NEW PRODUCT – 1 Watt Cool White LED – Heatsink Mounted
NEW PRODUCT – 1 Watt Cool White LED – Heatsink Mounted. Make a 1 Watt flashlight or a headlamp with this ultra-bright LED. The LED is very bright, with 90 Lumens in a 140 degree lambertian pattern. Compared to most LEDs, you would say this is 30,000 millicandela. Either way, its incredibly bright! The output is a ‘cool’ 6000K pure white, not a ‘warm’ incandescent-looking white.
The LED is mounted onto an aluminum PCB for heatsinking, and it also makes it easy to solder in. Simply connect to the big + and – pads on the PCB (there are two of each).
The best way to drive these LEDs is constant current, @ 350 mA, but you can get away with under-driving for compactness. At about 3V, the LED draws ~200 mA, so connect two Alkaline batteries up directly with no resistor for a basic bright lamp. You can also try driving it directly with a 3.3V power supply, that will probably work OK as well (although its not ideal) – that’s what we did when we made a vintage LED bike light using a 1W white LED.
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Doesn’t the internal resistance of the batteries play a large role in the current without an additional resistor in the circuit? This could vary significantly between alkaline batteries, and especially with other battery chemistries or a power supply, right?
@sparr and @K probably good questions for the forums so we can help the most people out at once (and also keep the discussion going, blog comments close out a week after the posts to limit spam)…
I see from the datasheet that in addition to the 6000K version you’re carrying, they also make a 3200K version… any chance you would consider carrying that as well? 3200K would be handy if you needed to match incandescent lighting.
I’m thinking that if I made an array of the 3200K and 6000K LEDs plus some way to control them (maybe using that neato lux sensor you have now to get constant total output) then I could dial up light that would match any color balance from incandescent to "open shade," which would be pretty handy for photo and video applications.
Doesn’t the internal resistance of the batteries play a large role in the current without an additional resistor in the circuit? This could vary significantly between alkaline batteries, and especially with other battery chemistries or a power supply, right?
@sparr and @K probably good questions for the forums so we can help the most people out at once (and also keep the discussion going, blog comments close out a week after the posts to limit spam)…
I see from the datasheet that in addition to the 6000K version you’re carrying, they also make a 3200K version… any chance you would consider carrying that as well? 3200K would be handy if you needed to match incandescent lighting.
I’m thinking that if I made an array of the 3200K and 6000K LEDs plus some way to control them (maybe using that neato lux sensor you have now to get constant total output) then I could dial up light that would match any color balance from incandescent to "open shade," which would be pretty handy for photo and video applications.