[mike31154]

Not much in the way of progress with the build, but I have been scoring a few more parts that I need. While in Kelowna the other day getting more wire at Princess Auto, I found out about a great electronics outlet not far from there, Interior Electronics. Eureka, a shop full of resistors, capacitors, voltage regulators, hard to find connectors, it was like being in a candy store as a kid. I picked up a few 5watt & 2 watt resistors ranging from 1.5 to 3.3 ohms and a breadboard. This will allow me to run each LED chip with the different resistances to determine what value of resistor I'll need to limit the current to the rated spec. Might be a tedious process & I'll need a resistor in series with the power supply for each LED. Also not the most elegant solution by today's standards with LEDs, but simple & effective. A good thing about doing it this way is that failure of one resistor isn't going to take out any other LEDs. About the only thing that will take out multiple LEDs would be an overvoltage fault of the 12 VDC power supply & I'm banking on that being very unlikely.

I used the breadboard with resistors yesterday to run 2 whites & 3 blues at once. Worked very well & the fans were nowhere near as audible as the four I'm using on my overdriven T5 tubes. In theory the 5 LEDs should have been using 50 watts, but if I recall correctly the wattmeter was showing less than that, so I assume they were being underdriven. Still very bright though & I think the 4 & 1/2 inch spacing between them should work fine without optics if I hang them at the proper height.