Some more 9W bulbs arrived & they used exactly the 9W in a wall outlet.  So the MOSFET circuit isn't giving the rated voltage.  3.3V isn't enough to turn on the IRF630's.  A complementary transistor would be required.

Over the years, the existing MOSFET situation proved good enough.  As they warmed up, they turned on more & got bright enough to do the job.  It's still not the ideal 200W equivalent.  There isn't a cascaded transistor which would be cost effective & compact enough.  It would entail making a new board.

Eventually, the remote control stopped working.  The problem is the CR2032's can't put out the 50mA required by the radio, 2Mhz micro & LED.  They were going for a few ms & browning out.  Lowering the clockspeed of PICs in the past didn't make any difference below 2Mhz, but if it did it would require also changing the baud rate on the receiver.  The radio power got lowered & that seemed to extend the battery life.  The mane solution is just having a lot of CR2032's & changing them out more often until an enclosure big enough for AA's can be made.  The gopro isn't the ideal enclosure for packing all the other bits either.

The other thing which didn't work was the 1/4s transmit timeout.  That got taken out & it just transmits as long as the button is pressed.  It was intended to prevent interference from creating bounces, but what really happened was interference knocking out the 1/4 second packet.  Debouncing on the receive side proved enough.  

The pinball button ended up a glitchy pain in the mane.  You don't want to be fighting a balky button in the dark at 4am.

A new enclosure for AA's, a better button are the key needs.