Well I have had a couple people at least ask me about me light and what went into building it.
So in the name of consolidation here's what I have on my few year old project.
First, I researched many, many, many, many, many, many hours on light, LEDs, other builds.
Then and only then did I start ordering anything.
This is what I got in the mail.
This is a 5w 'LED Engin' brand LED. This particular LED put out just over half a watt of light. Cost about $10 dollars at the time and is priced just over $7 now. I ordered 4 different wavelengths: 460nm blue, 625 nm red, 660nm deep red, and ~730 nm infrared (google Emerson Effect).
This is a few of the parts with a lighter for size reference. The smaller LEDs are the same, they just came on a smaller package.
The chips you see are voltage regulators. We will get to those later. The heatsink came from Ebay for about $15 plus shipping.
It came with the holes so I worked around them or used them.
It took me a lot less than 4 days to make light and no magic was involved.
You can see two components I have not talked about yet.
On the left is a Pulse Width Modulator or PWM for short. It allows dimming of the LEDs. On the right connected to the voltage regulator is a 1k resistor. The regulator and LED are connected to the heatsink with thermal tape I got from Ebay for approximately $10. The PWM I believe also came from Ebay and was about $30.
This was just a test. The LED is dimmed to about 50%.
Awww come on...I wouldn't run a test at just half power.
This was the set up I had planned. These are really bright at their rated 1 amp current. Amazingly blinding at 2 amps for maybe 2 seconds before they burn up.
Stupid mistake. Ordered more.
So in the name of consolidation here's what I have on my few year old project.
First, I researched many, many, many, many, many, many hours on light, LEDs, other builds.
Then and only then did I start ordering anything.
This is what I got in the mail.
This is a 5w 'LED Engin' brand LED. This particular LED put out just over half a watt of light. Cost about $10 dollars at the time and is priced just over $7 now. I ordered 4 different wavelengths: 460nm blue, 625 nm red, 660nm deep red, and ~730 nm infrared (google Emerson Effect).
This is a few of the parts with a lighter for size reference. The smaller LEDs are the same, they just came on a smaller package.
The chips you see are voltage regulators. We will get to those later. The heatsink came from Ebay for about $15 plus shipping.
It came with the holes so I worked around them or used them.
It took me a lot less than 4 days to make light and no magic was involved.
You can see two components I have not talked about yet.
On the left is a Pulse Width Modulator or PWM for short. It allows dimming of the LEDs. On the right connected to the voltage regulator is a 1k resistor. The regulator and LED are connected to the heatsink with thermal tape I got from Ebay for approximately $10. The PWM I believe also came from Ebay and was about $30.
This was just a test. The LED is dimmed to about 50%.
Awww come on...I wouldn't run a test at just half power.
This was the set up I had planned. These are really bright at their rated 1 amp current. Amazingly blinding at 2 amps for maybe 2 seconds before they burn up.
Stupid mistake. Ordered more.
