Lumicycle Halogen to LED conversion with piccies and a step by step guide.

Cateye ABS35 to see if there is enough room to facilitate one of these high power upgrades. I'm out of luck as the driver would never fit.

Spongebob, why not mount the driver externally, I'm thinking of mounting my driver pcb's and power switch externally…the power switch on the bars, and the drivers next to the battery?!?

Stephen your commuter/head mounted light shows great promise, small package size and conveniently powered..should be a real winner, was it a 1W output??

3x Cree LEDs plus driver on a single board

This will be VERY popular (especially if the board had flying leads already soldered on).

I.e. make it as near 'plug and play' as possible.

It appears to be what most people want, especially those who don't have either the confidence, motivation or time to bugger around like a few of us on here

3x Cree LEDs plus driver on a single board

Sounds good, for what housing / optic?

http://www.ultraleds.co.uk/ultimate-mr11-acdc-cool-white-bulb-p-1764.html

£7.82 and they claim it equals 18w halogen. Not anywhere near as bright as the Lumicycle upgrade, but I have tow lamps and for the money….

DoctorRad: Not sure yet – suggestions appreciated! I was initially thinking a circular housing / lens but OTOH a 'strip' would mean less PCB waste. I think my main issue is going to be whether FR4 would suit this or if I need to look in to MCPCB. I have read app notes that suggest thin FR4 with plenty of thermal vias can do the job but I'm not sure if that would scale for 10W+ of LEDs.

I need to order some 0.8mm PCBs soon so I'm going to add a few variants to evaluate. Not likely to be before February when I get some results though!

Spongebob: Based on their claimed 150mA power draw that looks like 4x 0.5W LEDs – certainly at 12V that is only 1.8W total power. Depends on the efficiency of the LEDs of course but I suspect you'll get as much light from a single decent power LED at a similar overall power level. Also, they talk about 'wide angle' – unlikely to be suitable for a bike light I would suspect.

Hi, does the driver with dim mode reduce the current draw from the battery and therefore increases run time or does the battery draw remain the same but some current is used by the resistor and therefore a reduced current gets to the LED's? Tks.

Hi DaveGr, the dim mode uses less power from the battery. On testing I'm finding I get around 540mA in dim mode for the 5W (970mA) driver. Your input current should drop proportionally.

All this power talk is very misleading . . . use drive current . . . it's the only thing that is constant with differing LED's and configurations . . .

$0.02

Fd

Fergus: Very much agreed. Unfortunately most LED manufacturers quote power… To be fair, Cree and Seoul don't push power ratings but many of the 'lower end' companies do.

I wish there was a simple answer but I think quoting power has become too established – despite the fact the power ratings quoted not only vary between colours but are wrong anyway…

The simple answer is to state the following

drive current
max input voltage
min input voltage
driver drop voltage
max input to output voltage differential
efficiency curve

Power doesn't come into it until you know what load you are driving as you know.

My conversion using your driver is 10W power consumption, 2W light output, 8W heat output but uses your 5W driver . . . which isn't a 5W driver at all it's a 970mA driver . . . which is more confusing ?

Fd

This is why I try and quote both and explain in my listings. This isn't as relevant to 1A LEDs as it is rate to use power for these. However, you won't find many 350mA and 700mA LEDs not described as being 1W and 3W respectively. I try and make it clear these are drivers *for* 1W or whatever LEDs, not that this is the actual output power.

I think next time I re-list I will revise the descriptions and definitely for the 970mA drivers remove the power reference. The 670mA ones are marginal while the 330mA ones I feel quoting 1W is valid as this usage is most common at this drive level.

Quick question – do both the XRE and XPG PCBs have the two pins in the centre for connection? If so, are they absolutely central and what is the spacing?

I will be able to order some more PCBs early January and I've had an idea to make a driver which solders directly to the pins from the LED PCB with power and control inputs at the other end. This should make the conversion much easier.

they are in the middle Steve

@ BlackCat

If you solder the driver board directly to the PCB, wouldn't that get in the way of the heatsink?

Plan is to have two terminals on one end of the PCB on the same pitch as the holes on the MCPCB. You'd then mount the driver PCB at right angles to the LED PCB with pins long enough to pass through the heatsink. Other option is similar but have the driver parallel to the LED PCB but with long enough pins to keep it clear of the heatsink. Not sure I'll be able to get the output pins central to the board though so the end-on approach is probably best.

Also wondering about the option of getting some custom-made heatsinks. Should be a fairly simple turning / milling job from some 32mm alu. Depends how much demand there is but based on the time saving over modifying the one Chucky used it may be viable. Can anyone give me a decent measurement for the flat?

Must look at getting one of these enclosures myself to play about – anyone know of a cheap source? Even the plain enclosure is £35 from Lumicycle!

