Um, hullo?

[LED Boatguy]

Hi, my name is Kurt and I'm an LEDaholic. Been lurking here for a couple years and thought I'd introduce myself and hopefully contribute something to the cause.

I've been making LED lighting fixtures for boats for years. Started off with the good 'ol 5mm ones and graduated to the high power stuff for monster specialized floodlights that put out a few thousand lumens.

Some pics are below. Those 66 5mm fixtures I made way back when are still going strong. It's amazing how much light you could make for 450ma. The other pics are of an early design Tim Taylor flood light.

I've got some interesting projects coming up, both for boats and home lighting. I'm just starting with this home lighting thing.

Anyways, hello.

...and THANK YOU for having such an educational site.

 

[Gunner12]

Presuming all those were C bin P7s or Q5 XR-Es, you have the potential of getting 7000+ lumen without overdriving any of the LEDs.

Great job!

McGizmo has converted all or almost all of his house to LED.

:welcome:

 

[LED Boatguy]

Presuming all those were C bin P7s or Q5 XR-Es, you have the potential of getting 7000+ lumen without overdriving any of the LEDs.

Great job!

McGizmo has converted all or almost all of his house to LED.

Thank you.

I run the Crees (Q4&5) at 900ma and the P7s (C-bin) at 2.8A. On the more densely packed lights, I back off the Crees to 700ma.

Not like heat is a big problem though. I've got 3 crees (Q4s) running at 1A on a piece of aluminum with a thermostat switch on it. When the temp gets to 75 deg C (170F), the thermostat turns on a fan and cools it off to ~50C at which point the thermostat opens. It's been cycling for over a month with no burnouts or noticeable degradation in performance. Still, on my lights, I design them to keep the junction temps below 80C per the datasheet.

Interesting times we're in now. Seems Cree, Phillips, Seoul and Nachia have plateaued for the time being and are now messing with form factors. Not that I'm complaining as I basically make deathrays and need the densities.

I've been reading up on the home lighting projects. Cool stuff! I have some warm whites on order from Cutter as well as some 120V drivers. Speaking of drivers, we need to get those prices down—and stay UL (or CSA or whatever). How about some generic (but UL) overstock wall warts & homemade drivers?

I'm sick of replacing burned-out CFLs, but I don't want to burn the house down with cheapo, unapproved drivers either.

 

[LukeA]

I've been reading up on the home lighting projects. Cool stuff! I have some warm whites on order from Cutter as well as some 120V drivers. Speaking of drivers, we need to get those prices down—and stay UL (or CSA or whatever). How about some generic (but UL) overstock wall warts & homemade drivers?

I've seen lots of CE approvals but no UL listing.

 

[LED Boatguy]

I've seen lots of CE approvals but no UL listing.

These switching wall warts are UL and they come from 6-24V. I'm going to try a couple of the higher voltage ones w/linear drivers. I don't want to start out powering a switcher with a switcher. Think I'll try a couple Xitaniums as well.

The wall wart switchers are here:

http://www.circuitspecialists.com/level.itml/icOid/8615

For the bathroom fluroescent replacemmemt, I'm thinking about a UL "universal" Laptop power supply that runs 4 amps amps at 24 volts and run series strings with their own CC power supplies from that.