Based on recommendations in chat - and if I've got it right - I'm looking to use 8mm 1W white Strawhat with a 140degree view angle and a forward current of 350mA. John
thanks John, do you have a good online supplier? i used some LED's for my portafloods but i'm not that happy with them. thought i might try some other shop that people have had good luck with. fj.
And taking fj's question a step further - would there be a possible group buy on these? No so much for any possible discount, just to make sure I get the right led since this is an smd project and getting up in the high power leds (I have less than 0 experience with either of these things).
I did a group buy in the US for 8mm .5W 100 mA StrawHat LEDs in several colors and got great prices from a Hong Kong supplier. The website is topbright88.com - they also sell on ebay as Shop4LEDs. Prices that were quoted to me via email were much less than the pricing listed on the website. Total order was over 5000 LEDs, and shipping was included in the price I was quoted, and even came Express in less than 3 days from HK. I might be convinced to run another buy - however I don't know if it's cheaper to do one in the US and another for AUS. In any case, I would rather do a bulk ship to AUS from the US and have someone there do the sorting for local shipping. This supplier does also have the 1W 8mm LEDs. Comments are encouraged to judge the interest for this...
^Thanks for that Mark. I sent a quote request for 5050's and 1W 8mm Strawhats. FYI, Ray Wu has quoted me a US0.64 price on these 1Watters: Comments welcome. John
John, Hopefully you'll get a response. Usually I didn't get much back from a request for a quote, until I indicated that I was ready to place an order, and then got a response fairly quickly overnight. In estimating the pricing, I usually use the web site price, and then adjust it after I get a firm quote for a given quantity. Note that you'll get a much better price for a higher quantity. Prices were $.46 US each for qty's greater than 100 for the .5W StrawHat on the site. Judging by the output of these in the Mighty Mini floods, I think they will be plenty bright for the strobes. Of course, I'm trying to balance light output with power requirements, too.
just a general question about stringing these LED's together. if i put 10 of these 350mA LED's in series, does that mean that total string current is 3.5A? i was thinking of running strings of 10 strobes to minimise channel count.
Yes thats correct With the strobes if you choose to get pack 2 (the PIC) then you will be able to run all your strobes through 1 channel as the PIC will allow a random flash when there is a signal sent to trigger the LED. This is the most cost effective way to control the strobes as the price per channel can be anywhere between 2 to 7 dollars (depending on what controller you use) if you choose to control them directly without the PIC. So effectively depending on how many you have and the cable size used, you could create a strobe string all connected in parallel being triggered by 1 channel using the PIC to generate the random flash.
No. LEDs in series will all have the same current going through them. Now, strings in parallel is a different matter. Did you mean series or parallel?
Looks like i misunderstood, I thought he might be talking about the using these LEDs with the strobes which i took for granted as being parallel at 5VDC (should read the post better). The fact that he is talking about using 10 per channel made me think that he was talking parallel as the strobe has been rated at 5VDC with the 1watt LED.
hmmm...don't really know series or parallel. i want to be able to wire up multiple led's per channel to minimise channel count. what is the best way to do that? i have put my name down for component packs 1, 2 and 3.
sorry guys, i just read an aricle about series vs parallel. it looks like parallel is what i want. using a 5VDC power source with LED's in parallel means each LED gets the full 5V? which would mean 10 in parallel = 3.5A current draw? here's the article http://www.theledlight.com/ledcircuits.html
Well the best way to wire these up is as you know now is in parallel. Now for how many channels that you need to use you could control all of them from 1 channel as that is the wire that sends the signal to the PIC to strobe which has very little current draw. Now for the power to the boards, the number you connect per string is dependant on the current carrying capacity of the cable you use and the wattage output of the power supply The supply power does not go through any channels as its the PIC that controls the flash from the signal wire which is connected through a controller channel at 5vdc. Hope that may be a bit more clearer for you and now you may have a heap of spare channels to use with other 5vdc lights or you could still just split it up so you have control of which bank of strobes you want to flash
