma’s can I run with the led stuck to a small plastic switch. The tube is 22mm so the driver would need to be less than that. It has three aaa batteries in series.
Shall I play it safe with 350ma or will 700ma start to melt plastic. It has a momentary clicky in the mechanism but doubt such small drivers will cater for that so prob swap it for a micro on/off switch.
Heres the list of drivers I have been looking at so far Aqualab: LED Driver List - LED Drivers and Regulator Boards (database driven)
even a 350mA drive current is ~1W, which would be quite a lot to get rid of. My daughters’ lights have a single AMC7135 chip in a machined alu head and they still get warmish after a while. My suggestion, especially as it uses AAA cells, is to figure out an appropriate resistor value (ohms and power) to get about 100-150mA at 4V or so battery voltage. Nice and simple!
Yeah your probably right, maybe il just go for double what it is now (120ma). I guess I would like more than 2 hours per set of batteries too lol
Iv just got some really badly designed chinese torches that have no contact with the body other than the very edge of the led so thought it might be ok.
Just a nice lens would be ok. She loves it anyway ha ha
Its a bit of fun, not terribly water proof or strong though ha ha. I have just put some alkaline batteries in it and has boosted the current from 60ma to 100ma, so that will do for now. You can select any colour or an alternating rainbow.
