Download Hotrater & LuxLuthor Spreadsheet Files

LuxLuthor

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Nov 5, 2005
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Many have seen and used older versions of some of the AWR Hotrater spreadsheet Excel charts that led to my Destructive Testing thread when I found much of the extrapolation in these charts to be inaccurate.

I am sharing these now because of AlanB, JimmyM have released their fabulous regulators that are light years beyond AWR's design. wquiles is soon to follow with his SF M6 regulated pack. Obtaining accurate bulb setting numbers for the regulator is now important to know.

These are new versions that I worked on with AWR after he left the forum. These two files are the latest versions he was involved with, and each shows different information.




This next one is my own version where I organized and added colors and some handy links going directly to places to buy or get specs on various bulbs. A few of the bulbs like the Osram IRC's have the more detailed exponent where we tried to predict bulb performance correlating with the actual destructive testing I have done. The best way to use these is changing the voltage value for the Vbulb "Regulated" cell to see how it changes the Lumens, Life, Amps, etc.


I believe people should still use my destructive tests as the most accurate way to determine their setting for regulation, or how far to push a bulb. You should not pick regulation voltages that are close to the flash point. On most of the tested bulbs, you can see the voltage categories that I thought would be the most practical for actual use--marked as "Pending" under the "Measured Life" column.

These three charts represent an incredible amount of time and work, so hopefully they can be used by the community.

The mods may wish to add this to the pinned "Threads of Interest" topic for future reference.
 
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LuxLuthor

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Oh also one more thing on the Hotrater versions, take note of the very top cell C1 resistance setting. My bulb testing was under 50mOhm which it has as you download it...but a typical stock mag setup with no changes has 250 to 300 mOhms of resistance. AW's multi-level soft starting switch has 225 mOhms. This can be adjusted in cell C-1, and it shows how resistance reduces delivered bulb voltage in direct drive setups.
 

jslappa

Enlightened
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Mar 4, 2009
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West Michigan
Thanks so much for this download. I am sure many who download this won't even understand that it was much harder to use a mathematical equation for each row. That's why changes to C1 affect the the row.

Thank you Lux.
 

Alan B

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Nov 19, 2007
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San Francisco Bay Area
If you make it go into direct drive you can measure voltages like anything else. You also have the code and tools so you can set the PWM value to 255 in the code and make it do nothing but direct drive regardless of anything else. Literally putting "pwm = 255;" just before it outputs the PWM would do that. Use a bulb compatible with the battery voltage and wrap some fine wires around the pins to tap the actual bulb voltage. Pull the switch out and use a clip lead to pick up battery plus from the big terminal on the pc board. That is pretty directly connected to Battery plus so is really close to the full battery voltage. Pick up minus from the M@g tube somewhere. That would give us a good idea of battery voltage and bulb voltage and from there we can calculate resistance pretty accurately.
 
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