Multi-colored Nichia Array

[soloco]

Has anyone made an array of Nichia LEDS of all different colors? I was wondering if this could be used to get better color coverage. My Lightwave 4000's got all white ones, but they are all tinted purple. I was think it would be interesting to have each LED a different color that could combine to make a nicer white light. Any manufacturer/modder do this yet?

 

[gwbaltzell]

You can buy a LED with Red, Green, and Blue in one package. I think Nichia sells their's for $12 US each. You could control this to produce several million colors. Don't know of any commercial flashlights that use this. You might search the mod. threads.

 

[UnknownVT]

[ QUOTE ]
soloco said:
Has anyone made an array of Nichia LEDS of all different colors?
<snip>
I was think it would be interesting to have each LED a different color that could combine to make a nicer white light.

[/ QUOTE ]

All one would need is RGB - Red, Green and Blue.

The main problem is the LEDs being discrete - so are discrete sources/points of light, and the "blending" of the light.

Beyond a cetain distance - past the eye's resolving ability the light may then seem white - but within the eyes' resolving range one will be able to see the discrete colors.

This would be true with the light illuminating an object - used close one probably would see the discrete color (banding), but with the light far away enough, then perhaps one would see the light as "white".

I did an experiment using a cheapo multi-colored LED pen which had red, green and blue LEDs - with photos - in this thread:

LED Colors and Vision (pics)

A better proposition might be the use of RGB LEDs - which would have the light sources much closer together -

However the uses of RGB LEDs so far have been in novelty lights - changing/strobing through the colors, and not the potentially useful flashlight that could be switched between white, red, green, blue, and any combination of colors.......

 

[idleprocess]

Balancing a RGB array would be a challenge.

Even if you manage to get near-identical angle/mcd numbers on the LEDs in your array, it would likely appear unbalanced due to the nature of the human eye's color sensitivity.

It might be easier to make a balanced array using SMD LEDs - some of those are amazingly small yet still intensely bright.