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xwingband
06-02-2007, 06:03 PM
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1886

I thought other here might be interested in it. Heck I was hoping to get maybe a few to pitch in with me because I don't really need 10 of them. :D

The bugger is small and I certainly like using drivers more than resistors. The amperage looks good for the Red III's and K2 Blues/Green.

Lord Maul
06-02-2007, 06:08 PM
i'd use that.
i'm thinking of making two stunt sabers, one with sound, the other without. this could be the without sound one

Jedi Ranger
06-02-2007, 06:27 PM
Those look great! And at that price, I'll probably buy a whole 10-pack myself!

I just wonder at the quality of these ones.

pockets
06-02-2007, 07:32 PM
intriguing

xwingband
06-02-2007, 08:19 PM
Yeah, I'm curious of the possibilites myself. That's why I'd like to perhaps split it up. That way if it's not all that great we haven't lost much, but if they're good we can add them to the arsenal. Their size is great.

pockets
06-02-2007, 08:30 PM
1.75 plus shipping? PM with any details we'd need to hammer out

Marsupial
06-02-2007, 08:37 PM
X- I'd be part of a group buy. I would want 2 of them.

I'd also like leds to go with'em...

keep us updated.

xwingband
06-02-2007, 09:09 PM
Cool, sounds like this is shaping up.

For now I'm assuming the 10-pack but they have a 20 for even less per board.

2 for me
1? for pockets
2 for marsupial

Lord Maul
06-02-2007, 09:47 PM
i'd take one too

Steeljack
06-02-2007, 09:57 PM
Ooooh, ooooh, in.

I'd take two.

Jedi Ranger
06-02-2007, 10:23 PM
I'd be in for up to 5 pieces.

Strydur
06-02-2007, 11:00 PM
You guys want me to just buy a 20 pack or so of the 1400 and 1050?

darthdan
06-03-2007, 12:14 AM
I'd buy them if you stocked them.

xwingband
06-03-2007, 02:05 AM
You guys want me to just buy a 20 pack or so of the 1400 and 1050?

I was hoping to try these out before we bugged you on stocking them, but as you can see these are attractive. A slight jump up from a resistor, but the promise of gained efficiency.

I found them in some flashlight digging. :D They seem cool about them so it looks good.

neophyl
06-03-2007, 02:56 AM
Damn it. Id just ordered 4 of the 800ma drivers for some cheap sabres. These werent on their website when I ordered. Oh well Ive just ordered 10 of the 1400ma ones too. Cant beat that price with free shipping too.

These look great for the 2 Ventress sabres Ive been asked to build.

Btw as these units get the 1400ma drive by using 4x of the amc7135 ic's it should be very easy to drop the power down to 1050ma or 700ma just by removing 1 or 2 of the ic's from the board. Means when the 10 I have arrive I can easily use them for leds that only want 1A :)

Strydur
06-03-2007, 08:38 AM
Actually from what I have read on a different site they come default at 700 and you have to put a solder blob to hit 1050 and two for 1400. The price difference though is that the 1050 has 3 chips the 1400 4 chips etc.. So I guess we could just stock the 1400 and modify them as needed.

pockets
06-03-2007, 08:14 PM
i'll go in for 2 of them or if tim decides to stock them, i'll buy from him with my next order. whichever

Novastar
06-03-2007, 08:38 PM
Interesting... copy all of that!

I'd be interested to try at least one or two, Tim, so you'd have my sale there... :)

supertrogdor
06-04-2007, 07:42 AM
I have been hoping you would start stocking drivers, Tim. I find them far preferrable to resistors. I suppose that should be mentioned in the wish list thread, what ho?

Strydur
06-04-2007, 08:48 AM
Ok they are on order

Jay-gon Jinn
06-04-2007, 09:40 PM
These sound like they will be a great addition to the store, and should be better than the resistor set-ups for direct driving the leds.

Jedi Ranger
06-04-2007, 10:14 PM
Ok they are on order

Awesome! Thanks alot Tim! I hope these work out for us.

