Building a running light LED array using 30 3W star LEDs, drivers, boost converter and Arduino
By Julian
Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado
Good morning all…
Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado
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Where did you get the drivers?
If I want to build a 5x100w or 10x100w light bar do I only need one 100w driver?
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Light bulbs generate their light via a very hot wire, reducing the power consumed in the wire reduces its temperature. This has two effects: First, the intensity emitted by the wire will drop proportional to T^4 (Boltzmann's law) and also the radiation will be shifted (even) more to the invisible infrared (Planck's law). LED's have a different working principle. Here you inject charges ("holes" and electrons) in a semiconductor where they are able to recombine radiatively (to produce a photon) when they meet each other. You inject these charges on specific energy levels (holes in the valence band and electrons in the conduction band) that are energetically mostly fixed and do in first order not depend on the amount of charges injected. Therefore the energy a charge pair has is always the same, whether you drive 100mA or 3A through your LED. Since the color is nothing more than the energy of the photon, and this energy depends on the energy the charge-pair had before recombination, the color does not change when the current is changed. The amount of photons however is proportional to the current recombining in your LED, therefore TADA! the intensity is (in a first order approximation) linear with the applied current.
If you're using a 1W driver on a string of 10 LEDs, each LED should be getting 0.1W.
great tutorials, thank you!
Did you fit the led display yourself or did it come with it? I have been looking for one like yours but can only find it without the display 🙁
Julian, thanks for taking the time to make your videos. I thoroughly enjoy them and appreciate the extent to which you re-purpose things.
3W LEDs without heatsink ? srsly ?
where can i buy it