Spider Web LED Lights

David_AVD

David_AVD

Grandpa Elf
Community project designer
Generous elf
Joined
Jun 12, 2010
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Location
Victoria Point (Brisbane)
These lights are from Deals Direct. They have 8 channels; 1 for each ring of LEDs. The controller has no button, hence they just do their own thing. The power supply is 24Vac 200mA. Diameter is approx 800mm. I will probably make a small DMX controller for these.

Spider Net Lights
 
I pulled the controller apart (you just knew I would!) and it's pretty much the same as the 2 and 4 channel 24Vac controllers you see, apart from having 8 SCRs and no selection button.

The good news is that it uses a common positive wire, so will be compatible with standard DC controllers. I've yet to work out the best DC voltage to run it from and what series resistors it requires in each channel line.

Each ring contains 20 LEDs and appears to be split into two parallel strings of 10 LEDs, so maybe 40mA per channel will be the target current limit.
 
Just did some testing of the 8 channel forward voltages using a 40mA limit:

Blue (1) 30.4V
Blue (2) 32.4V
Amber (1) 30.9V
Amber (2) 30.9V
Red (1) 30.4V
Red (2) 30.5V
Green (1) 32.7V (maxed out @ 30mA)
Green (2) 32.7V (maxed out @ 30mA)

So it would appear that the green sections are the limiting factor, requiring the highest voltage. They probably would reach 40mA at around 34V - 35V I reckon.

What does this all mean? To use these spider webs with a DC controller, you'd need to add a resistor (values yet to be determined) to each channel wire and use a 36V power supply.
 
David I bought a star net light off them last year
Ran really well at 32v
Although it did not last very long due to being a crappy quality I ran them without resistor. same 20 LED configuration
 
In what way did they not last long? LED (light output) or physical (wiring) failure?

If LED failure, that may be attributed to not using series resistors.
 
Here's the DMX 9 channel DC controller I made for them.

MGalleryItem.php
 
I've decided to use these spider lights on the same 30V - 31V DC supply as the Big W strings.

I added a 150 Ohm 0.6W resistor in series with each of the RED channel wires only. These values gave me 20mA - 40mA current draw per channel (varies with LED colour) from 31V DC.

I'll be driving these from my little 9 channel DMX controllers.
 
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