I know it’s been a looooong time since I’ve posted any new electronics projects, but that’s primarily been due to my increased course load now that I’m in graduate school. Well, I’ve finally picked up some 1050 ma constant current driver boards for the Luxeon K2 LEDs that I mentioned a while ago and hopefully I’ll get these up and running in just a little bit. I just wanted to post some pictures because I think they’re nice little boards.
The driver boards utilize 3 AMC7135 constant current ICs, which supply 350 ma each, wired in parallel. I picked the driver boards from DealExtreme, but judging from the forum comments on the page, I’m not going to expect these to have very tight tolerances. I could have picked up 1400 ma boards, but the increase in brightness is negligble for the 33% increase in power drawn. Once I pull together MOSFETs to drive them I should be good-to-go.
I also finally mounted the K2 emitters on aluminum breakout boards/heatsinks that I purchased from SparkFun, although admittedly the SparkFun boards are way too expensive at $2.95 each. DealExtreme sells similar boards for $1.91 for a 5 pack, but they appear to be too small for Luxeon K2s… I purchased the SparkFun breakout boards using a gift certificate that I won from Hacked Gadgets, so I’m happy (thanks Alan!).
Luxdrive has some really nice drivers. Stable and accurate with dimming, strobe, boost, buck, ac/dc, and battery pwr options in small weather resistant epoxy packages. Dimming is done with high frequency PWM eliminating visible pulsing. They are available in 350ma, 750ma, 1000ma, and 1500ma models for under $20. They have a link to their distributers. I have bought some and Im thoroughly satisfied with them.