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LED MeanWell power supply?


zingtaw

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They can work, but there is two things that need to be mentioned. First, all of them seem to have a lower voltage limit of 2.5v, which means that none of them will be able to turn off the LEDs (needs down to about 1.25v to do that). Second, none of them have a set maximum of 10v. The LT1117 is up to 9v, but all the others go higher, and could damage the dimming input on the driver if 10v is exceeded too much. I don't know how tollerant they are to excessive input voltage.

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I bought all of the parts so far from a member on here who did the group buy and am going to be getting 2 "p" type drivers. Any chance I'll find someone on here willing to trade a pair of D types for a pair of P types?

 

If I really wanted to get down to basics: have the LED's set at a static voltage and just have them run on a timer, would the pair of D type drivers and the LT1117 mentioned in post #528 be a viable solution?

 

I realize there are drivers that don't have dimming functions, but from what i think I've read so far, nobody runs the LEDs constantly at full 10v right?

 

Lol, don't mean to sound lazy or anything. I know there will be a fair amount of work to this I'm just trying to avoid building any type of circuitry with individual components.

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lol the more I read up and look for parts, the more i get lost.

 

Going to be getting two D drivers and the power regulator from post #528 so I need a 12v power supply. Does the current rating on the power supply matter? narrowed it to these two:

 

12v, 1500mA http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...oductId=3807944

 

universal 1.5v-12v 1000mA http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...oductId=3875403

 

sorry for the all the basic type questions on this meanwell thread, there was a link to a AC supply someone else was using on this thread but its dead

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lol the more I read up and look for parts, the more i get lost.

 

Going to be getting two D drivers and the power regulator from post #528 so I need a 12v power supply. Does the current rating on the power supply matter? narrowed it to these two:

 

12v, 1500mA http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...oductId=3807944

 

universal 1.5v-12v 1000mA http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...oductId=3875403

 

sorry for the all the basic type questions on this meanwell thread, there was a link to a AC supply someone else was using on this thread but its dead

Either of those will work, but they are very expensive for what they are. Check MPJA. They have cheap 12v supplies. Anything over 100mA will be plenty.

 

Would this article be of any use? I'm not sure how one would wire this together even if the effective pwm signal was +10v.

 

Arduino 10v PWM

That's a 10v AC square wave. Not useful for this application.

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thanks for all the help so far. I will work on getting D drivers along with a simple 12v power supply and the LT1117 power regulator. Would its still be possible to turn the power regulator all the way up to 9v and then put a potentiometer between the regulator and the LEDs and use that to dim them?

 

I don't think the R4 adjuster on the power regulator will be easily accessible or convenient to use.

 

Last question, if i can do what i mentioned above, what kind of potentiometer am i looking for? What resistance and wattage rating should be i be looking for?

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It would be just as easy to replace the pot on the board with a wired one, or spend a few bucks and build it yourself the way you want it with parts from Radioshack. You will also be able to get the full brightness from the driver by getting up to 10v output. The LT11117 regulator only goes up to 9v.

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It would be just as easy to replace the pot on the board with a wired one, or spend a few bucks and build it yourself the way you want it with parts from Radioshack. You will also be able to get the full brightness from the driver by getting up to 10v output. The LT11117 regulator only goes up to 9v.

 

Oh, i was under the impression that no one ever ran the LEDs at full 10v because it was overkill. Probably misread something

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Hi Evil,

Following on from my questions on build in the Ultimate LED Guide - I've a couple of questions on the Meanwell power supply. drivers.

 

1. I'll be creating 3 seperate panels over my tank. The centre section that I'll build first consists of 30 number 50/50 mix RB & White LED's . I understand I'll need 3 drivers for these. Each driver wired in series to 10 LED's. Do I need to worry about overloading the LED's or will the Meanwells only supply the power needed to supply the LED's without overload?

 

2. With the LED's in series is there a danger of the Xmas Tree light syndrome - where if one LED fails the whole string goes out?

 

3. Elswhere in this forum you talk about turning down an onboard pot to restrict the maximum current. Do you just turn it down in a particular direction or do you need to measure something while you make the adjustments?

 

5. I plan on mounting the drivers away from the lid. I would etimate that the LED's will be on the end of a 6' run of wire from the drivers. Is this acceptable? I could alternatively fix the drivers on the tank lid adjacent to the LED's. However I'm concerned about any heat the drivers give off and having mains power in the lid itself. What would you reccomend?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Dave

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1. The drivers adjust automatically. Nothing to worry about there.

 

2. If one pops, the whole string goes down (provided it fails open). This is much more desireable than wiring in parallel and cooking more LEDs from increases in current.

 

3. You can turn it all the way counter clockwise to set the output to about 975mA. Measuring the output would be ideal though.

 

4. What happened to 4? :)

 

5. That's fine. Just use 18awg wire to go from the drivers to the LEDs to reduce the voltage drop over that distance. You can still use 22-24awg wire for the LEDs in the array.

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1. The drivers adjust automatically. Nothing to worry about there.

 

2. If one pops, the whole string goes down (provided it fails open). This is much more desireable than wiring in parallel and cooking more LEDs from increases in current.

