gentlegreen
Newly Enlightened
I make my own bike lights of novel design and a core principle of mine is not to reinvent the wheel, so I used car lights for many years, and lately domestic MR16s, and a few years back noticed oversized triple MR16 LED spots becoming available on a popular auction site.
Since they were labelled "6 watts", I wasn't that keen as I was already using some expensive and genuinely good single LED-based lamps of around 4 / 5 watts that actually fitted inside 50mm plumbing fittings like the QH ones do..
But the next time I looked, they were labelled "9 watts", so I thought I'd take a gamble - only about £10 UKP shipped from China - ultimately I bought two each from two different suppliers.
Predictably when I stuck a meter in the circuit, I found they were drawing from 0.45 to 0.61 amps from my 13-ish volt NiMH batteries - so about 6 watts.
I amused myself by allowing the suppliers to try to bribe me to remove my negative comments - which I of course refused to do.
But they are in wonderful alloy housings, and after fixing a few of their limitations - lack of thermal paste and screws etc, they work very well indeed as 6 watt bike lights.
Then last week I spotted that a famous warehouser (the biggest) with a reputation I have come to trust, was stocking masses of these things from various suppliers and some were being labelled as "12 watts" - and the word "Cree"had appeared - though when it arrived, on reading the box, it turned out that this was the other famous manufacturer of LEDs - "Rotundity Cree" - and even better LEDs as this lamp would "replace an 80 watt Halogen" (the supplier claims the confusion is due to using the same box for many types of lamps ! )
It arrived promptly, similar price, slightly different driver with two inductors - presumably to allow dimming...
Not surprisingly it lit up no brighter than the others and when I stuck a meter on it, half an amp ....
I lodged a formal complaint with the warehouser (I don't plan to leave it alone there as a quick skim revealed masses of similar hyped products - apparently from different sources - though they also handle homoeopathic "medicines" and lots of other dubious products - which doesn't bode well).
I also emailed the company concerned and got a load of guff about why they were selling these as "12 watts" - but they withdrew it from sale - of course leaving lots of other variants - including GU10 - I'm almost tempted to try one of those too.
Their basic claim was that the LEDs themselves were good for 4 watts x 3, but that they had skimped on the driver module to cut costs- which is indeed teeny - inductor-based, but no heatsink.
Any guesses as to what will happen if I upgrade the driver or replace it with a resistor or LM317 and supply nearer to 1 amp to the series of LEDs ??
Since they were labelled "6 watts", I wasn't that keen as I was already using some expensive and genuinely good single LED-based lamps of around 4 / 5 watts that actually fitted inside 50mm plumbing fittings like the QH ones do..
But the next time I looked, they were labelled "9 watts", so I thought I'd take a gamble - only about £10 UKP shipped from China - ultimately I bought two each from two different suppliers.
Predictably when I stuck a meter in the circuit, I found they were drawing from 0.45 to 0.61 amps from my 13-ish volt NiMH batteries - so about 6 watts.
I amused myself by allowing the suppliers to try to bribe me to remove my negative comments - which I of course refused to do.
But they are in wonderful alloy housings, and after fixing a few of their limitations - lack of thermal paste and screws etc, they work very well indeed as 6 watt bike lights.
Then last week I spotted that a famous warehouser (the biggest) with a reputation I have come to trust, was stocking masses of these things from various suppliers and some were being labelled as "12 watts" - and the word "Cree"had appeared - though when it arrived, on reading the box, it turned out that this was the other famous manufacturer of LEDs - "Rotundity Cree" - and even better LEDs as this lamp would "replace an 80 watt Halogen" (the supplier claims the confusion is due to using the same box for many types of lamps ! )
It arrived promptly, similar price, slightly different driver with two inductors - presumably to allow dimming...
Not surprisingly it lit up no brighter than the others and when I stuck a meter on it, half an amp ....
I lodged a formal complaint with the warehouser (I don't plan to leave it alone there as a quick skim revealed masses of similar hyped products - apparently from different sources - though they also handle homoeopathic "medicines" and lots of other dubious products - which doesn't bode well).
I also emailed the company concerned and got a load of guff about why they were selling these as "12 watts" - but they withdrew it from sale - of course leaving lots of other variants - including GU10 - I'm almost tempted to try one of those too.
Their basic claim was that the LEDs themselves were good for 4 watts x 3, but that they had skimped on the driver module to cut costs- which is indeed teeny - inductor-based, but no heatsink.
Any guesses as to what will happen if I upgrade the driver or replace it with a resistor or LM317 and supply nearer to 1 amp to the series of LEDs ??
