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RGB Flood Lights

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bdkeen View Drop Down
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  Quote bdkeen Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: RGB Flood Lights
    Posted: 07 Oct 2009 at 7:16pm
I built 4 RGB units with 2 each (red, green, blue) MR16 LED bulbs. They work ok but wasn't really pleased with them especially when it came to color blending.  Decided to replace them with something better. Just finished building 2 of the replacements and tested these on a DCx16.  Very pleased with the results.
 
Ordered the PCBs at http://www.bigclive.com/flud.htm, a bunch of superflux leds from ebay, stuck 2 pcb's in a 500W portable work lamp from Lowes.
 
Since I have 2 extra pcb's I'm planning trying to make 2 UV units using UV LEDs in 100W flood light cases. Not sure where or how I might used these but seems like an interesting project.
 
If I get chance will post pics on my website in the near future
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ChrisL1976 View Drop Down
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  Quote ChrisL1976 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Oct 2009 at 8:24am
Bruce
Have you tried dimming those things?    Looks like a project I may add to my list for next year.   What was the total cost per unit?


Chris

www.lightsonsixth.com
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bdkeen View Drop Down
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  Quote bdkeen Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Oct 2009 at 10:00am
Chris - Dimming works good - it's slightly better than the dimming I was getting on the MR16's. There's still that low end cutoff point typical of leds  but I'm getting very smooth ramps. and they are alot brighter than MR16s and color mixes are far better. I even had to settle for the 3mm greens since the chinese ebay vendor didn't have the 5mm.  54 LEDs per board,  18 each color, 2 boards per light in the 500W housing.
 
Estimated cost was about $30-$35 per lamp for the RGB ones.. PCBs, LEDs, 500W work lamps, resistors. Work lamps at Lowes were $10 of that cost. I'm sure you could use different housings and lower the cost slightly. I used some old PS2 extensions for power making it nice having 1 wire for the 3 channels needed - then just use ps2 extension cables to fan out from the DCx16.
 
It'll be slightly higher probably for the UV units since the UV led's a a bit higher in cost.
 
Picture of the finished product can be seen at http://www.keenlights.info/projects.asp
 
I took some quick video of side by side comparison with a 6 bulb MR16 unit (2 red, 2 green, 2 blue) and it's poseted as well.


Edited by bdkeen - 09 Oct 2009 at 1:57pm
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wesalbert View Drop Down
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  Quote wesalbert Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Oct 2009 at 4:36pm
You just cost me some time and money LOL
 
good find.  I hope to get 6 to 8 boards done for this years show. 
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  Quote LightsOnLogan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 7:58am
Having been on the early end of DIY RGB solutions, let me share a tip:
 
If you want good color mixing, use twice as many red LEDs as you use for green and blue.
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bdkeen View Drop Down
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  Quote bdkeen Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 9:24am
Agreed - The experimenting I did was definitely leading to more red. I'm rather impressed with the boards I built having equal number of red, blue, and green superflux LEDs. White actually looks white, orange looks pretty much orange, etc. To be expected there's a bit of color 'shadowing' the first inch or 2 till the colors converge. Only really visable if shining directly up at the base of a wall (but an interesting effect)
 
I've been contemplating doing something for Trick-or-Treat night using just a single DCx16, these lights, and some sequences using pretty much just the waveform to event tool runing the colors on individually sequenced channels as opposed to using the RGB tool , mostly the reds and blues for that eriee purlple effect and shimmering the greens once in a while which produces a fairly nice whiteish strobe effect.  Test runs look pretty good. Red and Blue full on are producing magenta. In this case I believe if there were more reds the red would be over powering. I just got the cheap bulk leds available on ebay. If I have some time I'll see if I can video one of these lights going through a cycle of the spectrum using the RGB tool in Aurora.
 
Just for grins I also built 2 single board lamps using  all UV leds.. They work ok but aren't as bright as I'd like since the output on the UVs I chose is much less (around 80 mcd in the visable range - their cost is higher too).  They are giving that black-light effect on florescent colors just don't have the throw distance I'd like to see - maybe around 4 to 8 feet before you really start to loose the glow with other ambient lighting . Seems to be alot of inconsistance in the UV leds as well, some are more blue than others. Not sure I'd recommend this as a UV light unless the superflux UV LEDs were brigher and lower cost. The recommended leds are 20ma - not sure I want to try using the 100ma, more expensive ones that are available. (board designer advised me against it)
 
Anyone considering these boards - there's alot of soldering involved so be prepared for that - about 80-90 joints per board. Desoldering as well if you get a bad LED or the polarity isn't exactly correct on the LEDs (both happened to me - the reds were reversed from the blue and green) Also I emptied out 2 RadioShacks of 150 and 220 ohm resistors till I recieved those I ordered (I just couldn't wait to tinker with these)
Total cost was approximately $25 to $30 per light depending on the cost of the 500W work lamp used for the housing (HomeDepot had some for 5.95 and Lowes was 9.95). I didn't think that was really too bad plus it was a fun hobby project.
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  Quote LightsOnLogan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 11:06am
The RGB tool in Aurora is a "reasonable approximation" of the expected color output.  Given that Aurora can't know the specs of the specific LEDs you are using, combined with the fact the sRGB color gamut (used by PCs) is different than the color gamut achieved by LEDs, there is no way to make the color perfect.

You might have noticed that it is absolutely impossible to create some hues of purple on a PC screen that are possible to create rather intensely with your LEDs.

For a PC screen (or a television), red leans somewhat red-orange, green leans to lime green, and blue has a leaning toward green (but not so much as to make it cyan).  This is leftover from the CRT days when an electron beam struck phosphors that glowed at those wavelengths... those phosphor colors were a compromise in that they were cheaper to produce than RGB accurate phosphors.  As a result, the sRGB space lent itself to reasonable color reproduction in the orange-yellow area (flesh tones) at the expense of very poor purple rendering. 

LEDs on the other hand have different wavelength centers.  While a true red LED is possible, the "super bright" variety tend to be even more red-orange-ish than the sRGB spec red.  Super bright green is truly a pure green (not lime) and LED blue leans slightly toward indigo instead of green (but is far more accurate of a blue than the sRGB spec).  The result is excellent accuracy in the blue-indigo-violet area of the gamut, but rather poor rendering in the orange-yellow area of the gamut (the exact opposite of the sRGB color space).


Edited by LightsOnLogan - 20 Oct 2009 at 11:07am
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  Quote wesalbert Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 5:02pm
I was wondering about the thing with red.  Even debated on going with 3mm blue and green, and 5mm reds.
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  Quote bdkeen Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 5:10pm
I used 5mm red and blue but 3mm green. just got the cheap bulk ones from china on ebay(
My goal was as inexpensive as possible). They didn't have 5mm green or I probably would have gotten them too..  The greens are doing just as good as the others. It's really just more the amount of viewing angle and really has little to do with the actual brightness  - any of the colors causes spots in my eyes if looking directly at them straight on.
 
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  Quote wesalbert Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 6:02pm
I probably got them from the same place.  I also got 5mm Red and Blue, but had to go with 3mm Green.
 
A bit off topic, but how do I end up programming them? I ordered a DC controller that should be a few weeks. 
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