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Re: new P7 driver 3amps?

Originally Posted by
SUBjohan
Well
here are the measurements in a excel file.
All measurements where made with calibrated meters.
Hi SUBjohan,
Your excel file is a very good job!
I like precise measurements, in German I say "WER MIT MIST MISST, MISST MIST." It's a pity that in translation the play on words gets lost.
How do you measure currents? My new AC/DC current clamp (Chauvin Arnoux K1) has a span from 1mA to 4500mA and very small jaws.
Wulf
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Flashaholic*
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?

Originally Posted by
Bimmerboy
In my experience, when buying cheap, "made in China" stuff, two units of the very same item produced in China will, many times, have similar, but somewhat different components. That the supposedly same driver, received by two different people, works differently should not come as a total surprise.
My suspicion is that you will not get a clear, understandable answer on this one, if any.
That can be true sometimes. I have been lucky with the stuff from China I have been using so far, but I try to select what seem to be good quality. Buying cheap has different meaning in different parts of the world, I know that it can sometimes mean 'trash' or low quality in the US. Here cheap (billigt) can also mean that you made a bargain. I think there might be different UI versions coexisting and that the seller missed this detail, and the versions are mixed. The driver works well and seem to be very well built, it's the software that differs in the sense that my units have no memory function.
Stefan
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Flashaholic
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?

Originally Posted by
Meterman
Hi SUBjohan,
Your excel file is a very good job!
I like precise measurements, in German I say "WER MIT MIST MISST, MISST MIST." It's a pity that in translation the play on words gets lost.
How do you measure currents? My new AC/DC current clamp (Chauvin Arnoux K1) has a span from 1mA to 4500mA and very small jaws.
Wulf
Yes, in The Netherlands we have the same kind of saying "Meten is weten, maar dan moet je wel weten wat je meet".
I used 4 GossenMetrawatt Metrahit 29S multimeters so could measure everything in the same time. 
Greetz Johan
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Re: new P7 driver 3amps?
Thanks for the usefull measurements SUBjohan, the poor efficiency on med and low looks like they use a improper way to dim, like simply a PIC (12f629 or something similar) that PWM the input voltage per MOSFET oder regulator's enable pin, can you confirm this? So maybe it should be possible to modify it to one mode?
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Flashaholic*
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?

Originally Posted by
manne
... the poor efficiency on med and low looks like they use a improper way to dim, ...
Add to that, I'm disappointed the medium isn't more logarithmically placed between the other two, but that wouldn't suit everyone either. It would be nice to be able to set them wherever.
No, a torch does
not always mean flames.
Ian.
LED Driver List - now database driven and with new search features.
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Flashaholic
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?
That drop of efficiency for medium makes it look like the driver is loosing the same amount of power whether in medium or high mode (instead of loss being as a proportion of the mode).
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Re: new P7 driver 3amps?
Mine has a memory function. Just got this driver and so far I like it.
Excellent work on the measurements SUBjohan
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Re: new P7 driver 3amps?
So i've been reading the replys and it seem to be a positive towards these driver's but they are not very efficent on med and low ? in the real word does this shorten run time by converting power into heat ? how does it hold up against other drivers ? cheers DocD
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Flashaholic*
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?

Originally Posted by
DocD
So i've been reading the replys and it seem to be a positive towards these driver's but they are not very efficent on med and low ? in the real word does this shorten run time by converting power into heat ? how does it hold up against other drivers ? cheers DocD
They seem to work well enough. About efficiency on low & med real world runtimes needs to be performed in addition to the calculations made.
Stefan
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Re: new P7 driver 3amps?
Is there a recommended way to deal with the heat for this KD driver?
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Flashaholic*
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?
~10 hours on low is what I got from six fresh eneloops in an mdocod battery holder in a 2D Mag. Not going to bother with medium, it drained the cells to ~0.9 Volt.
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Re: new P7 driver 3amps?

Originally Posted by
mtnbkr1
Is there a recommended way to deal with the heat for this KD driver?
Ya, I'm not sure either, I ran mine for 15min on high and it was too hot to touch.
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Flashaholic
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?

Originally Posted by
nightstalker101
Ya, I'm not sure either, I ran mine for 15min on high and it was too hot to touch.
Which area gets hot (or just the whole thing?) ?
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Re: new P7 driver 3amps?

Originally Posted by
Galiphrey
Which area gets hot (or just the whole thing?) ?
I'm not really sure which area heats up, however the whole thing ends up getting hot. I'm not sure if thats a bad thing, however its questionable.
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Flashaholic
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?
>>-Auto-alarm towards high temperature,then switch to low mode automatically
I wonder how hot it has to get before the "auto-alarm" kicks in.
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Flashaholic
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?

Originally Posted by
Galiphrey
>>-Auto-alarm towards high temperature,then switch to low mode automatically
I wonder how hot it has to get before the "auto-alarm" kicks in.
I left mine running on high at 10V for 30mins and the auto-alarm did-not kick in. The driver was in free air.
Greetz Johan
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Flashaholic
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?

Originally Posted by
SUBjohan
I left mine running on high at 10V for 30mins and the auto-alarm did-not kick in. The driver was in free air.
Greetz Johan
I've received and installed mine now; I potted it to the underbelly of a P7 heatsink. It DOES "auto-alarm" after about 60 seconds of being on high. That is--it switches to the low mode. (I can begin to feel the heat on the outside of the flashlight body.) Then, apparently after cooling off for some seconds, it switches back to high again, and then repeats this later on... It does NOT do any of that after many minutes of medium-level. And if I'm reading your measurements right, the board itself produces the same amount of heat either way (high vs medium), so the difference then is the heat from the LED and through the heatsink, which (I assume) is being detected by the board. Unless I'm off the deep end now, then it seems like potting it to an LED heatsink the way I did doesn't cool the board, but actually heats it up... (?)
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Flashaholic*
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?
What voltage are you running into it?
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Flashaholic
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?

Originally Posted by
Packhorse
What voltage are you running into it?
About 11.7 volts. Do you suppose it's more efficient at higher or lower input voltages?
Edit: ((My guess would be higher voltages))
Last edited by Galiphrey; 08-13-2008 at 09:14 PM.
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Flashaholic
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?
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Flashaholic*
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Flashaholic*
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Re: new P7 driver 3amps?
So the way i'm understanding this is that the driver, has hope for being able to drive 2 P7's or may more? but as a single driver,ok on high and rubbish on med and low.
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Flashaholic*
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?
I know it's not as elegant a solution, but why not direct drive the P7 with three nimh D cells? No circuit losses or circuit heat issues to deal with. The nimh cells will hold voltage easily and provide around 2.8 - 3A to the emitter (with a vf of 3.25 - 3.5V), while giving excellent runtime to boot. I would think that dimming due to voltage drop in this scenario would be hard to detect by eye over the course of a long burn.
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Flashaholic*
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?
For me, I would rather have full brightness for the whole of the run time. Plus the low volt warning.
The 2 lower power levels and thermal protection are just bonuses.
Not to mention the ability to run it off an existing 12volt battery pack.
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Flashaholic*
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Flashaholic*
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Flashaholic*
Re: new P7 driver 3amps?

Originally Posted by
DocD
do ypu have a link? cheers DocD
http://www.kaidomain.com/ProductDeta...ProductId=1866
Quote Kaidomain: "Measures 19mm in diameter, and 8mm in height (Note: the diameter changes to 17mm since Aug.28th (shipping day)."
I got the 17mm board, new design.
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