RGB Flood Lights

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   I made 10 boards - 8 were RGB and 2 were populated with all UV leds. I only needed the 4 - 2 board floods so the UV ones were just a fun project.  I've done alot of testing with them on the basement walls. I did some quick Halloween sequences using the waveform to even tool in Aurora and plan on setting them all out tomorrow night hooked to the dcx16 while the kids at out for trick-or-treat. In my tests I've been getting a pretty nice look.  

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bdkeen Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Visit Members Homepage Add to Buddy List Beta Testers Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Location: Easton,PA Online Status: Offline Posts: 380	Quote Reply Posted: 30 Oct 2009 at 8:51am
	I made 10 boards - 8 were RGB and 2 were populated with all UV leds. I only needed the 4 - 2 board floods so the UV ones were just a fun project. I've done alot of testing with them on the basement walls. I did some quick Halloween sequences using the waveform to even tool in Aurora and plan on setting them all out tomorrow night hooked to the dcx16 while the kids at out for trick-or-treat. In my tests I've been getting a pretty nice look.


wesalbert Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 04 Nov 2008 Location: FL Online Status: Offline Posts: 23	Quote Reply Posted: 29 Oct 2009 at 7:58pm
	Got all the parts, boards and my DC16 today. So far in 3 hours I have 4 boards made and tested. Only messed up once by not flipping one red LED. I'm going to get them in the floodlight cases tomorrow so I can play tomorrow night. I need to make a minumum of 4 more boards. Will be able to wrap it up this weekend. Then if I am able to make more, its just a perk. I have enough parts to make 20 boards. I can't thank you enough for this find. Thanks
	32 channels

wesalbert Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 04 Nov 2008 Location: FL Online Status: Offline Posts: 23	Quote Reply Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 7:16pm
	Cool, playing with it now. All I need is the parts. I am pretty sure I can get 1-2 boards a night knocked out. Might get a couple guys from work that are good at soldering to help I got enough to do 20 boards. Edited by wesalbert - 20 Oct 2009 at 7:17pm
	32 channels

bdkeen Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Visit Members Homepage Add to Buddy List Beta Testers Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Location: Easton,PA Online Status: Offline Posts: 380	Quote Reply Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 6:23pm
	the boards have 4 connection points - R, G, B, and +.. The DCx16 is positive common - you can ohm out the connectors on the board and see which wire(s) will go to the + on the board. You'll use Aurora just light you do for the ACx16 - just pick the DCx16 when you add the controller or channel. You can control the RGB on seperate channels or you can use the RGB on ACx16 or DCx16 option and set the channel numbers appropriately.(still uses 3 channels). Setting as RGB allows the use of the RGB tool. A fade up done by starting black going to a color - color to color transitions - color to black to fade out. There's other stuff there you can do too - shimmer and twinkle. Everything is much the same as you're accustom to - really no special 'programming'


wesalbert Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 04 Nov 2008 Location: FL Online Status: Offline Posts: 23	Quote Reply Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 6:02pm
	I probably got them from the same place. I also got 5mm Red and Blue, but had to go with 3mm Green. A bit off topic, but how do I end up programming them? I ordered a DC controller that should be a few weeks.
	32 channels

bdkeen Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Visit Members Homepage Add to Buddy List Beta Testers Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Location: Easton,PA Online Status: Offline Posts: 380	Quote Reply Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 5:10pm
	I used 5mm red and blue but 3mm green. just got the cheap bulk ones from china on ebay( My goal was as inexpensive as possible). They didn't have 5mm green or I probably would have gotten them too.. The greens are doing just as good as the others. It's really just more the amount of viewing angle and really has little to do with the actual brightness - any of the colors causes spots in my eyes if looking directly at them straight on.


wesalbert Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 04 Nov 2008 Location: FL Online Status: Offline Posts: 23	Quote Reply Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 5:02pm
	I was wondering about the thing with red. Even debated on going with 3mm blue and green, and 5mm reds.
	32 channels

