help with home made led lights

[Weezard]

Cheeee! Tanks braddah. Preciate em! I was looking over at the thread and saw the post of the cake pan light. That thing is sick. Dope stuff Breh. What kinda driver did you use for that? Are the lights dimmable? What kinda power source you use on em? I basically wanna make the same light you did but with the 2 far reds and on a heat sink aswell. Or you have any recomendations for a diff dimmable driver/power source for these buggahs? Btw im uneducated with electronics. Sorry if i sound stupid.
mahalos braddah
Cheeeeee hoooo!!

I'm sure it's all in the thread.
But, for anyone passing by, I went cheap n dirty onna current limiters.
Used LM317 voltage regulators an' tricked 'em into behavin' like current limiters.
Ya jus' hang a resistor between the output and your emitters.
I used a 1.25 ohm 10W. because I wanted a little over an amp. if I recall.
When the LED draws current through the resistor, it creates a voltage drop.
If you tie the sense lead of the regulator to the load side of the resistor the regulator will try try to maintain that voltage.
That keeps the current constant .
If you use a high wattage resistor you can avoid thermal creep and it works a treat.
Not the most efficient way, but it works, it's easy, and it's cheap.
'zat what ya wanted to know?

Aloha,
Weeze

Weezard Reviewed by Weezard on 12-24-2010. help with home made led lights aloha, sorry if this has been asked in a different thread but iam a newbee here. im trying to make a small led grow light with 5w ledengin emitters and was curious if anyone knew of any led drivers w/ dimmers(so i could control the spectrum) that would work well with these. iam using 2 deep reds(660nm), 2 reds(630nm), 2 far reds(740nm), and 1 blue(450nm). i was planning on running each band on its own driver and i wanted the far reds to be on its own power source so i can use it on a Rating: 5