LED Lighting Problem

That is a simple and elegant solution..Thank You.

Any reason for a lithium battery as I have a spare battery from a riding mower that has left this earth(don't ask)

Just efficient use of space....use what ya got if it fits by all means....

thanks.

To my mind, reading down from the top, yours was the first practical answer that would work, though some others mention it again later (they don't read down from the top maybe or don't read period!!)

As neither of us know what the LED current draw is or the amount of pulsing from the generator, we can only say "a big capacitor" instead of an actual value.

My take/guess would be to get hold of a 10µF 35 volt polarised cap (or larger) as a starting point and add extra Caps in parallel till the problem is fixed....but even with just one, the unwanted flicker effects of the generator/magneto should be seriously reduced, if not quite fixed.

He just needs to watch out for the + and - carefully when adding the cap and diode.

The amount of light produced by a LED is proportional to the current flowing through the LED. The voltage regulator in your golf cart is designed to provide a proper charge cycle into your battery, not to provide a constant voltage or current into any ancillary circuit. This is the crux of your problem. The design of your LED lamps will determine which approach should be taken to solve this problem.

They are 12 v automotive running lights. I figued I may have an issue with the carts regulator that's why I wired them direct to the battery (fused of course)

exactly....saved me all that typing

I'm not very familiar with the G2 engine however this is just what I remember from my experiences with headlights on a golf cart. I seem to remember that there was a separate switch that come off the battery. Even then the lights did flicker a bit and those were regular 12 vdc incandescent bulbs. Does the engine use a generator / alternator to charge the battery? On some of my older dirt bikes they used a magneto to power the headlight.

magneto powered thus the pulsing.

I think SolarEagle nailed down a solution for me.

I thought it may have been a magneto.

With SolarEagles drawing, won't you lose charging ability while the lights are on?

Maybe put a separate 12 v regulator before the lights?? What voltage is the magneto putting out? Do the new LED lights have a built in transformer to reduce the voltage to 3 or 5 volts or are the LED's connected in a series?

I know!! Sometimes the job that seems the simplest quickly becomes a major pain in the butt!

they are 12v no transformer etc. I was concerned about the draw on the battery thats why I went LED. I did hook them to the battery and left them on for 4 hours. there was no noticeable drain on the battery so a second battery just for them will work fine without being charged during use.

That sounds like a great idea and looks like it will work for the application.

Good luck!

I don't know the currents and haven't done any calculations but here is are two wild comments to consider:

#1

What about powering the LEDs through a diode and having a large value capacitor across the LEDs? The capacitor will act as a current source when the voltage on the battery lines drops. For this to do any good you need the diode to prevent the cart motor from consuming the charge stored in the capacitor.

#2

Another wild idea: I doubt that the battery voltage is actually dropping enough to cause the flickering. My guess is that the flickering is caused by the IR (current multiplied by resistance) drop in the wires from the battery or battery bank. Battery terminals that are loose or corroded can also be a big voltage drop. Running the lights from a wire directly from the battery might give you a cleaner power source. This way the only current and therefore only IR drop in the wire going to the LEDs would be the constant and small LED current.

To avoid dead batteries you might want the path from the battery to the lights to go through a relay. The dirty power you now have should be good enough to run a relay coil. The relay coil would need to be dead when you turn off the key.

LEDS ARE diodes

Yep. Even under the current administration that is still true.

I suspect that if you draw out a working circuit that you will need a blocking diode to prevent the storage capacitor from discharging during the time that the motor is causing the large IR drop.

His LEDs are headlights so getting another one of them just to use as a blocking diode does not make sense. Since this seems to be a very noisy high current circuit I would suggest a blocking diode with a voltage rating far above the normal LED. So, the shopping list has one or more C's and a D without the LE option but with a little bit of the HV option. Packaging probably AX but could be RAD or SMT. Thus, D with HV and AX but without LE.

Then again, I could be wrong. I am very good at that.

(When I was in Huntington Beach a few years ago we had lunch at the Hunting Beach Beer Company on the beach. Almost everyone was way too skinny. Don't you people eat meat over there on the left coast?)

Hi Bruce,

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. The diode I was talking about would be used to prevent the stored energy (in the capacitor) from being consumed by the motor. While the motor was drawing a large amount of current from the battery, the battery voltage would dip thereby causing the LED circuit to dim. I presumed that the LED circuit already had a current limiting device of some kind or else it would have burned up when the cart was not moving. That was an assumption on my part.

The capacitor was intended to provide 12 volts while the motor was otherwise causing a drop in the battery voltage while the current hungry motor was having its lunch! By running the LED circuit from the stored energy in the capacitor, the dimming would be minimized. A picture or sketch would have saved me from all of these words. Sorry if I caused any confusion.

These golf cars use a starter/generator that can barely keep the battery charged with nothing else drawing power.

EZ Goes are the same way. I forget the output but it's less than an amp as I recall.

Aux battery (maybe motorcycle) and a small ac charger might help.

Also, buy an automotive battery. 8AMU1R from Autozone is what I use. (Not an endorsement)

We have 6 EZ Goes and I never buy golf car batteries for them.

the diode/capacitor idea may work as well

I have a U1R battery(spare) I'm going to use as light source following SolarEagles idea first (I don't have to buy anything to try it). If it doesn't work out I'll try the Diode option.

Thank You all for constructive and illuminating(no pun intended) replies..

Tell her not to play golf at night and you may save yourself a heap of work.

Hopefully she is more intelligent then my wife with her golf cart, a G2 electric real heavy and I don't mean that in the stoner sense either. Last year she decided to go rock hunting for her rock garden in the bottom of the local creek and it took an 9N Ford to get her out. Now that I have my Club Car equipped with 24" tires and 72 volts I may not need the tractor, but you never know. She has too many college degrees and no common sense about mechanical things. I guess I forgot to read the fine print her dad gave me too many years ago.His last comment to me was their family gave great funerals not divorces. And he went out in style.

"His last comment to me was their family gave great funerals not divorces."

Statements like that would have me calling off the wedding and bugging out of town. Not that I go into a relationship looking for a way out, but the insinuation that the family murders ungrateful in-laws makes it a family I would prefer to not be a part of.

Hello every-one, I tried using the second battery and switch per SolarEagle. Works great! The other half doesn't play golf, she runs up and down to the creek out back and over the hill to run our Terrier. She only needs the lights for the last run of the evening so they are only in use 1/2-1 hour at a time.

Thank you to everyone for an educational and entertaining read....