Quote Originally Posted by oldmac
Hey there Emmie,

When I read your post the first thing I wanted to tell you was to shout out to Weezard.
Since he already saw your post and volunteered his talents, I was delighted. The "lil lizard" is the best LED guru left standing here. :thumbsup:

Some of us have already done side by sides just to prove to ourselves or partners that LEDs do work and can produce a better finished product plus as good as production as HPS.

Just so you know, DIY LED lights are not a cheap proposition. Good 5 watt diodes from LedEngins (a favorite american brand) will run abt $8.50-10.50 each, already mounted on MCPCB depending on color and wavelength. Plus then you need a power supply plus drivers, heat sink and cooling fans. Oh, btw when thinking abt wattage understand that a 5w diode will only put out 3-3.5w each driving them carefully.

Hope you decide to build one, I'm sure Weezard can fill you in on more details to consider.

OM
Thanks for the encouragement OM, I was actually out there on Mouser looking at the parts prices when your note came in. I know what I am wanting to do now as far as configuration, but I am unclear just what flux density I am going to get per $$ spent on the LED's. I will touch bases with Weez and see what I can learn. Fans, heat sinks and power supplies are not that difficult to come up with, and I am very intrigued by the claims of that manufacturer referenced at the top of this thread as to how they have "stepped up" the voltage in order to lower wattage requirements. It seems to me that with proper supply voltage choices, the wasted wattage in the dropping resistors and a lot of the heat could be greatly minimized, but I can not for the life of me figure out how (stepping up the voltage) reduces the power consumption of this project since 2.2v at the diode is 2.2 volts... no matter how you arrive at it. I'm going to order a handful of 5 watters and play around a bit on a breadboard to see what can be done.

Emmie