[OT] Anyone experienced with white LEDs?

From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch_at_30below.com>
Date: Tue Feb 4 17:54:00 2003

I'm looking at building a personal lighting project possibly using white
LEDs instead of regular miniature bulbs, and as I browsed the Mouser
catalog, I got a whole lot more confused than less...

I'm trying to get the maximum amount of light for current expended, and the
numbers seem to be nonstandard, or at least not enough info is provided... :-/

Example:

P. 217, "Super Flux LED Lamps"
         The white one shows at 20mA it will put out 400-600 "Iv (mcd)"
P. 216, "Blue & White LED Lamps"
         The brightest white they have is listed as: "2200->3200
         "Luminous Intensity" but with no mention of current or value
          (mcd? ucd? )
P. 199, "Thru-Hole White LED Lamps"
         "Luminous Intensity" ? current would output 1.7->2.3->2.6
         (min/typical/max) mcd...


and on P. 206, there's a few colored LEDs output listed as "Foot Lamberts"...

And Digi-Key has these Surface Mount Incandescent Lamps... :-O The look
cool, but how hot do they get? (It's a very small installation area... It's
still an idea I'm forming, but if it works out, it's a *kewl* idea...)

Any good websites w/info on how to figure out how many LEDs I'd need to
make about a 40W (or more) lightbulb worth of light?

-- Also, my college electronics braincells are rather weak, as I can't
remember if the wattage rating means "total dissapated wattage" or "total
wattage of the circuit branch it's in"... [1]

... I'm getting too old for this ...

Any help/pointers would be *massively cool*...

Thanks!
"Merch"

[1] - I want to use SMT current limiting resistors [2] (fewer holes to
drill...) and the highest wattage ratings I can find is 1/8W... in a 6V
20mA circuit it's running real close... (I could run ~17mA to get a margin
of error... but I want the max light I can get...) RatShaq has 1.2A 6V
wall-warts for a reasonable $, and I wanna build a "different" light
fixture. Of course, I want a *usable* light fixture... ;-)

[2] - I wish I could find SMT white LEDs... :-/

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
zmerch_at_30below.com
What do you do when Life gives you lemons,
and you don't *like* lemonade?????????????
Received on Tue Feb 04 2003 - 17:54:00 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:35:53 BST