Building a 1 watt LED light

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I agree. But the little ones are fun to play with.

Right now on cobkits.com you can buy the citizen clu048 chips for $9-11 each. They're regularly $20+ and kind of fun to play with themselves. I'm going to build another just as soon as my other components arrive.
 
I like the idea of the integrated driver, but it does keep all the heat dissipation at the light. Did you get a reflector or lens for it? I have a 60 degree on my full spectrum and a 120 degree on a red led. Still debating if a lens is necessary, but it looks cool.
 
I like the idea of the integrated driver, but it does keep all the heat dissipation at the light. Did you get a reflector or lens for it? I have a 60 degree on my full spectrum and a 120 degree on a red led. Still debating if a lens is necessary, but it looks cool.

It's just like any other chip that I've played with. It needs a heat sink. No I didn't buy any reflectors. I like the cobs without refkectors. Coverage is better. Here's one I built using lenses but I took the lenses off.

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I saw this along time ago but finally made one for my lights. It needs alot of improvements but I'll still be able to look at the spectrum. Simple design off the internet. I cut out some pieces of wood to make a box. Painted the interior flat black. Theres a divider mounted at about a 30 degree angle with a diffraction gradient placed over a window in the divider. A USB camera looking through the slide and window to the slit. A small slit cut into the front panel where the light enters.

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This is the spectrum of an old CFL I used to calibrate the spectrometer. I calibrated the software graph by dragging a couple of pointers to the correct peaks. One peak is 436nm, that corresponds to the Mercury used in the bulbs. The second peak is 546nm, also mercury. Theres no pointer but there is also a mercury peak about 692nm. In my bulb that peak is about 687nm.

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Just looking at the spectrums of some bulbs that are laying around the house. I really want to see the spectrum of the "Full Spectrum" LED but haven't got that far in testing. It would also be nice to see the spectrum shape of the other LED colors.
 
Just looking at the spectrums of some bulbs that are laying around the house. I really want to see the spectrum of the "Full Spectrum" LED but haven't got that far in testing. It would also be nice to see the spectrum shape of the other LED colors.

Yea, I get what your testing for. I'm just not getting how you're doing it. Like the lil box thing. What's that program?
 
I just ripped this off the internet, the box is used to shield all the light except a little tiny sliver that goes thru the slit. The slit width is important in the future but not for now. The distance of the box slit to camera is also important for future calculations, may be beyond me. For now, I want the wavelength peaks. The intensity of a particular wavelength is for the future, baby steps.
The software is Theremino. A diy place on the internet. Just having phun with photons..
The diffraction gradient splits the light into its rainbow of components with magic.
 

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