One of my hobbies is LED DIY. Because my major in the university is about electronic, I have been being crazy for LED DIY projects. I have made a lot of LED light fixtures for myself and my friends as well, simply and ugly at very beginning time, and then gradually complex and delicate. It not only gives me the painful failure feeling, but also the joy of harvest. Here I write to share my DIY LED lighting experience with all of you.
There is no doubt that the LED (light emitting diode) is the direction of energy-saving illumination industry. It will replace the many current illuminate systems in the near future. But until now the prices of LED lighting still high compared with traditional fluorescent or incandescent lighting sources. The LED manufacturing companies become more and more in recent years both at home and abroad. The quality of various brands varied much, so you should pay a great attention when choose the LED lighting for your DIY project, since it affects the lighting effects and lighting lifetimes greatly. In my opinion, it is better to buy LED lighting packed with famous-brand LED chips, such as Cree, edition, as far as your finance will allow. Certainly, the same LED chip with different lumen values can vary significantly, take the 3 watt LED chip for example, the lumen values varied from 80 to 200, the prices differs however more than one times between the one with highest lumen value and the one with lowest lumen value. So when buying the LED lights, you should ascertain the exact lumens it can product, tried to purchase from high reputable LED light stores. Some DIYers prefer to buy the lighting with lens, which l don’t recommend, as it will affect the brightness, how to solve this issues? You can ask to customize the lighting to be with small bean angle, as the larger the bean angle is, the shorter distance the lighting can reach, the smaller the bean angle is, the longer distance the lighting can reach. I usually customize the bean angle to be 90 degrees, so the scope and distance is moderate.
The LED driver is another focus for many DIYers, people may like to buy the constant voltage drivers also known as switch drivers, as they are cheaper and easy to buy. But I can tell you that the constant current drivers are the best choice. Because it is impossible to make the internal resistance in LEDs to be same, if use the constant voltage driver, different LEDs will consume varied voltages, the light degradation of the high-voltage LEDs are very serious, even burning out the LED chips. The reason LED can emit light is the current, generally, for 3 watt LED lighting, the most effective current is about 700MA. LED circuits have two types, parallel and serial, respectively. When purchasing the constant-voltage drivers, you need to calculate the total voltages you need, in general, one common LED light might consume about 3.6 volts, and the total voltage for 5 pcs LED lights will be about 18 volts. If buying constant-voltage drivers, you’d better to choose dimmable ones. For the constant-current drivers, the more channels it can driver for, the more expensive it is, so just buy according to actual needs.
The heat dissipation is biggest headache for most LED DIYers. The lighting burning out and rapid light degradation have a big relation with the heat dissipation issues. You need to solve this issue as well as you can for your lighting project. Some LED products have good appearances, but with bad heat dissipation design. To avoid this situation, you’d better to use professional radiators.