Any thoughts on the following as aiding cooling ? There are two types, one solid (mk1) and one vented (mk2) which is similar to the ones on Ebay. The manufacturers web site doesn't give dimensions apart from "fits electric motors".

Clip-On Alloy Motor Heatsink

While I'm thinking on, are there any spare Cutter PCBs / Optics floating around and if not do you need to order a single LED on the MR11 PCB or do you need to order three LEDs plus the PCB? The Cutter site isn't that clear… Best invest in my own stuff if I'm going to look at doing stuff for these properly!

Dave – Would certainly help. The problem with the standard Lumicycle housing is that it is 'flat'. In general, the more surface area you have the better the heat dissipation. Only question is whether they will fit the housing although as the one with a fan is for a 25mm fan and the diameter looks bigger than that then maybe…

DaveGr – I used something similar on my conversion, look back through the posts for pictures. It seems to work very well, although I've only been out in the freezing weather which obviously helps. They should fit exactly as a 540 motor is just the right diameter, however I've had two different designs supposedly for 540 motors but when they arrived they were different diameters.

BlackCat – you only need x1 LED in the cart to set the type required on the MCPCB, then select however many boards you want.

Blackcat – The board we're using for the conversion is the XPGMR11T with 3 x 1w Cree LED's. Will the 970ma driver work with this?

http://www.cutter.com.au/proddetail.php?prod=cut937

Got my board today Blackcat (with wires already souldered to save my cack handedness knackering it up). ACE! Ta very much.

SB: That board uses the XPG which is fine up to 1A.

To those who replied off-list, I've not forgotten, just snowed under at the moment!

Hoping to have a lumicycle-specific driver late January and a simple test-hack to see if I can run power LEDs on standard PCB laminate for an all-in-one.

Have a good one all – off for a few days now.

I've just had a mare soldering on the connectors on my XPG board. They peal up so easily. The ERX versions were much much more durable when trying to get the board back into the housing. as luck would have it I managed to peal up the track scrape the black off and solder carefully to that. Not perfect but it's holding for now. All in all, I'm not really impressed with this new board and will be ordering XRE Q5's from now on as I'm happy with the 4 can's done already using this method and I don't think the XPG MPCB is quite up to the job.

That's a bit odd – I soldered up an XP-G triple MCPCB a wee while ago with a burnt out crappy soldering iron tip, and it held up OK. I'm a novice solderer, and was using crappy equipment, so I reckon you might have been a bit unlucky. I've since redone it with a new clean tip and it was a million times easier to get the heat where it needed to be rather than sitting the tip on the pad for a minute or two before the solder would melt. Everything was getting hot except the bits I wanted too!

Anyway, have my first conversion all done and dusted now. Big thank you to Chucky, fergusd and others for the help. Have ordered a quad XP-G from Cutter, and the other bits required to convert my other Lumi can too.

Gray

I'd considered a quad conversion too, however I couldn't get the right battery/driver combination.

x4 XPGs at 1000mA should give a total Vfd of about 13.2V, if you're using a 14.4V battery you'd need a buck converter like a bFlex or one of BlackCat's drivers where the input voltage must be greater than the output voltage.

However, the bFlex margin is recommended at +1.1V over Vfd and BlackCat's is +10% over Vfd. This means the lowest recommended battery voltage is 14.3V for a bFlex and 14.6V for a BlackCat. It won't take long for even a freshly charged battery to drop below these figures and therefore send the board out of regulation. This would mean losing dimming capability on the bFlex, not sure of the implications with a BlackCat though.

I'd also considered a x5 XPG which is even worse! However it can be overcome using 2 drivers. I had planned on using a Hope HID housing to fit it all in, this may be a bit of a squeeze in a Lumi halogen can though.

Unless you got a faulty one I don't think there is any issue with the XP-G MCPCB . . .

I've soldered a number of these now and have had zero issues . . . however I am an experienced solderer and have the correct gear . . .

I suspect you are overheating the solder pads, probably because you are using too hot an iron and not using it properly (no offence) . . . probably keeping it on the joint for far too long

I use a small tipped iron (1.5mm width) of about 20W power with 1mm solder and can solder these joints onto the MCPCB in about 1.5 second . . . you must use a clean iron tip (use a damp sponge to clean it) and apply the iron to the joint with the wire already inserted, leave in place for about a second then touch the solder onto the joint (not the iron), the solder will melt and the flux will clean the joint and the solder will then flow onto it very quickly . . . then remove the iron . . .

It helps to pre-tin the wires (ie. get some solder onto them before you try to solder them into the board – makes the process quicker – again this should be done with a clean iron and quickly)

large iron tips don't help, hot irons don't help . . . and like all PCB's if you overheat them they will de-laminate and the pads will come off . . .

