When Good LEDs Go Bad?
aka: How to drive an electron crazy
One day we found it necessary to drive a large number of LEDs. Not just any LEDs- $10 a pop Philips lumileds. These LEDs, unlike their smaller cousins, are giant, powerful, and need a heat sink. They are bright enough to cause eye damage if you look at them straight on, and one can provide enough light to illuminate an entire room.
Needless to say this was not your everyday LED controller project.
Starting from scratch a custom circuit was developed to provide a steady stream of power to the LEDs. To achieve this, a constant current-source driver was developed to efficiently and safely run the expensive LEDs. Custom embedded firmware was created to drive the 16 channels of LEDs and act as a liaison between a controlling computer and the LEDs.
The end result was a networkable 16 channel high power LED driver capable of simultaneously animating 16 LEDs. With its built in expansion port the boards can be daisy chained together to create large chains of powerful and bright LEDs.
We'll soon be providing a set of custom programmed boards to be Seattle textile artist Maggie Orth so that she can control one of her awesome electro-textile creations.
