XMAS Flood

[Bill Hoffman]

Ok, now I see the v-drive has built in strobing. Time to re-think what I just said. lol

Bill

[Bill Hoffman]

I just got the BOM from William for the components to build a v-drive. The way I figure it, I can build a "double Rainbow Flood", using the vdrive with constant current technology (not including shipping) for right around $67. A double Rainbow Flood will color wash any thing I would ever want in vibrant color. And for around $52, I can build a single Rainbow Flood, with vdrive technology, which in itself beat the other 2 I tested in brightness. Things are getting brighter!!!!

Bill

[Tim Fischer]

Bill Hoffman wrote:

I just got the BOM from William for the components to build a v-drive. The way I figure it, I can build a "double Rainbow Flood", using the vdrive with constant current technology (not including shipping) for right around $67. A double Rainbow Flood will color wash any thing I would ever want in vibrant color. And for around $52, I can build a single Rainbow Flood, with vdrive technology, which in itself beat the other 2 I tested in brightness. Things are getting brighter!!!!

Bill

Do you have any experience with the V-Flood? It would be interesting to see how it compares to one or two RF's on a V-drive...

[Bill Hoffman]

Tim Fischer wrote:

Bill Hoffman wrote:

I just got the BOM from William for the components to build a v-drive. The way I figure it, I can build a "double Rainbow Flood", using the vdrive with constant current technology (not including shipping) for right around $67. A double Rainbow Flood will color wash any thing I would ever want in vibrant color. And for around $52, I can build a single Rainbow Flood, with vdrive technology, which in itself beat the other 2 I tested in brightness. Things are getting brighter!!!!

Bill

Do you have any experience with the V-Flood? It would be interesting to see how it compares to one or two RF's on a V-drive...

No experience with the v-flood, but I built a couple of Mighty Minis, which I thought were the way to go until I discovered the Rainbow. Not knocking the vflood in any way, but since it's got about the same amount of 8mm strawhat leds on it, I can't imagine it's any brighter than the MM. I may be wrong, since I haven't tried it, but it's just not worth it to me to buy more strawhats just to try it out. That's $30 I can put toward another couple of vdrives. :-)

Bill

[Bill Hoffman]

I just found out that the v-flood has more leds than the Mighty Mini, I hope somebody does a comparison so we can see the differences in the two. I've seen a side by side of the Aether and the MM, but I haven't seen anything comparing the vflood to the MM, should be interesting.

Bill

[dmoore]

Bill Hoffman wrote:

I just found out that the v-flood has more leds than the Mighty Mini, I hope somebody does a comparison so we can see the differences in the two. I've seen a side by side of the Aether and the MM, but I haven't seen anything comparing the vflood to the MM, should be interesting.

Bill

It's hard to compare to the MMFL since it can be built with 100mA, 150mA and 500mA LEDs. Of course it also has native white and the v-flood doesn't - it depends on color mixing which may or may not be good depending on the distance of the flood to the items it front of it.

[Denny]

I just finished powering up the first five Rainbow Floods in a very fast test to see how they lit up the front of my house. I did not power up the individual colors, but lit all the RGB together. They definitely do a better job than the incandescent floods I have been using; much brighter, better spread, and don't have the hot spots of the incandescent bulbs. As I mentioned, I lit all the RGBs simultaneously from my power supply rather than run them through the LOR controller. The colors seemed to mix well in that I could not see any area that was more red or green than another area. However, with all colors blazing away, they are definitely blue rather than white. I imagine this can be corrected with a little experimentation on brightness levels of the individual colors once connected to a DC controller. I was very impressed with the brightness and wide spread of light. They put out more heat than I expected, but nothing like an incandescent flood. Can't wait to get the other five finished and get my second order in. I need to solve the color mix to get white as I would like to replace some of the MR-16s used to illuminate my wife's larger cutouts. Has anyone experimented with the color balance to get white from these floods? If so, what is a good starting point, percentage-wise, on the colors? Overall, very impressed and for under $15 per flood, I don't think you can go wrong.