 

3. You can turn it all the way counter clockwise to set the output to about 975mA. Measuring the output would be ideal though.

 

4. What happened to 4? :)

 

5. That's fine. Just use 18awg wire to go from the drivers to the LEDs to reduce the voltage drop over that distance. You can still use 22-24awg wire for the LEDs in the array.

 

Hah - I missed Q4 by mistake. Seeing as you mentioned it here goes........ Per prev notes on this forum the analog dimmer control specified is shown as follows:-

post-48390-1258402169_thumb.jpg

 

However you mention earlier in this forum that we can remove the capacitors. In addition I found some specs on the LM317 ( http://www.national.com/mpf/LM/LM317.html#Overview) That says:-

"Normally, no capacitors are needed unless the device is situated more than 6 inches from the input filter capacitors in which case an input bypass is needed. An optional output capacitor can be added to improve transient response. The adjustment terminal can be bypassed to achieve very high ripple rejection ratios which are difficult to achieve with standard 3-terminal regulators."

Does that mean I can remove C1 and C2 from the circut? If not which one?

 

Additionaly - I seem to remember back in my college days that adding a capicitor and resistor in a circuit could ramp up the flow of a circut slowly. If so is there a way in which I could add a capacitor within this circut to increase the voltage over time (Say 10 or 20 mins) instead of an instant full blown value. This would give a rather simple sunrise/ sunset effect to that starter. If this is practical what sort of values would you need and how would the circut look?

 

Dave

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Make sure you change the R1 and R2 values. R1 should be 1470-1500 ohms, with R2 being a 10K pot. That gets you about 10v out.

 

You can take both caps out and still have fine results. they are both cheap parts if you want to leave them in.

 

Using a RC circuit to add a fade in can work, but the cap that has to be used would be quite large.

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Regarding the LM317 w/10K pot setup, here's what I picked up at Radio Shack. I'm probably including overkill on information, but the last thing I want to do is to find out that I got a capacitor made from the wrong stuff or the resistors are rated for too low of a wattage.

 

Let me know if any of these are out of whack. Radioshack is pretty close to home.

 

470 ohm and 1K ohm resistors. 1/8 watt. Wasn't sure what wattage to get and this was, iirc, the only ones they had at these resistances.

 

0.1 uF ceramic disk capacitor, 50WVDC max "high K dialectric"

 

1.0 uF tantalum capacitor (the only one they had) 35WVDC max.

 

10K ohm pot, 500VDC, 0.5w

 

LM317, pretty straightforward. Looks like the forks we use for eating corn on the cob ;)

 

 

I do not have the Meanwell nor the LED's in hand yet. This stuff was in budget ;) and the rest will come later. Baby steps for po' reefers.

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Good morning.

I am just seeking clarification for my upgrade early next year.

 

I will be controlling the 12 Meanwell dimmable drivers using 4 channels (2x white 2x Blue) on a profilux computer.

The 12 drivers will be split over 3 daisy chainable LED light "modules" over my 5 foot tank.

 

I have 2 options for interface between the Profilux L-port and the drivers.

1 is a card (EVG-AP-2F) that can control 2 channels and also has a relay for each channel that switches the power off to the device that is being dimmed to 0%.

The other is a card (LBFAP) that can control 2 channels but has no relay for switching power,

 

Now for my question:

which one of the above 2 cards will be best to use?

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Either or. At 0v, there is no ooutput from the driver. No need for a relay at that point. The relay might be nice to shut the AC side of the driver off when not used just to save a little power usage. It's not required though to get full range of usage.

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Make sure you change the R1 and R2 values. R1 should be 1470-1500 ohms, with R2 being a 10K pot. That gets you about 10v out.

 

You can take both caps out and still have fine results. they are both cheap parts if you want to leave them in.

 

Using a RC circuit to add a fade in can work, but the cap that has to be used would be quite large.

 

Hi Evil.

So a revised circuit would look something like this:- ?

post-48390-1258451565_thumb.jpg

For the fade portion - What would be the size of resistor and capacitor for a slow ramp up of say 15 mins?

Can you replace R3 with a variable so the time can be adjusted? Is there a wonderful formula you would be willing to share that can be used to calculate the time?

 

Dave

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You could use a 5K pot and a 0.01f cap to get up to a 40 second delay. You need to change the location of R3 though. It needs to go between R1 and the output to the driver, like this:

 

VIN-----LM317---+--R3---+---VOUT		  |	 |	   |		  |	 R1	  C1		  |	 |	   |		  +-----		|		  |			 |		  R2			|		  |			 |GND-------+-------------+---GND

 

Anything more than about a minute and you are looking at huge capacitors.

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I so built what i believe to be the right circuit and tried testing it but i'm not sure whats up with the results im getting. I used 1k and 470 ohm resistors on the LM317, no capactiors, and a 10k pot.

 

The power supply was a 9v 500mA just to test it, i know i should be using a 12v. When i test the voltage of the power supply it shows 14.3 volts with no load on it. When i hook the power supply up to the rest of the circuit, I am able to adjust the voltage with the potentiometer between about 2 volts and 12 volts on the output side

 

Does this mean the circuit is working? lol or does this mean i've built a distaster. I'm right about where i should be, except 2 volts above on each side.

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