They take up more room then a 7135’s, they cost more to assemble then 7135’s as well and they don’t give a truly regulated low mode. Although with ramping firmware this is not that big of a deal.
So cost and simplicity are the largest reasons for their use. You know exactly what the light will do regardless of the Vf of the LED.
For 1S setups the 7135’s are still ok, although I have been seeing an abnormally high failure rate on them recently. Seems every prototype driver I get with them from china has a bad 7135 lately. For 2S and above, they are not options at all.
there are options even pin compatible problem is often you got to redo all PWM values as they are slower
then they cost like 5 times what a 7135 from china costs
Linear regulators with like 1-2A get disqualified by heat management on a regular driver
for space of 523 or 323 FET+2 0805 0.5W resistors is as big as an AMC here on 20mm
on the back of this 17mm you can literally put enough for a decent current, but still the heat wont get as goot conducted to the driver edge as with AMCs its the case
Is anyone selling this driver assembled flashed and ready to drop in? Other than through the upgrade package in the group buy?
I’m really interested in it for another spot light build but I have never done any surface mount circuit board soldering, and I’m a bit nervous to start.
I’m confused. Are you basically asking for a FET driver for the BLF GT? That won’t work as you’d burn up the xhp35-HI. If you plan to swap in a xhp70.2 then the conversion kit is about the only way to get the correct mcpcb.
Are you asking about a different model thrower light? Does it happen to use the same diameter driver as the GT?
If you just want a different sized FET driver for a different light, Lexel makes those here.
thanks Jason, I’m looking at building my own spot light using the TA driver and 70.2 . seems like the only way to get that exact driver is the group buy. for $100 aud is a bit over the top for me though. think i will just use a big buck driver and a remote mounted pot. that will be all the functionality and performance I need. doesn’t have to be efficient in my case.
If you have room for it and don’t need modes an external buck converter is actually the better option for you I think. You could setup an external pot on the converter to have a ramping brightness dial as well if you wanted to get fancy.
thanks TA i think you’re right. it’s for a plug in hand held spot light in a car. should be starting about 13v. external pot should be just the ticket. although I’ll probably just leave ot on full boar hehe.
“The mcpcb is not currently available so you will need to customize an mcpcb for this mod right now.”
I’m ordering a conversion kit from nealsgadgets and it has a MCPCB so I’m guessing the above is irrelevant to me? Will I be good to go just doing a driver swap
Correct, I ran out of the last batch and it did not look like there was enough interest for more. I generally only make a driver if there is interest enough to sell at least 25-50 drivers. Just not worth the hassle for less.
Like Jason said you can get the conversion kit from Neal now and that has everything you need.
Well I finally did the mod with your parts kit. Honestly it was a bit more difficult than I thought as my soldering skills needed a serous tune up. It all came together though and when I hit the button…… SHAZAAM! Instant mega thrower! I have the NW version and shaved the dome as much as possible. The tint is still neutral white with no real yellowing that I noticed when used outside. It throws as far if not further than my OG XHP35 HI, but with a much larger hot spot.
Thanks TA for making an already great light even more awesome!!! If anyone is on the fence about doing this, do it NOW! You won’t regret it!
I’m not really familiar with this driver and board. Is there a diagram or instructions that you could pm me or direct me to on this? Any disco modes?
Great, glad you got it working! Soldering it with an iron would not be fun at all. Using hot air and solder paste it is really quite simple, the hardest part is applying the solder paste and placing all the components.
Far as the manual, I am not 100% sure what firmware you used but I assume it is the GT70 firmware, in which case the GT70 manual should be what you want. Although really it is very close to the normal GT firmware, just tweaks to the mode sets and minor things mostly.
There are some strobe modes, they are just disabled by default. You can enable them in the menu.
I bought my original XHP 35BLFGT second hand and I never really played around with the programming. So I’m assuming it is set on stock. I can tell you though with a double click from Turbo and went to Strobe mode. Could you put me in the direction of the menu for this programming?