LEDgardener

Hello,

I am considering buying 6x EB Gen 3 590mm with a HLG driver. What HLG driver/build would you recommend for this?

Will mount these on a shelf (3/shelf). Will it be good enough or should I go for 4/shelf (8x EB Gen 3)

It depends on how hard you want to drive the strips. My reccomendation is to run them at no more than 15 watts per 560 strip. For 6 strips I would suggest a hlg80-20. I'm not sure how difficult they are to get though.
One problem with the bridgelux strips is the forward voltage being at 19V for nominal current. It would be much better if they added an extra led or 2 in the series to bring it up closer to 24V as 24V drivers are easier to come across and usually cheaper.

TEKNIK wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 14, 2019 6:42 pm

It depends on how hard you want to drive the strips. My reccomendation is to run them at no more than 15 watts per 560 strip. For 6 strips I would suggest a hlg80-20. I'm not sure how difficult they are to get though.
One problem with the bridgelux strips is the forward voltage being at 19V for nominal current. It would be much better if they added an extra led or 2 in the series to bring it up closer to 24V as 24V drivers are easier to come across and usually cheaper.

is that doable somehow? maybe put a tiny red LED on either side?

You could do it I guess, too much math for me to work out on a Sunday morning though

Thomas research products have the 75w 25v 3A driver that would give 500mA each to 6 strips. It's 88% efficient, and costs about 10$. Don't know if you could find something better in the meanwell range, outside the HLG line. 2 of the 22v 40w TRP drivers would give you about 72w with an efficiency of 86%, costing about 12$.

Hello kaobyy,

I hope u dont mind if i piggyback on your thread with a similar question. It may help in your situation.

Here is the datasheet for hlg 120h

Now lets say i have an hlg 120h 42b, with the same 6 strips above, some info for strips... From my understanding, on my hlg 120h 42b, i can wire the strips, with two in series, and three in parallel. Each string with a typical 38.2 volts at 700m.
Now the above datasheet says my drivers constant current mode region is 21 to 42v. So with each string at 38.2 it should run in constant current mode and offer total of 2.9 a for the three strings. Each string could get .96 a. So that would be 36.9 watts per string (18.45w/strip)total of 110 watts.
I can add a cased potentiometer from rapidled to dim it if need be? Its the nicer one for six bucks.

So the driver is detecting the voltage, only thing i control would be current with the potentiometer?
Does this make sense and what are the potential pitfalls? Could the strips end up out of constant current mode, (with my concern being with a string ending up with over 42v)?

On a side note I have read folks concerned about not running these to hard. I just saw an instagram account with a fellow running eb2 4 ft, at 1400m ! 60w per strip, proper heatsink of course. Running it for close to a couple years apparently.

Our EB builds gradually got driven harder and harder... Just built a bunch for a friend that have 8 2 foot strips per ELG-240-42. I think they ended up at 1450mA. I drove them for an hour in a room with static air and they temps were fine. Heatsinks were 0.6mm thick 20mm wide L bar, so they dont even cover the whole base of the strips.

Finally the dude felt his tent was running a little hot, and is going for 70% in his next build. I think the heat will be welcome for 2/3 of our year, temps just fell below freezing yesterday, so I think his temps will have already stabilized. There is a noticable difference in heat when you run hard though. I have the luxury of designing the lighting again for each round. It's autumn and I predicted the cold weather... added 1000w of HID instead of radiating heaters. Girls are loving it.

(the infidel)

Meanwhile, I was about to turn to jerky, not freeze!

The CV drivers will act as CC at around their max current, and CV below that maximum. The B type driver has no current limiter adjustment at all. Note the fine print. Hardly anyone keeps ABs in stock at that voltage. If you wanted to current limit that way, OnlineComponents.com has 10 HLG-120h-24AB units, though you are limited to a lower max current setting than a 20AB, which is basically a block of unobtainium. An A type would do well for setting voltage, then just turning it on or off elsewhere.

Hello the mouse police,

Thank you kindly for the feedback?

So dimming the driver 120b with the cased potentiometer from rapid led will not work?

It will work, but will have a narrow useful range, and if it's a standard pot, may have a chance of not reaching 100K/100%. It will give you voltage adjustment, which will dim the LEDs, but in a very non-linear fashion. On a typical 40V (or 2x20V) strip, typically by the time you reach 32V/80%, the LEDs will be almost off. You will probably have a 10:1 output range within 3V down from whatever your highest output is, and that's under 10% of the adjustment range. You can still use it with dimming, but make sure to either add a fixed resistor to take up the pot tolerances, get a few pots and test them to get one going high enough, or get a 0-10V dimmer, and expect a narrow usable range with all of them.

If you want wide more or less linear range of output adjustment, get a constant current or constant power driver.

And now, despite my name, I must sleep.