Headlight for night flying drone

Support Motor controllers/drivers and motors
1

I have looked around online for a simple solution to this issue and haven’t found it yet: I want to put a set of high power DIMMING LED headlights on my drone.

I want to use RC/PWM to control high power LEDs with 7.5 amps total current. The power supply is 4S lipo so the input voltage is around 16.

I found that I could use a buck boost converter to control voltage out with a mini-pot so I thought for sure that there would be a PWM controller that would allow me to use the RC signal to vary the voltage output. So before I knew much more I bought these motor controllers which I am sure will do the job if I can give them the proper pwm:

Then I learned that RC/PWM and control pwm are very different. One of the INAV developers said I might be able to use a DAC to convert the RC/PWM to voltage and then use that to control the motor controller.

Then I saw some of the posts that are on this site and thought that someone here must have done this before on a robot, right?

SO NOW THE QUESTION: IS THERE A COMPACT CONTROL CIRCUIT (MAYBE A SMALL H BRIDGE DESIGN) THAT WILL ALLOW ME TO USE RC/PWM (SERVO CONTROL) TO CONTROL 16 VOLTS INPUT VOLTAGE AND GET VARIABLE OUTPUT VOLTAGE UP TO 7 OR SO AMPS OF CURRENT???

2

Hello.

You emailed with a similar question about using a Simple Motor Controller to control your LEDs, so just to reiterate for anyone else who comes across this forum post, I have summarized it below:

While you can use something like our Simple Motor Controllers to get a PWM output from an RC signal, you would generally be better off using a dedicated LED driver (which typically use constant-current control) unless your LEDs are specifically designed to be driven by a constant voltage (e.g. they have built-in current-limiting resistors). Unfortunately, we do not have any suggestions for an LED driver like that. If you find an LED driver that can handle your LEDs and be controlled from a microcontroller such as an Arduino, you might consider making your own system that accepts the RC signals and controls the LEDs; however, this would add a few extra components to your system, which might not be ideal for a drone.

Brandon