questions re: rgb 'moodlight'

[something]

Hey all, i've been browsing the forums here and am frankly impressed at how much ppl know about leds. I'm in the process of making a little rgb light box and theres a couple of things i'm not sure about.

I like the superflux 4 chip leds for my purposes, they have a huge angle of opening and i like the multiple light sources. I'm not sure however if i'm going to need any kind of heatsink for them, particularly as i'm going to have quite a few in close proximity.

If i do need a heatsink, do i attach it to the anode or the cathode (i've read both :thinking? and would it be possible to just use bundles of copper wire (spread out to increase their heat dispersion)?

with the weak rgb leds i've been playing with it's quite difficult to get a true white blend. can anyone point me to a good reference for balancing the lumens?

i was thinking of the following setup for leds and resistors, designed so i could connect the heatsinks between stages without worrying about insulation:

(for a single colour of led i.e. ~= voltage drop) can anyone see any problems here? (not really that knowledgeable about electronics, just bodged together the control circuits and so on)

cheers, j

 

[led-dude]

Hi. I've built a similar circuit, but I took a short cut and bought one of these off the shelf rgb mood lights and harvested the microchip:

http://www.blinkee.com/page3.php??id=Electronic Mood Ring

Best of luck.

 

[something]

cheers, but half the fun is making the controls.. i've made a couple of triangle-wave voltage regulators with adaptable frequency which in combination with some variable resistors for the current gives me a nice and flexible setup.

In fact i'm now thinking of just going with some pre-mounted rebels from here: http://www.led-tech.de/en/High-Power-LEDs-Luxeon/Luxeon-REBEL/Luxeon-REBEL-on-PCB-LT-1015_49_85.html
they're still relatively cheap and avoid the necessity of doing fine soldering myself! Only annoying part is that they've used a lower bin grade for the pre-mounted parts as compared to what they are offering loose.

J