gernby
10/27/2013, 10:04 AM
I'm building a custom LED setup for my 180g Bowfront, and am using 9 MeanWell drivers to drive 72 LED. The LED's will be divided into 4 channels (white, royal blue, UV, and red/green). Since the UV and red/green channels will just require 1 driver each, I don't need to worry about tuning across multiple drivers. However, my whites and blues will require multiple drivers each, so I need to tune all of those drivers to work similarly.
I started out trying to tune the drivers using the internal potentiometer (SVR2), but it's pretty difficult to get each driver set identically. This means that some of the LED's wind up turning on and off at different dimmer levels, and are being driven at slightly different current levels. Basically, when I turn the dimmer down to the point that the LED's start to shut off, each LED string turns off at a slightly different position.
What to me last night is that I might be able to just combine the drivers in series with all of the LED's in the channel, which would (if it works the way I assume) force all of the LED's to run at the exact same current level and turn on and off at exactly the same dim level. However, I don't know if there is anything "special" about the LED driver that would prevent the system from working as I think it would.
I'm ashamed to admit this, but my bachelor's degree is in Telecommunications Engineering, which is based in electronics. However, I've forgotten virtually everything about it, and really don't know how these drivers work.
Below is a simple diagram showing my current setup (top) and my proposed setup (bottom). Thoughts or suggestions?
http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h2/suzukas2000/Driverwiring.png
I started out trying to tune the drivers using the internal potentiometer (SVR2), but it's pretty difficult to get each driver set identically. This means that some of the LED's wind up turning on and off at different dimmer levels, and are being driven at slightly different current levels. Basically, when I turn the dimmer down to the point that the LED's start to shut off, each LED string turns off at a slightly different position.
What to me last night is that I might be able to just combine the drivers in series with all of the LED's in the channel, which would (if it works the way I assume) force all of the LED's to run at the exact same current level and turn on and off at exactly the same dim level. However, I don't know if there is anything "special" about the LED driver that would prevent the system from working as I think it would.
I'm ashamed to admit this, but my bachelor's degree is in Telecommunications Engineering, which is based in electronics. However, I've forgotten virtually everything about it, and really don't know how these drivers work.
Below is a simple diagram showing my current setup (top) and my proposed setup (bottom). Thoughts or suggestions?
http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h2/suzukas2000/Driverwiring.png