Thwarted Again

Brighter lights

Written by

Eric

in

,

Version 1.1 of the Luxeon LED test board was waiting for me when I returned from the frozen northlands. I spent some time soldering in the through-hole components this morning and then did the LEDs this evening. The LEDs were a little tricky but they all work and I didn’t burn myself which counts as success. I have some pictures of the finished product. The lights are bright. Very bright. The LM317 regulators get really hot. I have some heat sinks I’m going to have to attach but I was erroneously running the thing at +25V which may be part of the problem. The regulator dissipates power equal to (V_in – V_out) * I_load so if V_in is 25V, V_out is only 11V (3.4V forward voltage * 3 LEDs rounded up for other loss) and I_load is 320mA the power dissipated is 4.5W which is an awful lot. I’ll try again soon with the voltage set more sanely. Anyway, pictures.


Lights on

I think the next step is to get the Arduino in and useful so I have a little bit of time to wait.

Comments

3 responses to “Brighter lights”

  1. emily

    Did you ever get these working? I’m going to get these started soon but I was never so creative about getting lights in them! If you did get them working, I’d love to see a picture.

  2. Eric

    Sadly, I never finished the project. I got to the point where I was thinking about how I was going to actually make the mounts and enclosures and that turned out to be a little too much to do. I was also out of work for a little bit which meant no spending money on this kind of stuff and then I got my new job which pretty much consumed my entire life for the last two and a half years. I get the make-things bug every once in a while and that is how things like my eternal bookshelf project lurches forwards occasionally but mostly it’s the job where the creative energy gets spent these days.

  3. emily

    Well, maybe I can figure something out. If so, i’ll let you know.

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