Published on May 15, 2017
Having previously bought one of these lamps as just the housing and LED, I bought the full thing on ebay to see how the power supply was implemented.
It’s not really fantastic. The regulation is appalling with the power of the light being around 1W at 12V but actually peaking at around 2W at 7V.
The chip being used inside is an MC34063 switching regulator that can be configured for boost or buck operation. Strange that with such a capable chip the actual regulation is so poor. I guess they just used it in the simplest and sloppiest configuration possible.
