My next build will have a 12v LED bar made with a bunch of these.
Before you ask; Yes I will have them thermally adhered to a heatsink.
Anyway; It feels like our buck converter options are limited when dealing with anything above 12s and 13s+ fuhgettaboutit.
I found these. I may have room for 4 of them in parallel, thoughts?
What are your thoughts? How would you get 200W @ 12V out of your 13s+ battery?
I just bought one of these buck converters, but they are a little big (74mm x 74mmm x 31mm), but the heatsink it has is definitely necessary for 200W. I just blew 3 of those buck converters you listed, as converting 50.4v to 12v at 1A output yielded around 45% efficiency and each one was losing around 12W as heat which killed it within 10 minutes. And I did have them attached to a piece of aluminum C channel.
I wonder if that would survive 13s
Im gonna try the 72V version
It says its rated for between 40v-60v but there is also a 72v version I’ve seen on amazon.
Just ordered it. Will report back.
I just heard the mail truck drop it off, let me get it in here and I’ll start testing it.
you can wire 4x 12v led strips in series for a 52v lighting system. No buck converter required.
just like batteries, when putting loads in series you add respective voltages. when wired in parallel, you add the amperage.
I will try this! 5s2p Light strip lol. Each LED gets roughly 11v right?
not sure about the lights you linked, but I hear that some lights even have cc/cv module built in, in that case your voltage range is more flexible
So I did a quick test and on its own my 20W LED bar was pulling 18W at 12V, and when I used the buck converter, 50.4v to 12v only bumped it to 21.5W so around 3.5W are being lost as heat. 85% efficiency is a lot better than 45%. Though your results will probably differ a lot because you are pulling 10x as much power.
nice! actually not bad…
thanks for doing that test, I always wondered how much juice goes into heat like that
On the other hand with one of those little PCB buck converters, my 1/2 watt break light pulls nearly 2 watts from my power supply… a nice 25% efficiency
HORRIBLE.
Why not get an led bar that works at 48v and use a Meanwell LDD to drive it?
This is most well documented buck converter I’ve ever seen. This spec sheet is more complete than almost all of the shit on my board. Also, a 3 year warranty? Damn
Yep it’s great, got a few, haven’t had a chance to put em into a board yet, also it’s freaking TINY
Where did you buy yours?
Are there controls? I see a variable voltage output but no knobs or buttons.
edit: Oh damn it has pwm control? So one of those knobs with 3 wires coming out of it? 
