I understand the waste not, want not approach. And being a self confessed cheap bast person, I can relate. But warm white LEDs, and bright yellow LEDs can give a nice bulb type effect, with a lot less current draw.
Bight yellow LED in my HO Tyco 10wheeler
John Visser said:
Hi Rick,
I assume those bulbs draw about 175mA, is that about right? With any linear dropping approach, like a primitive diode string, or a linear voltage regulator, you’re not going to get much life out of a pair of (relatively expensive) 9V batteries. With a linear regulator like an LM7317 your setup will quit about 1/2 way through the batteries’ life (about 8.5V each), and at that draw will only last a couple of hours.
A much better approach is to use a small, switching, step-up converter, which you could run from one 9V battery, or any pack of 2 or more volts, and adjust the output to exactly 14V. It will hold this voltage throughout the life of the batts. It will run at greater than 90% efficiency.
Such a device is available on eBay for under $1 with free shipping from China (under 50 cents if you buy five), or under $5 from a US source.
Search for SX1308.
Regards,
jv
Welcome John
Hi John and welcome to the forum.
Thank you for that information, I will check it out, but to tell the truth, I have about given up on the bulb idea for the snow plow headlight and will go with an LED.
I will save the bulbs for building lighting(https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)
Rooster ’ said:
Welcome John
Thank you, Rooster.
Rick Marty said:
Hi John and welcome to the forum.
Thank you for that information, I will check it out, but to tell the truth, I have about given up on the bulb idea for the snow plow headlight and will go with an LED.
I will save the bulbs for building lighting(https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)
Thanks for the welcome, Rick. I agree, I think LEDs are the way to go. But the up-converter is something to keep in mind, in case the need arises again.
Rick, you might want to test those bulbs on 14 volts and see how much current they draw, if it is a lot, you might determine that they would never be used in a project, at the very least you know the parameters to run them. They sure use a lot more current than LEDs
Greg
Greg,
Thanks, they do draw more than an LED but it never has been a problem. I have about 30+ of them installed in locomotives, cars and buildings and they work just fine.
In the snowplow with a head light that probably won’t get used more than a few hours a year I just didn’t see the need to install a 14.4 volt 2000+ amp hour rechargable battery, seems like
a little overkill. Just want a part time headlight in case I run it a little at night.
Another thought is to use 2 0f the larger 6.3 volt batteries in series and have 12.6 volts for the 14 volt bulb. These are heavy and would be great for a snow plow car!!
These are 6.3 volts and rechargable and at home depot!!
OR just 1 12.6 volt battery from Walmart.
Good thought Dan but the plow frame/body is already built and these batteries are to large to fit inside without major alterations.
The plow project is lying idle on the work bench as other RR projects have taken the front seat during our somewhat dry and partially
sunny early Spring.
