DiY LEDs - How to Power Them

ANC

ANC

Well-Known Member
Yes, you hang them above the lights. They shit everywhere though.
My daughter was in tears last week cause I won't let her have a hamster, as we have cats.
 
KonopCh

KonopCh

Well-Known Member
ANC said:
Not sure I follow you, You can adjust the voltage with nothing connected...
Click to expand...
I guess they have two built in dimmers (A version), one for voltage and one for current?
So I need to adjust voltage to 34-35V if I drive 36V COBs below 1A (Citizen 1212 at 0.7A runs at 34V let's say). Or does driver automatically adjust V?
 
ANC

ANC

Well-Known Member
You can connect a voltmeter and adjust the current until the voltage is where you like it for the temperature you are running at.
 
Randomblame

Randomblame

Well-Known Member
An LED's without additional current limiting resistors are usually constant current devices. The difference between CV and CV/CC is the latter can work in both modes. But it is always better for LED to drive them in CC mode.

HLG and ELG series drivers are available in CV/CC. You can use them either with secondary CC drivers like Meanwells LDD's, in this case it would work in CV mode, or you can drive LED's directly, in this case he would switch to CC mode. The CV mode output range is smaller but voltage can be slightly higher(33-40v for the 36v version), constant current region is wider(18-36v). That means, you could use a 36v CV/CC driver also to run a bunch of F-strips(23-24v), but the driver can not exceed his max. current, witch means you get less watts in the end because of the circuit voltage.

Screenshot_20180622-170716.png

The screenie below is part of the HLG-150H-specsheet, pdf's for ELG- and HLG-150 are added below.

Screenshot_20180622-170649.png
 

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Randomblame

Randomblame

Well-Known Member
If you drive 6 Citi1212 on an HLG-150H-36A each COB would get ~700mA(4,2A : 6) and would run with CC(direct drive). Output voltage depends on COB requirements/circuit design, at 700mA it should be within 34 and 35v depending on Tcase of the COB/heatsink.
 
Randomblame

Randomblame

Well-Known Member
Aquarium guys like that drivers because they can use additional LDD's to run a certain number of differents single diodes.
You could use a HLG-150H-36A for instance to power 4 different LDD's with up to 34v and up to 1500mA output per LDD.
For example with 10x XP-G3's on the 1st channel(1500mA, ~50w), 10x 420nm aktinic's (1000mA, ~33w)on a 2nd channel, 10 blue diodes at 700mA on a 3rd channel(21w) and maybe a mixed 4th channel with also 700mA.(20w).

Each LDD is dimmable seperately via 5v pwm and can be switched on and off(dimm to zero).

This method is less efficient but allows you to power a bunch of different colored LED's at different drive currents on one bigger driver.
 
shimbob

shimbob

Well-Known Member
In theory, would 21 strips of Blux l1120 strips work on a HLG-320H-C2800 when wired as 3S7P?
Upper range of the driver is 114v, divide by 3 is 38V. 2800mA divided by 7 is 400mA. Figure 5 of the specs tells me it could work. Its very very close, close enough?
 
Randomblame

Randomblame

Well-Known Member
shimbob said:
In theory, would 21 strips of Blux l1120 strips work on a HLG-320H-C2800 when wired as 3S7P?
Upper range of the driver is 114v, divide by 3 is 38V. 2800mA divided by 7 is 400mA. Figure 5 of the specs tells me it could work. Its very very close, close enough?
Click to expand...
Hmm! It could work! I would messure the open circuit voltage of the driver first using a multimeter, it's probably a few volts more. A cheap one with 10A max. should be okay, my was only 5,84$ (e3ay)and results are pretty close to what I would expect to see. Close enough for my needs.

The worst thing that can happen is that the driver/LED's starts blinking with dimmer at max position. It could be neccessary to dimm the light down and ramp slowly up when the strips gets warm. But that's all guesswork!
Best would be to check open circuit voltage and then try it out if it's enough.

You could also use an HLG-320H-42A or B and wire all the strips in parallel. Maybe a few watts less but rather on the save side, right? You could use 5-port Wago's for each cluster of 3 strips in parallel and connect all the wago's in parallel using the other two ports. Thats pretty easy! LEDgardener.com has a few wiring examples for parallel strip layouts on his website. It's worth to visit it before you finally decide which way to go.
 
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