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Is it worth trying to adjust this LED driver?

Fred27

I bought some cheap LED lights recently. They seem pretty good for the price (less that £10 at Screwfix) but for what I'm using them for a bit dimmer would be ideal. Anyway, I thought it would probably be reasonably easy to modify the driver circuit for lower current and as a bonus the LEDs would probably last longer too.

I expected perhaps a simple capacitive dropper at that price, but on opening it up I can see something a bit more complex. It has an SOIC-8 chip on there but the marking don't reveal much when I've searched.

ICNE2531AE
A10350AB
2130

The white soldermask makes it a surprisingly tricky to trace the circuit too. Any tips, or ideas on the IC?

image

Just to reassure you all, I am aware that even the "low voltage side" of this sort of cricuit is dangerous to touch is it's likely to not be isolated from the mains side. Any modification will be done with it disconnected and then stand back, power it on and see what happens! The LEDs on the other side are two banks of 7 LEDs wired in series, so I could always disconnect one bank and hope that it's a constant current driver that will automatically half the output voltage.

Parents

  • If your interest is to extend the life look at the temperature of the components. The most probable failure mode is the electrolytics   going out, due to quality, undersizing and the entire assembly operating at high temperature. All the LED lights died under my watch did the same way - by the electrolytics, way before the LED flux dropped. The bad electrolytics can bring the rest of the bulb with them and blow out the LEDs, controller and diodes too. 

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  • If your interest is to extend the life look at the temperature of the components. The most probable failure mode is the electrolytics   going out, due to quality, undersizing and the entire assembly operating at high temperature. All the LED lights died under my watch did the same way - by the electrolytics, way before the LED flux dropped. The bad electrolytics can bring the rest of the bulb with them and blow out the LEDs, controller and diodes too. 

Children