Page 6 of 7 FirstFirst ... 234567 LastLast
Results 51 to 60 of 70

Thread: Strobes: Xenon vs LED

  1. #51
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Bedfordshire, UK
    Posts
    603

    Default

    I looked at the SGM units at PLASA last year.
    While they were impressive, they still weren't as good as an Atomic to my eye... and at the quotes price point of "around £2999" I'll stick to buying Atomics for now!
    If in doubt... Give it a clout?

  2. #52
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Posts
    2,478

    Default

    If you know what the LED's are and can get them in bulk to save costs, it seems to me there's a hell of an incentive to DIY there, given that kind of money.

    I have an LED driver that will take fast proportional modulation, based on unusual application of standard voltage regulators so it's easily scaled up, and can handle strings with total Vf of up to about 60V. Stanwax gave me an extremely thin sheet of interesting FR4, my first lamp was built using it. Copper on one side, etched to take the LED's on a pattern of tracks. Epoxy the sheet onto a thick Al baseplate, then wipe the whole copper side with dilute resin flux, and solder with a eutectic indium alloy picked for some safe temperature you know you'll never exceed in operating the lamp. Do it like a big SMT bake, fiddlign each LED into position on a thin solder bed, then cool and wash in IPA. This might be a surprisingly easy way to sidestep a multi-hundred quid spend. As it's a strobe for a wash of light I presume there are no lenses to consider, just a protective acrylic sheet over the doings.
    Last edited by The_Doctor; 08-16-2013 at 17:18.

  3. #53
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    5,704

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by The_Doctor View Post
    If you know what the LED's are and can get them in bulk to save costs, it seems to me there's a hell of an incentive to DIY there, given that kind of money.

    I have an LED driver that will take fast proportional modulation, based on unusual application of standard voltage regulators so it's easily scaled up, and can handle strings with total Vf of up to about 60V. Stanwax gave me an extremely thin sheet of interesting FR4, my first lamp was built using it. Copper on one side, etched to take the LED's on a pattern of tracks. Epoxy the sheet onto a thick Al baseplate, then wipe the whole copper side with dilute resin flux, and solder with a eutectic indium alloy picked for some safe temperature you know you'll never exceed in operating the lamp. Do it like a big SMT bake, fiddlign each LED into position on a thin solder bed, then cool and wash in IPA. This might be a surprisingly easy way to sidestep a multi-hundred quid spend. As it's a strobe for a wash of light I presume there are no lenses to consider, just a protective acrylic sheet over the doings.
    Yeah it sounds good but also a lot of work. Also, once you've built the strobe you need the casing and accessories. Given, the Freq 5 is £125 and the 16 £239, they're not too badly priced and I could see it being difficult to make the whole thing for much less once you add in case, bracket, reflector, switches / knobs, DMX in / Out ports and Power In/ Out.

    I can see this is a great DIY project for someone but not necessarily a cheap one. I think for me personally an off the shelf solution might fit better but I'm sure others might jump at the chance to DIY. I can certainly vouch for the brightness of some of the LEDS now - I have a torch with a Cree in it (not 100% sure which one but it claims 1,500 lumens), and it certainly is bright. Even a glanced reflection off picture glass on a wall can leave you with a very nasty and persistent after image - think purple to brown burn image for at least 5 mins. So, I can certainly see how the basics for building something nice are there for anyone with the time and money to experiment.

  4. #54
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Silicon Valley
    Posts
    129

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by The_Doctor View Post
    Sorry White-Light, unavoidably off-topic now, but at least it helps keep the thread up in the activity list..



    Thanks for posting. The driver is a 37V current limited DC output supply that came with it, and also a thing I devised based on an LM317 for linear dimming, duped into wanting 0.25V across its sense resistor instead of 1.25V, reducing total voltage drop and saving power. The array Vf is about 32V and the open-circuit supply output tops out at 36.6V, more than enough difference to allow insertion of my dimmer. While I designed it for a 12V LED floodlight with grounded cathode, I was able to adapt it successfully to this high power lamp because the LED array is not electrically connected to its baseplate at either end, so a couple of low power zener diodes were used to manipulate grounds for op-amps to allow the regulator to handle the large LED Vf. So long as the replacement LED is about 32Vf and isolated from its baseplate, and has an emitter area of 7/8'' squared I can use it.

    It's actually a 30W lamp fitted with a 50W LED, but I rarely use it at full power. Even when I do, I find that the heat is modest (ambient tenmperature never gets very hot here so I risked it), there's no significant shift in colour like I often see in LED flashlights with different power. The seller's original LED options were cool white and warm white. (3500K, I forget what the cool white temperature was, and can't find my records of buying it). The mixed-phosphor one was intended to balance the two but the resultant colour is horrible, so instead of trying to correct it (suggestions and requests to the maker failed, as have filter gels), I'm going on the basis of hopeful recognition of familiar LED's. The Luxeon Rebel RB100 used in a Fenix P3D 'premium' flashlight is as good as I have ever seen. I'd settle for 50 watts of that! So long as it came on a physically and electrically compatible baseplate for the big lamp...


