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Seeking Feedback for Kit on Upcoming LED Design Challenge

rscasny

imageHi All.

As the new year moves on, so does element14's scheduling of new Design Challenges. That's what I want to talk to you about today. Specifically, an LED-focuses challenge. 

We haven't done much with lighting/LEDs (although Tariq may have when he managed Project14), but I have a sponsor who is interested in such a challenge. So, I'm exploring here how to make it work, both in terms of your interest in this activity, a propose challenge kit, as well as any theme it would cover.

In this discussion, I wanted to do a few things. For starters, to share with you the parts the challenge's sponsor would like to see in the design. Now, that does not limit us from adding parts to the kit. The next thing I want to do was flesh out the challenge's objective. Let me start with the parts. There's just a few of them:

1315050930002 LED, AlInGaP, InGaN, Red, Green, Blue, SMD, 120 °, Round, R 13mA, G 13mA, B 13mA

More Info

1313210530000 LED, AlInGaP, InGaN, Red, Green, Blue, SMD, 120 °, Dome, R 5.5mA, G 5.5mA, B 5.5mA

More Info

1312020030000 LED, AlInGaP, InGaN, Red, Green, Blue, SMD, 120 °, Square, R 5.5mA, G 5.5mA, B 5.5mA

More Info

1312121320437 LED, AlInGaP, InGaN, Red, Green, Blue, SMD, 110 °, Square, R 20mA, G 20mA, B 20mA

More Info

Click on this link to see the manufacturer's documentation for these products.

Here's a dual wire diagram for the product:

image

So, the above is kind of bare bones. I expect that there will be much more in the kit depending what the challengers would like to do. Now, what element14 would also include in the challenger's kit would depend on what you would want to do. A few random thoughts about it are:

  • Creative Lighting
  • LED Indication
  • LED Alerting
  • LED Alarming

The sponsor calls out what they see as the leading applications of their LEDS. They are:

  • Appliances
  • Industrial Control
  • Smart Lighting
  • Gaming
  • Decorative Lighting

Now is a good time for a poll:

So, I've offered a lot of information to chew about.

Just for myself, I think it would be fun to do something along the lines of Creative or Decorative Lighting. I would need to include prototyping gear, as well as a kit of support components. Enclosures I would probably not provide since many of you have 3D printers and have that capability; I also would probably not offer any test equipment as part of the kit, but you can always wish for it! I'd probably like to see some PCBs designed and built, with whatever solution you have available.

Now, if you were more interested in something more practical, the designs would require a larger and probably more extensive kit. I'm thinking industrial control panels etc. 

Thanks you for participating in the element14 Communities activities.

What Do you think? If you have the time, please vote in my poll and/or leave a comment.

  • These devices would be great for decorative lighting applications, the more devices the merrier, literally.

    A 5V controller like an UNO R4 Minima would allow lots of creative effects.

    Beyond the LEDs and a controller, a suitably beefy power supply would be most useful.

    As for more kit - I think more LEDs would be preferred over more instrumentation.

    I expect there will be lots of enthusiasm for this topic.

  • Wurth Elektronik has horticulture LEDs too, maybe it would be interesting to have a challenge involving growing plants with artificial light?

  • These Wurth devices are quite expensive (approx 10-20x the price of parts direct from China (Aliexpress) at the 1000 off level - so you will never see them used in decorative stuff.

    On the other hand if you are using them on the front panel of an expensive instrument or similar device there is no way you would risk using parts from such an uncertain source to save a few pounds.

    I've looked into using smart leds/ neopixels/ws2812 etc on the front panel of an instrument and I think these parts would be viable.

    A reasonable kit would be at least 50 of each type (although few people would use al 4 types) - so maybe 200 of users' choice of part.

    If you want to encourage board designs then either provide no other parts or maybe offer free custom boards (although this might be very hard to arrange on a multi national basis).

    My concept for a front panel required 2 custom boards, a processor and a stack of little rubber buttons to short pads on the board. It's easy to drive the LEDs using an SPI port on the processor (may be necessary to use a slightly odd clock frequency !). Buying bits from China, by far the most expensive parts were the light guides to get the multicolour LEDs to shine through the panel nicely.

    So my preferred kit would be 200 LEDs with light guides and 100 rubber buttons - but I'm guessing most other people would want something else.

    MK

  • Interesting the 1312121320437 is 48bit color

    image

  • in reply to dougw

    Many thanks. That helps quite a bit.

  • in reply to vmate

    I can ask if Wurth wants to open it up to those LEDs. I was just given the ones I mentioned above. But it's early in the planning for this challenge, so I can ask. Thanks.

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Interesting info. Thanks for commenting about it. Right now, I'm getting the clear idea that the challenger kit will need to include a lot of LEDs. 

  • You might make the challenge more accessible if you can provide some pre-mounted on an evaluation board. Strips of say 10 that can be used as is as a strip or be snapped off into into singles that can be used in breadboard/protoboard or soldered into wire strings.  

  • in reply to scottiebabe

    That is interesting, but I suspect the current gain 12-bit value is intended for use in white point colour balancing or global array dimming applications, while the PWM level 12-bit value should be the actual image data.

    I suspect the 12-bit gain + 12-bit PWM doesn't net you 48-bits of resolution since some of those values would likely overlap in terms of the effective current delivered. For example - 100% bright at 0% PWM is the same as 0% bright at 100% PWM, or 50% bright at 50% PWM is the same as 100% bright at 25% PWM, or 25% bright at 100% PWM.

    - Gough

  • in reply to beacon_dave

    They have a Lighting Development Kit, which has PCBs kind of like what you described, along with driver boards.