TPR1 - to drive LED floods?

L

LabRat

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Just throwing out this idea for discussion. (oh.. and Hello.. I'm Andrew... and I like blinky flashy)

Take the basic TPR1 (no PIC) which is essentially a constant current driver, that can handle up to 12v.
If using something akin to the Mighty Mini (re-jigged to be 3 LEDs in a row (12v instead of 24)), couldn't
the TPR1 be used to drive these? (One per colour) Instead of using current limiting resistors?

Or is heating (and heat dissipation) an issue ... so it will work for strobing, but not for lighting?
 
Yes, it could.

The basis to the strobe board is the NUD4001 chip, to set it up as a constant current driver requires only one resistor.
you can then drive up to 500mA.
It will even work up to 24vdc.
Heat could become an issue, the data sheet explain heat dissipation calculations for the chip.
Our tests with the NUD4001 have shown it to be quite resilient.
 
The problem with that is the number of devices you will need. Even for the standard MM you would require eight CC drivers. You have to drive each path separately because if you go by each color you would not get even distribution of the 200mA of current. One side will get more current and may eventually blow. This would then shoot all the current down the other leg and blow them out. If you hack them down to 12v, you will now have 16 paths of 100mA and would need 16 CC drivers...

I'm working on using LM317 regulators as CC sources but the 24v source is causing heat issues...
 
Rainbow floods have even more rows, at 18 total, 6 parallel's per color. Constant current, to be designed at a low cost (relative) is meant to have one parallel of LED's, all at a set current. An example of this would be a high power "star" LED (1-5W) There are some chips out there that have more than one regulated output, but they are more expensive.
 
chilloutdocdoc said:
Rainbow floods have even more rows, at 18 total, 6 parallel's per color. Constant current, to be designed at a low cost (relative) is meant to have one parallel of LED's, all at a set current. An example of this would be a high power "star" LED (1-5W) There are some chips out there that have more than one regulated output, but they are more expensive.
Click to expand...

Yep - exactly right - RJ at DLA has the right idea (as usual) with the Aether with fewer but higher power LEDs. Multiple parallel paths mean multiple CC drivers. But of course the better LEDs come with a higher cost so it's good to look at alternatives which still get the job done at a lower cost as well.
 
Andrew

I think everyone summed it up well, CC is the correct thing to do but the NUD is not the cheapest solution for what you want, and most will be hard to retrofit.

Cheers
Phil
 
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