Novastar
06-05-2007, 02:34 PM
Agreed on all of the above.

And yes, for those new people reading--drivers are MUCH better than just going resistor only. Simply because of the nature of LEDs...

Current hungry....?? YES. *CHOMP*
Voltage hungry....?? NO. Not so much.

Also, a driver saves the newbie's arse since it's awfully tough to "over voltage" an LED if you're using a driver. Duh.

But it's terribly easy to do if you're running resistor only. Give a Red-Orange LED 6v and mess up the resistor, and it's done. :)

Finally, it allows for you to alter your battery pack in many many ways--without having to re-think your driver or resistor or LED, etc. etc.

Jedi Ranger
06-05-2007, 10:41 PM
Finally, it allows for you to alter your battery pack in many many ways--without having to re-think your driver or resistor or LED, etc. etc.

It's the battery (voltage) options that I really like about using drivers instead of resistors.

Strydur
06-05-2007, 11:40 PM
These dont have many options for voltage.. 2.4-6v or something like that

Novastar
06-06-2007, 02:55 AM
Darn... 6v is just below what I like which is (go figure) about 7.2 to 8.4v since I am a huge Li-Ion nerd.

heheh. Still... I'd pick at LEAST one up to convert any one of my resistor-only sabers on 3.6/3.7v Li-Ion. :)

xwingband
06-06-2007, 05:49 AM
Still useful. 3.7, 4.5, 4.8, 6, etc...

Dregan
06-06-2007, 12:08 PM
factory said 4.5v max, but I know people who have overdriven it. YMMV and whatnot.

Ah well. My favorite battery is still the 18650. There's a reason I bought a case of them (144 batteries... all going to good homes... and I may still need more...)

Novastar
06-06-2007, 01:31 PM
144?

What in the world for?

Dregan
06-06-2007, 02:24 PM
Volume discount. I paid about half of what I should if I'd ordered them onsies and twosies. They're Chinese (I met a few friends while in China, and some of them do a few transactions for me every now and then) but the chemistry, amperage and charge cycle rating are all just as good as anything I could get over here.

As for what they're for, I have a side business building high-end design lighting (mostly LED and CFL based) - which is how I got into saber smithing - and I use the 18650's as the main cell in the flood and spots that go outside a house, which are charged off a self-contained solar cell -similar to this (http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5685182), but with Lux's or Cree's, and I resin-cast a shell to hide the light so it looks like a rock or flower pot or whatever. I also use them in lights for camping and of course, sabers.

144 won't last me a month, even with my 10-day vacation coming up.

Oh, before I forget, I might have a few extra 350 mAh drivers left over, if someone wants one. PM me. Not much good for sabers, unless you use a Cree or Seoul white emitter, which could get you as high as 100 lumens or so.

xwingband
06-06-2007, 03:44 PM
factory said 4.5v max, but I know people who have overdriven it. YMMV and whatnot.

Ah well. My favorite battery is still the 18650. There's a reason I bought a case of them (144 batteries... all going to good homes... and I may still need more...)

The spec sheet linked at the bottom of my initial link says 2.7-6V... although the absolute max is 7V.

Dregan
06-06-2007, 05:31 PM
I was just quoting what the factory rep told me. Like I said, I know people who have hot-rodded this chip, so obviously it can be done.

My first batch of the 1050's should be in next week. Afther these, I'm switching to buying from Kyle @ DX.com - he's cheaper, and I prefer dealing with him beacuse I've worked with him before, and he's good people. I paid around $3 each for my current batch because I did not buy in the bulk that a full retailer (like DX.com, who buys rolls of 20-chip sheets) does. Live and learn.

Anyway, where I was going with that, at $3 a pop, I'm willing to fry a few to see exactly what this will take. I don't have any of the 1400's (I bought the 1500's that DX doesn't have yet) so I can't test them, but maybe someone else will. When I get a solid result, I'll post here.

neophyl
06-16-2007, 07:35 AM
Well my 10x 1400ma drivers arrived from DX along with the 800ma ones I ordered earlier so I decided to do a bit of testing.

