I have a 60A power supply running three channels, each defined at max 15000 mA. Measuring current at 100% solid white looks good at 43A and is plenty bright enough. The temperature gets extreme as some might have already deduced. The power supply gets warm, but the panels themselves put out A LOT of heat. I put in a fairly quiet 6” blower and the temperature has gotten much better, but I believe in multiple fail safes, and fuses alone aren’t going to cut it. A fan can fail, and I’d have a fire probably within an hour. Sure I can set the current limit lower, but that’s a setting that could be changed inappropriately by mistake.
I want to add a couple of more safety features like a thermistor and set it as an analog “button” so that when the temperature goes up, the brightness goes down and vice versa. This (I believe) will create the issue, that the brightness will always be around the same because the thermistor will override the brightness setting. Is this the case? Does anyone have any examples?
Thermal fuses are also a good option to prevent overheating, but when they trigger, they’re dead.
Thermal switches would prevent having to open the enclosure and replace them. This would be more of a shutdown device (in line) to de-energize the power supply from the input side. In the event of a thermal shutdown, this of course would trigger the device to “power down”, but when the temperature drops below the switching hysteresis the device will re-energize. Depending on the start up preset, all may be good, but the device may just keep going on and off as the temperature fluctuates.
First off - I feel ya. Nobody wants to their project to be a fire hazard. I have all my diy led stuff on smart plugs that turn off when I leave the house and I used to obsessively check my cameras to make sure I didn’t see smoke.
Second - do you intend to leave your project on while unattended? If not, a fuse and fan is likely sufficient. Test out your fuses so you know if their rating is correct. Shoot use 2 fans if it makes you more comfortable. Fuses are cheap so just blow a few in the name of science and gaining a little extra confidence in your materials. If you are planning to leave this on while unattended then you are probably like me and no amount of fail safes will bring you any peace. The more time that goes by that I don’t come home to a pile of ashes the more confident I am that I’m just a bit paranoid.
Just use good components, test your fail safes are working as intended and don’t plan to light that thing up full brightness white…unless that’s it’s purpose. I used to always plan for the absolute max the LEDs could draw but realized I never ever use RGB white except possibly in an animated effect and only a portion would be white.
The fact you are thinking this hard about it indicates to me you likely have put together a safe project.
Lol. My soulmate. Any of my projects that stay attached to power are attached to smart plugs for the same reason.
No. I do not, but you never know, when some stray bit is going to toggle a smart switch or outlet. I went with reset-able fuses and I definitely plan on checking their trigger point as well as my clamp ampere meter.
I found the specs and they recommend no more than 5A per panel, which is about 40%. I had them way up to test, and they literally almost boil. I quit at 200 F.
I had to take a little break because I got some total crap wire from Amazon, and have to replace it.
I just read a lot of the thread you linked. Have you tried moonmodules? It has most of the popular user mods included (rotary encoder, 4 line display, audio reactive, arti-fx to make your own effects and a few others) and also has a bunch of additional 2d effects (if you enable animartrix)
If you have space: mount it to an Aluminium plate and have a gap behind that plate or just mount the panels with spader so air can flow behind the panels, keeping them cooler (you may need to make that into channels as these panels are quite floppy).
edit: sorry, picked the wrong reply arrow…
Interesting. I was thinking something similar, like a grid or cross-hatch pattern. I left them on the backing board like in the photo, but I cut some slits above and below the panels so the space between the LEDs and the diffusor gets air circulation. That seems to work very well with the blower.
No. I absolutely do not, at least not 100% RGB. Since however, I’m not the only one that might play with the configuration, I do want to prevent my project from becoming a hazard.
I couldn’t find a data sheet, but according to their page 48A is the highest recommended current. I will probably never reach my self-impossed limit of 45A, but again, I’d like to keep my project as safe as I can.
Any of my projects that stay attached to power are attached to smart plugs for the same reason.
. Thank you.