You can usually file down iron tips to give them a second life . . . but ensure that if you do they DO NOT have the heating element as part of them (most don't but you can see the danger)

Finally got my cans converted…BIG thanks to Chucky(AKA Racing) for the guide,ordering,answering dunbass questions, and Jonathan B for the soldering skillz!
XP-G's running with Blackcat 970mA drivers,8mm alloy heatsink and a lot of elbow grease

Lumicycle cans

they look great with matching heatsinks.

glad it all worked out well

I've had to send my XPG board back as the tracks pealed off the board. THe XRE is as good as ever and I've replaced it with an SSC for now. Still need to find someone with a proper internal heat sink.

Converted one of my Lumi cans using Chucky's instructions. Triple XPG but with an XPE optic and a 650ma driver board from black cat.

Works beautifully, does get a little warm on the can when tested in a warm house(the house was also not moving at the time), but nice and cool when on the bike.

Converting my Lumi HID next.

Right, checked out the driver and the heatsink on ebay, to no avail, and I'm not sure what led's and optic to order from cutter?.

My lumi's are the old 13.2 battery, and it's the standard cans.

Help!.

Anyone?

I think you need to start at page 1 and go from there.
The guy who makes the driver board has even posted on here & can probably be contacted through his profile, the heatsinks are flywheels from a nitro r/c car – even if you can find the link to a dead eBay item you'll get a description of what you need (I think someone posted a sketch somewhere too)

There are also several replies to the 'what optic & LEDs' question.

I believe that your battery will be OK, but am not an electrical genius (not even an electrical half-wit) so I'd ask the bloke who supplies the drivers (I think his name is black cat on here) when you e-mail him….

Nobeerinthefridge

mail me (it's in the profile) and i'll tell you what LED and lens to order.

Dave

I have just changed my 3W driver for the 5W version with the low power resistor on the board. Can anyone explain how I wire up the board to a switch to give FULL POWER – OFF – LOW POWER. The negative pole of the battery needs to be connected to the – connector on the board for full and to – as well as to A for low power. I have a 3 pole ON-OFF-ON switch and can't work out how to wire it up. Do I need to get hold of a different swich?

I don't think you can use the switch to switch on and off. I had it so that you had to unplug the lead to power down.

I connect the neg from the power connector to the centre tab on the switch together with a wire to the neg on the driver board. The connect from the 'A' connector on the board to either of the outer tabs on the switch. This allows you to either switch the 'A' wire in or leave it out just have the neg from the power connector go to the board via the tab on the switch.

here the brown is from the connector and the black goes to the neg on the driver. The red goes to the 'A' on the driver board.

Sorry I've been missing from the board for a while guys, back now if you have any queries.

The drivers are still available but in response to comments on here I've changed the descriptions to remove the reference to power ratings. Trouble is that since I did that sales have slumped so I suspect people haven't thought to look in my eBay shop and locate the new items….

The store URL is http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/Black-Cat-Technology or my website at http://www.blackcattech.co.uk currently just links direct to my eBay shop – until I get time to create a proper website that is! The drivers are in the 'Power LED Drivers' section.

I think squeekybrakes contacted me independently about the switch issue. What you call a three-pole switch isn't. A pole on a switch is one independent switching mechanism, not a reference to the number of terminals. So a switch that has one common, one normally open and one normally closed is a single pole, double-throw switch. (SPDT) – in other words, you have one independent mechanism that can go two ways. A double-pole switch has two switching mechanisms that have no electrical connection between them.

To turn a dim-mode driver off you will need a double pole switch – unless you use Chucky's method of just pulling the plug. You also need a switch that has a centre-off configuration. In other words, there is one 'setting' were no electrical connections are made in the switch. You have one pole of the switch where both normally open (NO) and normally closed (NC) are connected to the 0V power supply, and the common (C) is connected to the 0V / PWR- terminal on the driver. This means that for either direction of the switch power is applied but for the centre-off setting it is removed. Then one side of the other pole (can be NC or NO) is connected to 0V and the common to the 'A' terminal. This means that for one setting the 'A' terminal is pulled low and for the other it is left floating. Therefore, one way you enable dim mode and the other way the driver runs at full power. In the centre-off position the 'A' terminal level doesn't matter as there is no power to the driver.

I'd meant to get hold of a lumicycle can and look in to getting some heatsinks custom-made. Indeed a few people from here did offer to lend me theirs but due to pressure of work I didn't get around to replying. Apologies to those people for ignoring them!

Hoping to have a new version of the driver in about 3 weeks now – again delayed as I had too much to do. This one will have shutdown and half-power modes built in and is designed to sit better inside the can.

my solution..