underwater light need help wiring of the leds

[not very smart]

hello all, i want to make underwater light for the bottom of my boat, i'll be maching aluminum "pots" to put them in with cooling fins machined on the back to dissapate heat, i'll encapsulate the electronics in a clear resin and be done. however.....i'm "electriclly challenged" and have no experence in how to wire these things. my boat is 12 volt with a large battery bank, power consumption is not an issue. my research so far has lead me to the CREE 3 UP XP-G R5. AND A BUCK DRIVER. i plan on making an array of these in each pot...maybe 7 of the 3 up units per array. question is this...do i need anything other than buck driver and leds? or do i just put 12v to driver, then wire driver to led?and if i understand my research so far i will need 1 buck driver per 3 up led. oh of forgot...i plan on using 1000ma drivers. do i have this right? next question...is there a simple way to incorparate a temp sensor fo some kind to prevent overheating should i forget to turn them off when i trailer the boat? thanks in advance!!

 

[jspeybro]

Don't know the LED unit. 1000mA could work, but the result will be very different depending how the leds are wired.

if the leds are wired in series, each led will get 1000mA, if they are wired in parallel, each led will get 1/3 A.

a buck driver should do when running it on 12V, but I've read that in cars you may need to protect the circuit from voltage spikes. I can imagine that this is similar in boats, maybe someone else can confirm this.

regarding temperature, if it's in the water, just be sure you have a good heatsink and that this heatsink has a thermal path to the water.
Some drivers incorporate temperature monitoring and reduce the current if the temp goes too high.

do you need anything else? not sure. I usually add some optics to shape the light. If you just want to light up the boat, this may not be needed.

oh, and using some breaks/paragraphs in your posts make the posts a lot easier to read

Johan

 

[Packhorse]

I have built a couple of LED lights powered from a boats electrical system.
I used resistors for one and AMC based drivers for the other. Both work well.

What I would be careful with is some drivers that may produce interference. These would generaly be switch mode drivers. These can cause issues with some sensitive electronics on a boat.