LightsOnLogan Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Admin Group Joined: 11 Oct 2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 3187	Quote Reply Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 11:06am
	The RGB tool in Aurora is a "reasonable approximation" of the expected color output. Given that Aurora can't know the specs of the specific LEDs you are using, combined with the fact the sRGB color gamut (used by PCs) is different than the color gamut achieved by LEDs, there is no way to make the color perfect. You might have noticed that it is absolutely impossible to create some hues of purple on a PC screen that are possible to create rather intensely with your LEDs. For a PC screen (or a television), red leans somewhat red-orange, green leans to lime green, and blue has a leaning toward green (but not so much as to make it cyan). This is leftover from the CRT days when an electron beam struck phosphors that glowed at those wavelengths... those phosphor colors were a compromise in that they were cheaper to produce than RGB accurate phosphors. As a result, the sRGB space lent itself to reasonable color reproduction in the orange-yellow area (flesh tones) at the expense of very poor purple rendering. LEDs on the other hand have different wavelength centers. While a true red LED is possible, the "super bright" variety tend to be even more red-orange-ish than the sRGB spec red. Super bright green is truly a pure green (not lime) and LED blue leans slightly toward indigo instead of green (but is far more accurate of a blue than the sRGB spec). The result is excellent accuracy in the blue-indigo-violet area of the gamut, but rather poor rendering in the orange-yellow area of the gamut (the exact opposite of the sRGB color space). Edited by LightsOnLogan - 20 Oct 2009 at 11:07am


bdkeen Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Visit Members Homepage Add to Buddy List Beta Testers Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Location: Easton,PA Online Status: Offline Posts: 380	Quote Reply Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 9:24am
	Agreed - The experimenting I did was definitely leading to more red. I'm rather impressed with the boards I built having equal number of red, blue, and green superflux LEDs. White actually looks white, orange looks pretty much orange, etc. To be expected there's a bit of color 'shadowing' the first inch or 2 till the colors converge. Only really visable if shining directly up at the base of a wall (but an interesting effect) I've been contemplating doing something for Trick-or-Treat night using just a single DCx16, these lights, and some sequences using pretty much just the waveform to event tool runing the colors on individually sequenced channels as opposed to using the RGB tool , mostly the reds and blues for that eriee purlple effect and shimmering the greens once in a while which produces a fairly nice whiteish strobe effect. Test runs look pretty good. Red and Blue full on are producing magenta. In this case I believe if there were more reds the red would be over powering. I just got the cheap bulk leds available on ebay. If I have some time I'll see if I can video one of these lights going through a cycle of the spectrum using the RGB tool in Aurora. Just for grins I also built 2 single board lamps using all UV leds.. They work ok but aren't as bright as I'd like since the output on the UVs I chose is much less (around 80 mcd in the visable range - their cost is higher too). They are giving that black-light effect on florescent colors just don't have the throw distance I'd like to see - maybe around 4 to 8 feet before you really start to loose the glow with other ambient lighting . Seems to be alot of inconsistance in the UV leds as well, some are more blue than others. Not sure I'd recommend this as a UV light unless the superflux UV LEDs were brigher and lower cost. The recommended leds are 20ma - not sure I want to try using the 100ma, more expensive ones that are available. (board designer advised me against it) Anyone considering these boards - there's alot of soldering involved so be prepared for that - about 80-90 joints per board. Desoldering as well if you get a bad LED or the polarity isn't exactly correct on the LEDs (both happened to me - the reds were reversed from the blue and green) Also I emptied out 2 RadioShacks of 150 and 220 ohm resistors till I recieved those I ordered (I just couldn't wait to tinker with these) Total cost was approximately $25 to $30 per light depending on the cost of the 500W work lamp used for the housing (HomeDepot had some for 5.95 and Lowes was 9.95). I didn't think that was really too bad plus it was a fun hobby project.


LightsOnLogan Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Admin Group Joined: 11 Oct 2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 3187	Quote Reply Posted: 20 Oct 2009 at 7:58am
	Having been on the early end of DIY RGB solutions, let me share a tip: If you want good color mixing, use twice as many red LEDs as you use for green and blue.