Hi all, i'm planning on building a DIY LED panel, small one for a micro grow. I was gonna run 3w Cree xp-e reds, 3w Phillips luxeon rebel deep red, 3w Cree xt-e Royal Blue, and Cree 5w xp-g warm whites. Can i run all of these in series? or would I have to run the warm white xp-g on a separate driver? Going on to amperage now.. It seems a lot of drivers for 3w LED are fixed current and variable voltage depending on number of LED's in series. Why do some people run LED's on 700mah constant power supplies but others run 350mah? Is there a large light loss from the less current? Do i need a dimmable driver to run 350mah through them? Im just so confused on what drivers to run, please help!
DIY LED, confused about driving current etc..
- Thread starter budballer
- Start date
Drivers supply a constant current source to your LEDs up to a maximum total wattage. So you can't just buy the cheapest 350mah driver and then hook many LEDs up to it. You'll have to figure your total wattage requirement and buy a driver that supplies that current for the amount of wattage that you want. An LED can be driven at different currents and will provide differing amounts of light and longevity depending on the current driving it. If you drive your LEDs near max current then they won't last very long, however, as you decrease the current you lose light...so it's a balancing act and it depends on the LED itself what it "likes" to see for current. You can have multiple drivers on one fixture and run some of your LEDs at one current and some at the other. The dimmable driver would allow control of the amount of light put out by an LED on it's circuit. So you could separately dim say the blues and the reds if you have a separate dimmable driver for each string of LEDs. I would guess that you could run the 3 watt and the 5 watt LEDs at the same current but you wouldn't get the performance out of the 5 watts that you are seeking or the 3watts would burn up in a hurry. Hope that helps.