Im currently putting together a pair of Assaj Ventress sabres so I decided to use the red leds/heatsinks Id built for those as they were sat there conveniently.

First of all I set the bench supply to 5v (i was planning on using 4xaa nimh so 5v simulates this pretty well).

I selected one at random and wired it all up to the led and psu. Powered it up and it was only drawing 350ma. Huh!!. Thats not right I thought. Checked the board and of the 4 IC's, 2 had one of thier pins not connected. Checked all the other boards and all 10 were the same. The 4xic's on the board are electrically wired in parallel so they should ALL have the pins connected.

It looks like the tracks are deliberately designed that way for the 700ma versions with the tiny gap supposed to be bridged with solder to put the extra 2 in circuit. So I bridged them out and powered it up again.

This time it was drawing 700ma. Still only half of the rated value so I did some more checking on the board. It turns out that 1 of the 2 diodes is defective. This means only 2 of the IC's are actually getting power. This corresponds to the 350ma i first got as it meant only 1 IC was properly connected and only 2 after I had bridged the extras in.

So I tested the diodes on the other 9 boards and they all checked out as ok. I wired up a second board after id bridged all the ic's. Results were much better this time. With all the IC's connected and both the diodes working this time it was 1347ma, close enough to the 1400ma for me to be happy.

Only problem is it gets hot real quick. Theres no heatsinking on the driver and doing so will be difficult due to the way its designed. I dropped the voltage down to 4v to simulate a 3xaa rechargeable pack instead as this will still run the red led and while it gets hot it doesnt as quickly.

When the board gets too warm it causes the led to flicker like a very fast strobe. That might look cool in a sabre but it means the electronics are in danger. This seems to happen more when run above 4.5v. I know its heat related as it gets faster as it gets hotter and gently blowing on the board to cool it slows/stops it lol.

I'll have to do some testing on the other colours to see what they run like with their higher forward voltages.

For those that arent used to soldering, wiring these up is going to be tricky as the led negative wire is close to other components so you have to be careful. The positives of the led and battery wire to the middle of the reverse of the pcb and the neagtive battery goes to the ring on the reverse so the other wires are easy to do.

For their price they arent that bad but quality control is something that needs to be improved.

Tim id double check all of these and possibly add wires on yourself before selling them otherwise you are going to get some unhappy customers I think.

Oh, the 800ma ones I bought, I tested 1 and it was only driving at around 210ma. Tested a second and it was driving at 797ma.

Dregan
06-26-2007, 06:23 AM
That's a whole lot of useful info right there...

On another note, I will verify that these go Plop-plop Fizz-fizz when given 7.2v.

Works great with a single 18650, but then, 95% of these that I've ordered are the 350 mAh variety for white LED's. The higher amp versions are probably different.

I agree about the heat once you get into 4.5+v, I'm looking at simple in-line heatsinks. My best so far has been a layer of thermal epoxy an a copper pipe cap, but I'm not happy with how the leads are working without creating a short. For most of what I do, 3.7v does not create too much of a heat issue, though. I'll probably have to get a few 1050's for my next RGB saber, so I'll definately work something out by then.

Strydur
06-26-2007, 11:48 AM
I got these and tried them out as well. With 4 new AA's so 6v this baby overheated and started flashing the led within seconds. At 4.5v it seemed to work fine. They are sort of a pain to solder also. They would probably work great with a single li-ion setup. Because of the technical aspect I dont think I will offer these on the store. If any of you want to try one out just drop a note on your next order and I will toss one in the box as long as I still have some.

Corbin_Das
07-08-2007, 07:41 PM
Hi all
Tim sent me one of these to play around with too. I was thinking about having it in a single Li-Ion mini saber with a red blade. We'll see.

Corbin

P.S. Does anyone have a link to a PDF manual for these? I can only find ones for a more block like looking piece. Thanks