as the title states, I am looking for high power RGBW leds. I need them all to roughly be in the same item example leds, however, I can’t find any actual datasheets on these leds, or a manufacturer, so I am not overly interested in purchasing something like that, but websites like mouser, element 14 and digi-key dont seem to stock those types of leds, or ones that even look slightly similar, or if they do, they cost 13 dollars a piece, and need a minimum order of 1000 pieces.
My end goal project is to make a custom fibre optic controller like this one, however, why im not using it is because I will need around 10+ of the machines, and I have ideas, that they dont have, like support for controlling seperate units with a singular remote (they all seem to use RF, which has no issue, except im pretty sure two units will be controlled by the same remote
TL;DR looking for RGBW leds that are around 9-16w (under 20 dollars is preferable), and any suggestions or ideas would be much appreciated.
We do have RGB, just not RGBW. with the right diffusion these can do a decent white, but I understand wanting RGBW when this will go into fibers, and maybe split the colours.
A quick look on Digi-Key found these LEDs in 3 colour temperatures, so it’s your call whether the white channel is worth more than doubling the price ($7.57 for 10 from us, $25.78 from DigiKey)
the white is prefered im my opinion due to the ability to probably have a brighter white (mixing rgb and the w at the same time), but I might have a play around and purchase some, do you suggest a smallish led driver circuit or have something on the site for it?
a 9w led should be sufficient, and there is always the ability to use lenses to reflect them, but my goal was to have a direct output from the light straight into the fibres, because I dont want more surfaces to possibly need cooling, and extra work to be put in due to how many of them that will need to be made.
Okay, I dont mean small in terms of physical size, I mean small in terms of not having seven hundred components to control a single led. the goal is to have a pwm signal, a power + (not sure what voltage depends on what it should be worth) and ground, and then on the output side there would be a positive and negative terminals for the led itself, because if I have to have 3, or possibly 4 per led, and having 10-15 leds on top of that will start to get expensive, very fast. I worded the message wrong, as size isn’t really an issue, as long as it isnt the size of an elephant. But having a smaller amount of components per circuit would be preferable.
Hi Maddie
If you have a RGBW LED and you want control over the colours you will need 4 drivers, one for each colour and one for white. If you want to control 10 of these separately you will need 40 drivers.
Starts to mount up but I don’t see any way of controlling more than one colour with one driver. The strips that are available and have individual addressable LEDs only have one control connection but each LED has its own little control IC.
Cheers Bob
PS. This could get to be the size of an elephant. That link to that light source would have all this inside and probably controlled by a special purpose IC designed for that device and not readily available. To be honest if that linked device is complete with high power LED I don’t think you could build it for anything near that price.
thats honestly fair. I was just hoping to not be stuck with RF, but what I might do, is purchase one, and pull it apart, and see if its hackable, because you are right. I cannot find an LED, heatsink, mounts (for the fibres) and control board/drivers within that price.
Hi Maddie
I think that is the way to go. I can’t think of any easy way to do this if you want control of the colours. And the added mechanical problem of putting it all together and still make it look presentable.
You might have a problem if all the control units happen to be on the same frequency. With a bit of luck this will be selectable with maybe dip switches or similar to select frequency, codes or some form of identification.
Good luck. Cheers Bob
This won’t be a perfect match for your situation where you want RGBW control but in case you haven’t already come across it we have a guide to driving high power LEDs which I’ll link below. Not all of it will apply to your device, but a lot of the discussion around constant current drivers should be relevant to your project.
Okay, after doing some maths and testing, the roof area I am planning to put it on is approximately 5x5m , or 25m². My calculations say for 1m², I will need approximately 1500-1700 strands of fibre. that means, for a 300 strand machine (the biggest I can find, that isnt an insane amount, which I will explain why later) would mean I need 5 or 6 machines per square metre. That would mean I would need 125-150 of these machines, and at a cost of 70 dollars each, that would be 8750-10500 dollars, which is inanely out of the budget for this project, especially if it is only for 1 part of the design of the project.
My reasoning as to why I want multiple smaller machines, and not 1 or 2 big ones, is because I want the ability to change the colour, of sections, so I can make patterns in the roof, like rainbow waves and stuff.
Does anyone have any suggestions, as to how I could make something like this work? any ways to make things cheaper, or such?
Hi Maddie
Do you need pin points of light which you would get from fibres. Or could you diffuse them somehow behind a frosty sort of screen so you might need far less fibres.
Or is there any way to project from behind onto a frosted screen from a smaller source. Like a rear projected movie screen.
Or project from the front like lighting up the Opera House or buildings.
Cheers Bob
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