    It could be worth mentioning here that my dimmer can be modulated. Fast. Might be useful in a high power DIY strobe...
    If it's a current limited driver then replacing the LED with anything similar will work just fine. not sure what current it's at but you could potentially get a giant array of cree XM-Ls
    http://www.cutter.com.au/products.ph...mm+Round+MCPCB
    hmm.. something like those 8 LED arrays would do nicely if you had the space.
    or..
    Otherwise, a Cree CXA2530 array would be nice, they're made for integration into home/commercial lighting products and have good binning. (well, mixes of)..
    The CXA might be your best bet. It would also work quite well with the homemade strobelight project you guys are discussing

    just go with 5-10 of those LEDs and you'd get 25-50 thousand lumens at their rated drive current. I'm sure you could go even higher.

  5. #55
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Posts
    2,478

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by csshih View Post
    If it's a current limited driver then replacing the LED with anything similar will work just fine. not sure what current it's at but you could potentially get a giant array of cree XM-Ls
    http://www.cutter.com.au/products.ph...mm+Round+MCPCB
    hmm.. something like those 8 LED arrays would do nicely if you had the space.
    or..
    Otherwise, a Cree CXA2530 array would be nice, they're made for integration into home/commercial lighting products and have good binning. (well, mixes of)..
    The CXA might be your best bet. It would also work quite well with the homemade strobelight project you guys are discussing

    just go with 5-10 of those LEDs and you'd get 25-50 thousand lumens at their rated drive current. I'm sure you could go even higher.
    Thanks. While I probably won't be able to use those in that floodlight, they look worth coming up with other methods. I think a bar of 'structural aluminium' such as cheaply sold by RS might work, with a fan in one end. The stuff has all kinds of complex internal extrusion patterns, likely great for coupling heat to air passing through.

    White-light, point taken. The idea is for people who can get the best LED's they want, but not find a cheap ready made product that uses them, or does it in the way they want. For a good quality strobe light I doubt that's going to be a problem.

  6. #56
    Join Date
    Aug 2013
    Location
    Akron Oh
    Posts
    42

    Default

    Not an expert at all here but in my smaller indoor rig I'm using the adj freq strobe 5s(5wx5) - around 30w total consumption and they are stupid bright. Looking directly at them at 40f + leaves spots for more then a few minutes in your vision. I have yet to put them in an indoor venue that they did not absolutely flood the place out. At under $150 piece I would probably just go to town putting up as many of those as you need instead of dicking around with HID lamps and high current pulls unless you really need something IR rated. Even then I would think in larger setups they would make great throw away lamps if they did get damaged.

    I personally really like the fact that with LED spots, floods and cans now you can put together a really decent impact light system on under a few hundred watts, no more blowing breakers or gear death from shoddy house power even when sharing taps with the sound system.
    Also SUPER useful outdoor in limited wattage available situations (generators).

    Not an expert, hardly even a pro. I'm not a number chaser I just try to find what works for my situations and these things will probably be part of ALL my setups.

  7. #57
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    5,704

    Default

    Thanks Random, thats really useful info for me .

    What do the inbuilt chases look like on the 5 LED version?

    I like the look of the 16 better becuase of the extra length but rather think it could be overpowering in a home situation although there is a dimmer control.

    BTW ADJ are starting to produce some really nice lights now - their Vizi Beam 2R and 5R moving heads have 4 degree and 3 degree angle beams respectively - thats not so far off Sharpy's (0-3 degrees) for around 1/5th the price. Not saying they're anywhere near as nice with 3 degrees spread as 0, but for the money..
    Last edited by White-Light; 08-28-2013 at 01:46.

  8. #58
    Join Date
    Aug 2013
    Location
    Akron Oh
    Posts
    42

    Default

    Surprisingly rugged metal casings, about a foot long. Very compact units. The dimmer is still really damn bright all the way down into the 50 dmx range going down and then cuts out totally in the 30's so it seems like it has a kind of exponential response curve. With the pricing I think you can get 3 5's for the price of 1 16 so you get three units but lose 1 led for the same price range, flexible placement seems worth it.

    I got a pair of the chauvet led spot 250's at the same time and was super impressed with them as well. Way better then I expected at the price.

  9. #59
    Join Date
    Oct 2013
    Posts
    4

    Default

    If lifetime is an issue, LEDs are a must. I designed the drivers for the 1 watt white LEDs for the edges of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas and it has been running 8 years as of last Christmas (about 25% duty cycle).

    Luxor had gone through 2 sets of a xenon flash tube version. They did not last long and Luxor was going to abandon the whole thing till they heard of the LED lighting company I used to consult for.

  10. #60
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    1 hr from everything in SoCal
    Posts
    2,753

    Default

    I finally found an LED strobe that is worth it's weight. Has anyone else heard of ColorKey? This is the first I have seen or heard anything about them. http://www.amazon.com/ColorKey-6x10W...s=colorkey+zap

    I bought two of these, expecting the worst and was very pleasantly surprised. I would say these are roughly 75% of the brightness from my ADJ MegaFlash stobes. Now, of course that is subjective since the "on time" of the LEDs is probably 10x longer (maybe more) than my xenon strobes so I may be perceiving the light as brighter. Not sure. These 60W LED strobes are damn bright, I can tell you that! The only downside to LED strobes, that I have found, is the "stop action". It is still not there. I don't know the "on time" for xenon but it is a hell of a lot shorter than LED and thus, gives that perfect "stop action". LEDs aren't there yet. But if you're after a nice bright flasher, these will fit the bill. These ColorKey Zaps are going to be added to my haunted yard this year to suppliment my ADJ MegaFlashes. These have about the same footprint as an ADJ MegaFlash. Also, they are always cyclic, there is no "full on" blinding effect.
    If you're the smartest person in the room, then you're in the wrong room.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •