Smart Home: Party Ball, Kind of

RE: Smart Home: Party Ball, Kind of

genebren — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 22:43:46 GMT

Duncan,

There is no such thing as a failure, if you keep trying (then it is just an experiment). You have made some great steps towards your goal, so keep moving forward. There are some good suggestions here (thanks to [mention:cff82ed12b714001a1ba5205f2cb553c:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05], [mention:4f57fc9d538949ad9eb336ddb9469bb8:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] and [mention:d85999949f974a74a457e05151ea1c2b:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05]), so step back and plan what to try next.

Good luck!

Gene

RE: Smart Home: Party Ball, Kind of

14rhb — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 19:41:38 GMT

Hi Duncan,

I wouldn't say your design is a fail as titled in your video. It looks good, but from reading your article you are disappointed with the brightness - maybe this is just version 1 in development, lessons learnt and therefore definitely not a fail? [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-c7f897ea-f1c2-4ca3-b202-e1388bbfca6b/contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16].

The single LED on the original board do look like they are higher power than the Neopixels - I see you mentioned that in your teardown, assuming they were 1W....which is probably correct. The thing I notice is that they have a clear lens and probably focus that power into a narrower beam angle than your Neopixels. So you probably loose on luminous flux density due to both the lower power and lower beam forming.

You may have already mentioned this and I've just missed those comments - my apologies if that is the case.

Rod

RE: Smart Home: Party Ball, Kind of

jc2048 — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 11:35:58 GMT

I'm not sure I'm following this. Why not use the LEDs that are on the board?

RE: Smart Home: Party Ball, Kind of

fmilburn — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 05:29:47 GMT

Hi Duncan,

How many Neopixels are there? If not too many, I bought some RGB LEDs a while back mounted on aluminum star shaped PCBs. Each LED is supposedly rated for 1W so 3W total. I never took it all the way to 3w and suspect it might need a heat sink if you did.

I bought mine from a small reseller in the US no longer in business but you can get them from the usual Chinese locations - just search for rgb 3W or similar. There are also RGBW. I don’t see them on Newark. I used them on a project that also had Neopixels and they are considerably brighter. The R,G, and B LED pins are separate on large pads and easy to solder. I controlled current with resistors.