12V 10W 2811 I/O Floods (Running on 24V)

David_AVD

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I was looking at replacement boards for the 12V 10W 2811 I/O flood lights on AliExpress the other day. In the photos for one listing I noticed that the board was marked as 12V - 24V, not just 12V as advertised.

A quick check of some older and new flood lights that I had revealed that they too were marked 12V - 24V. The capacitor strung across the power input was rated at 35V, which was a good sign too. The red arrows in the image below highlights this.

Last night I hooked one of them up to a pixel tester and a 24V power supply. When set to white, the current draw was ~ 640mA @ 12V. This reduced to ~ 380mA @ 24V, confirming that the constant current drivers were dealing with the increased voltage.

Something else I noticed was that there is a colour shift towards red when the power is only slightly under 12V. Running these floods from 24V would seem to have the benefit of less current flowing in the cabling. This in turn means less voltage drop and also totally avoids the colour skew that can happen at under 12V.

So far I've only run one of the lights on 24V for about 30 minutes, but I'll be changing the 4 out in my display on the weekend to a 24V supply. This means I don't have to worry about the 24V -> 12V step down converter I was using to power them. I can just use the 24V that I have going into the yard.
 

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AAH

I love blinky lights :)
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Is there in inductor hidden out of site there somewhere? If it's got constant current and handles the varying voltage by varying the current there's either something really cunning happening or an inductor or 2 stashed away there.
 

TerryK

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Hmm. Interesting. I've a pair of 10s and 30s. The 10s are marked 12 Volt while the 30s are marked 12-24 Volt. When time allows I'll experiment a bit.
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
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Those CC driver boards are switching type, not linear so have an inductor per output channel.
Which is why is I asking if there was an inductor/s hidden out of site (sic). :D
 

David_AVD

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I've only had the 10W floods from Light It Up LEDs (in WA) running on 24V for a few nights now, but they seem to be working exactly the same as when they were running on 12V. The only difference being they now draw less current. The overall power consumption is a little more than on 12V, but not having to worry about voltage drop causing them to colour shift if the voltage at the light drops under 12V is great.
 
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