Garage door motor unit courtesy light upgrade

Fiddy · May 4, 2014

Good Hello,

So i just moved into a new house and i have this courtesy light on my garage door motor.

The hole unit runs off 24VDC and so does the courtesy light, the factory fitted incandescent was 15W so im going to stick to that power.

here are 2 photos of the unit:

Now the current off the shelf unit i have in there at the moment isnt bright enough for a laser enthusiast.

Im thinking 1 big single led without a lens or reflector for wide angle.

The led im thinking of going is a SST50, what i need from you guys is what driver would be the best option?

Theres no much space inside the light cavity, so the smallest size driver the better!

Any help or suggestions would be great!

Cheers! Fiddy.

Flaminpyro · May 4, 2014

I just checked and a SST50 takes up to 5000mA and is a 8000K color lamp, that is kinda blue almost isn't it ? and 5000mA is a tough go for most of our LD drivers so I would suggest a driver made for the SST50 then.

If you wanted to drive it to 4000mA then a P3 driver could do that for you.

BTW it looks like you have plenty of lighting in there now :thinking:

ryansoh3 · May 4, 2014

As for an LED, I'd actually recommend an XM-L2 neutral or warm white or an MT-G2.

The latter has respectably high efficiency and the ability to push it beyond 3K lumens.

Here is a great site to search for drivers:
http://www.videofoundry.co.nz/ianman/laboratory/research/driverlist.php

Fiddy · May 6, 2014

Flaminpyro said:
I just checked and a SST50 takes up to 5000mA and is a 8000K color lamp, that is kinda blue almost isn't it ? and 5000mA is a tough go for most of our LD drivers so I would suggest a driver made for the SST50 then.

If you wanted to drive it to 4000mA then a P3 driver could do that for you.

BTW it looks like you have plenty of lighting in there now :thinking:

I dont want to run it at the full 5A! that would go over the 15W power limit for the light.

The flexmod being a linear drive will be burning up quite alot of current droping 24V to ~3V and produce a bit of heat id imagine.

A buck driver would be better but finding one that can handle a relatively large Vin is the part im struggling with.

Yeah i have 8x 4" fluros once i turn on the garage lights, but the courtesy light is very dim when they arent on.

ryansoh3 said:
As for an LED, I'd actually recommend an XM-L2 neutral or warm white or an MT-G2.

The latter has respectably high efficiency and the ability to push it beyond 3K lumens.

Here is a great site to search for drivers:
Aqualab: LED Driver List - LED Drivers and Regulator Boards (database driven)

i thought of going xml i still may go the that depending on the driver i choose.

Fiddy · May 6, 2014

Decided to go with a china buck unit, 5-32v it can do 5A max with CC and or CV operation

1PCS-Lithium-Charger-Step-Down-5A-5V-32V-To-0-8V-30V-Power-Supply-Module-New.jpg

djQUAN · May 6, 2014

I hope you're not going to run it for more than a few seconds at full load. I had one of those 2A rated ones and ran them at 1.5A and it burned my finger.

Fiddy · May 6, 2014

It will run for 5 minutes, will be doing a bit of testing on it, i bought more than one unit too ;-)

djQUAN · May 6, 2014

If these are like the common chinese dc-dc converters, you can probably stick a heatsink on the backside to help on power dissipation too.

Cyparagon · May 6, 2014

The constant current doesn't kick in until several hundred ms after the voltage comes up. Be CAREFUL with those and set the voltage first. Might even be better to just run it in constant voltage because the current limit is shitty.

djQUAN · May 7, 2014

You can probably run it with LEDs since they can tolerate brief overcurrents better than laser diodes.

Also, I would set the CV level at slightly above the LED Vf. Just raise the output voltage just enough to overcome wire resistance until the CC mode kicks in. This way, the overcurrent condition at startup is minimized.

Polonium210 · May 7, 2014

In my garage I used the courtesy light on the door opener to trigger a relay that parallels the main garage light switch..

All garage lights turn on and time out when the courtesy light times out :beer:

Fiddy · May 7, 2014

Cyparagon said:
The constant current doesn't kick in until several hundred ms after the voltage comes up. Be CAREFUL with those and set the voltage first. Might even be better to just run it in constant voltage because the current limit is shitty.

She'll be right, the SST50 is quiet tollerent.

Polonium210 said:
In my garage I used the courtesy light on the door opener to trigger a relay that parallels the main garage light switch..

All garage lights turn on and time out when the courtesy light times out :beer:

Thats nice, i could do that but is a bit overkill for me as i have 8x 4" fluro's on the garage lighting circuit

Fiddy · May 20, 2014

Just got 4 of the boards, set one up nice, running from 24VDC and pumping out 3A in CC mode, bugger all heat produced in the driver, installed it onto my garage door motor light terminals for a test and it went BOOOOOM!

The input capacitor exploded, retested the supply volts and it was around 22VDC, checked ripple volts (on AC) and it was 1.4V, being a smart boy i checked it with a CRO and sure enough the RMS is 22VDC but the peak voltage is ~36V, it looks like half way rectification of a 36VAC supply, big peaks then nothing for the next 180 degree's averaging out at 22VDC!

Should i put a nice capacitor across the light terminals to smooth the DC out?

Garage door motor unit courtesy light upgrade

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