I recently tore down a Phillips 120V LED bulb and discovered it has two main components: the LED board and a detachable driver board. My goal is to run the LED part using a separate power supply. The driver board has three connections labeled LED +, LED -, and D, but I'm puzzled about what 'D' stands for—maybe something to do with dimming? When I connect line voltage, I'm reading 80V DC from positive to negative as well as positive to the 'D' terminal, but nothing from negative to 'D'. This 80V seems unusual, and I know most power supplies only go up to 30V. Does anyone know if there's an off-the-shelf power supply that can handle approximately 80V for about 10 watts? Just to clarify, I'm doing this because I have a custom enclosure that fits the LED board but not the driver, and since I got the bulbs for free, this could save me a lot of money. Here's a link to an image of the teardown: [https://imgur.com/a/8ojAxIT](https://imgur.com/a/8ojAxIT)
2 Answers
Don't forget that you can experiment with the power supply while limiting the current. Start at 2 Volts and raise it slowly until the LEDs light up. I tried this with mine and found it fired at 6 volts, drawing around 27mA. If your board has several LEDs in series, make sure to configure your setup around common voltages. This will make powering it much easier.
It looks like you're dealing with the LEDs directly. To power those, you'll need an LED driver since LEDs require a constant current rather than a constant voltage. The driver can adjust for any current your LEDs need, so it's probably not a good idea to discard that part entirely. You might consider using longer wires to keep the drivers in a different location, since the boards are already detachable. This way, you can fit them in your enclosure without much hassle.