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Old 11-24-2014, 12:33 AM
_Adrian_ _Adrian_ is offline
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Nice Job...

I would change a few things though...
1.- Dimmers are a catch 22 - Loss of voltage as well as current limiting. You need to find a better solution as this is already getting complex and will impact the life of LED's and could be a potential fire hazard.

2.- Running LED's in series still means the same amperage draw just need more voltage. Ex.: 4 5v drawing 500mA each in series will require 20V @ 500mA but in parallel it would be 5v @ 2A. High draw situations the heat is generated.
The LED's im planning to use are rated for 9-12V at 900mA but will run 4 per string ( for a combined maximum voltage of 48V. This means one 48V 10A power supply can drive about 40x 10W LED arrays at 95% load.

3.- Move to a larger heat sink, loose the fans and gain back your hearing LOL

4.- Start looking at an light controller, whetever its off the shelf or Arduino based. This would allow you to recreate solar and lunar cycles and being able to fade in and out and recreate more other weather related events ( Ex: storms ). There's Tons of PWM controlled LED drivers that are fair priced, and readily available.

All this ends up reducing heat output, you'll end up extending the life of the LED, makes the system more stable and easier to use/maintain most of all
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