Cree RC landing lights/how to

I bought four of these Cree leds from DX and four of these driver boards as well.
When I wire them up and add power they are really dim.
For power I've tried a single to three cell lipos and they are still really dim.

The led fed directly from a single lipo is quite bright however.

I want use these as switchable landing lights on a radio controlled airplane that I fly at night.

Is there a wiring diagram that explains how to properly wire these components for a brighter output or are they not compatible?

Looks like a step-down board to me - although wiser heads may correct me.

It probably needs at least 4 or 5V input to get it going.

I take it you have wired the leds in parallel.

Steve

The LED and driver board combination should give you about 230 lumens at the emitter which should be bright enough to have you seeing spots for a few minutes if you looked at it directly long enough to have an involuntary flinch reaction to the bright light.

Are you wiring the driver leads directly to the LED? One driver board to one LED? Did you get the polarity right? (though getting it wrong should give you no light) Two Li-Po packs should be the maximum that the driver can handle as two fully charged Li-Po packs gives you 8.4V and those drivers are rated to 9V.

it is 5 mode driver, as you connect it at first it is in low, you need to switch it to higher modes, off-on does the switching,
also this one has unusual hook up, + of the led hooks directly to the battery, but - goes thru the driver.

Okay I decided to try another board and led,(I bought 4 each) and it works perfectly.
Very bright instead of dim on this one.
So I may have gotten a defective board.

One question how many LEDs can attach to a single board?

Also I rapidly unplugged/replugged the battery and there is no brightness change.

I don't think these are multi mode boards.
I can easily control the brightness with a brushed ESC (motor speed control) and a spare radio channel so that's not a problem.

Thanks for the help.

Bilbobaker said:

I bought four of these Cree leds from DX and four of these driver boards as well.
When I wire them up and add power they are really dim.
For power I've tried a single to three cell lipos and they are still really dim.

The led fed directly from a single lipo is quite bright however.

I want use these as switchable landing lights on a radio controlled airplane that I fly at night.

Is there a wiring diagram that explains how to properly wire these components for a brighter output or are they not compatible?

Click to expand...

You can wire these 4 leds in 3 ways.

Parallel. 4x current, 1x Vf. 3200mA/3.7v
2s/2p. 2x current, 2x Vf. 1600mA/7.4v
Series. 1x current, 4x Vf. 800mA/14.8v

Where 'current' is about 1 amp and 'Vf' is about 3.7 volts. If you have a 'boost' driver then it can suck extra juice from lower-than-Vf battery, but these probably aren't boost drivers.

"Accepts 3.6V ~ 9V input power." This is a buck circuit, so you'd need higher voltage in the batteries than your LEDs want. You want a boost circuit, or you need voltage for what you want. However, if that driver in your hand will take 7.4v, you can drive 2 LEDs (in series, at 800 mA) with the driver and 7.4volts or more of battery.