[Ponddude]

The heat from the Rainbow Floods is actually normal. The heat comes from the resistors not the LEDs. I actually like that because it allows the lights to find there way out of the snow.

[Denny]

Ponddude wrote:

The heat from the Rainbow Floods is actually normal. The heat comes from the resistors not the LEDs. I actually like that because it allows the lights to find there way out of the snow.

Snow, what's that?

[dmoore]

dmoore wrote:

Bill Hoffman wrote:

I just found out that the v-flood has more leds than the Mighty Mini, I hope somebody does a comparison so we can see the differences in the two. I've seen a side by side of the Aether and the MM, but I haven't seen anything comparing the vflood to the MM, should be interesting.

Bill

It's hard to compare to the MMFL since it can be built with 100mA, 150mA and 500mA LEDs. Of course it also has native white and the v-flood doesn't - it depends on color mixing which may or may not be good depending on the distance of the flood to the items it front of it.

Someone sent me a PM on how this post I made above is incorrect. I wanted to post it here and admit that I made a mistake (soo many floods this year!) when I made the post above.

PM Message: "How do you know this?? Have you seen a VFLOOD?? And BTW, the VFLOOD does have native white - hmmmm. And as far as mixing, VFLOOD was designed to outmix anything that uses individual (not RGB) leds. But you didn't know that either so again, how can you make that statement?

MMs and have such problems with 100ma LEDs and current limiting why would you want to make it any worse by increasing the LED power with multiples of standard case LEDs? The choices for high power LEDs make a small number of higher power LEDs the answer to the proglem, not a 'band aid'."

1. 
   
2. The vflood DOES have native white LED's - I was completely wrong on this, I'm sorry for mistating this as fact.
   
3. No, I have not seen the vFLOOD in operation.
   
4. The quality of color mixing with seperate LEDs is a function of distance between the LED's and the distance from a reflective object in front of them. How well the MMFL or any flood for that matter would vary.
   
5. I personally ran 8 MMFL's in my show last year and after getting the right resistors in them, they worked fine for me. Those 2009 lights were built with the 100ma LEDs but I've also built them with the 1/3 less cost 150ma LED's that I purchased from China and those work fine also (run for 48 hours straight, all LEDs on). YMMV. I personally feel that there isn't a major problem with current limiting when spec'ed correctly as current limiting resistors are used in MANY items.
   
6. I'm not sure what the reference to the higher power LED's is. I'm unsure if this is a reference to the hight power LED's in items like the XMAS flood or the Aether flood.

Thanks!
David Moore

[jldavis1969]

Denny wrote:

Ponddude wrote:

The heat from the Rainbow Floods is actually normal. The heat comes from the resistors not the LEDs. I actually like that because it allows the lights to find there way out of the snow.

Snow, what's that?

It's that annoying white stuff that the souther folks hardly ever get!!!!!

[Jack Stevens]

jldavis1969 wrote:

Denny wrote:

Ponddude wrote:

The heat from the Rainbow Floods is actually normal. The heat comes from the resistors not the LEDs. I actually like that because it allows the lights to find there way out of the snow.

Snow, what's that?

It's that annoying white stuff that the souther folks hardly ever get!!!!!

We have it all the time! It comes out of the machines to enhance the feeling of the season.

[Denny]

Jack Stevens wrote:

jldavis1969 wrote:

Denny wrote:

Ponddude wrote:

The heat from the Rainbow Floods is actually normal. The heat comes from the resistors not the LEDs. I actually like that because it allows the lights to find there way out of the snow.

Snow, what's that?

It's that annoying white stuff that the souther folks hardly ever get!!!!!

We have it all the time! It comes out of the machines to enhance the feeling of the season.

Oh, that's right, it's that bubbly stuff that comes from those machines. I have one of those too, but didn't know that was snow! And I thought it had to be cold to get snow -- silly me!