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  • Author Author: genebren
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Kitchen Lighting System Phase 2 - PCBs have arrived!

genebren

Previous post in this blog sequence:

Kitchen Lighting System Phase 2

Kitchen Lighting System Phase 2 - Part 2

Kitchen Lighting System Phase 2 - part 3 - Let there be (better) light!

Kitchen Lighting System Phase 2 - PCBs, Schematics and new sensor module.

 

The new PCBs have arrived and I could not wait to try out my new LED board (I soldered up the 10 new LEDs boards last night and earlier to day, so I had no blank boards left for the picture)!  Five new shiny PCB types to play with (from the upper left corner, clockwise, we have the following:

Load controller, Master controller/PIR, 4-LED driver, Light Sensor and EnOcean Transceiver board to support the load controller).

I was excited to try out the new 4-LED design to test out my other recent changes.  I have been working on improving the light output of the current design, attempting to further reduce the losses of the light cover/lens.  To that end, I have redesigned the cover/lens to thin it out further.  Additionally, I have added a little texture (semi-prismatic) to diffuse the light a bit. Starting in the upper left hand corner and moving clockwise, we have the earlier cover/lens, a thinned version of the cover/lens and a thinned and textured version of the cover/lens.  All three of these cover/lenses were printed with the same clear PLA filament.  The earlier version shows some yellowing of the background and a resulting attenuation of the lighting (approximately 1168 Lux @ 10").  The thinned out cover/lens yielded a higher light output (approximately 1295 Lux @ 10").  And the latest version, with the additions of a light prismatic texture, yielded a slight improvement (approximately 1348 Lux @ 10").  This was all welcomed improvements in light output, but I still wanted to to see where this would go with the new LED board.  Well, I just added connectors to one of my new boards and did a little testing.  The new LED board, with the new thinned and textured cover/lens produced a light output of 1715 Lux @ 10".  This an improvement of ~269% over the existing lighting.  Not to bad for a couple of weeks work.

 

The new Light Pucks are coming along nicely.  Below are the new PCB (top and bottom) and the fully assembled light puck turned on and shining brightly.

I still have a lot to do, assembling the new PCBs and then writing a bunch of firmware.  This has been an exciting journey up to this point, but it feels like it is going to get crazy soon.  In addition to this project, I have another exciting project getting ready, a new shop.  Since moving to Texas (almost three years ago), I have been without a real shop.  All of my tools have been sharing space in the garage with my wife's car (and almost a ton of pre-mix concrete in sacks), which makes it really difficult to do anything with my tools.  I have a bunch of prep work to do while I am waiting for my final approval from my home owners association.  All that, and my Mom is coming in to town next week to visit with us and her great grandchildren.

 

Thanks for reading along,  more to come.......

Gene

Anonymous

  • Nice update!

    Your lights are like "the Lumberjack's axe" at this point - "This is my favorite axe - I've replaced the head twice and the handle three times"

     

     

    Could you just tin the PCB around the lights?

  • in reply to luislabmo

    Thanks Luis,  great information.  I am also using Cree LEDs, although my CRI is only 80 (in a warm white to match the other lighting in the kitchen).

     

    Gene

  • in reply to genebren

    Hello Gene,

     

    Completely aligned with you in this one!. It always puzzled me that I always got different whites when buying light bulbs or LEDs for my projects. Not long ago I learned about CRI (Color Rendering Index) and that totally changed the game; when I need nice whites now I get LEDs with a CRI of 90 or higher. I'm currently working with Cree J Series 3030 with fantastic results.

     

    Luis

  • in reply to luislabmo

    Luis,

     

    These are all good points.  I can't say that I see any tinting, but we all know that there are an awful lot of shades of white.  This is something that I should look into on future lighting projects.  Note:  Now that I think about it, the PCBs that were in the original housing where white solder masked.  That should have been a hint to me at the time.

     

    Thanks for the idea!

     

    Gene

  • Great update on the project Gene!. It's progressing very well.

     

    I'd like to add you may get even better results using white solder mask on your LED PCBs as this has better reflectivity properties, also using other colors may tint a little the color of the light by the reflection -this may not be noticeable but may be a problem for certain applications when trying to reach accurate colors.

     

    Luis