The Continual Drive for more LED Brightness

Hi all,

Recently I have been getting more and more into the 3 watt RGB star LEDs... using my PIC 12F683 to drive them via software PWM. These LEDs are quite bright - you certainly shouldn't look directly at them for long times - but I'm wondering... what's brighter? Two of these 3 watt RGB star LEDs working in tandem would be cool... but what about something like this, the MaxM Blaster?



This is, apparently, a very bright collection of LEDs... and comes very neatly packaged too. However, it says it is the daughterboard for a BlinkM MaxM which appears to be some means of programming sequences (fades and flashes) into the board. That's all quite expensive, and it's not what I want anyway... I've already written the code to do the fading etc..

My question is... do you think that this MaxM Blaster could be simply controlled from my PIC? It appears as though it takes 5v and then has four pins on the other side (three for R, G and B) and the other for, er, well - I can't guess (glad the datasheet says it's unused!).

I was thinking... I could apply 5v and ground to one side, then send something akin to PWM pulses either directly from the output pins of a PIC or, maybe (but this doesn't sound right) from the emitter of a transistor, like I do now for my R, G and B connections to the 3 watt star RGB LED.

I saw the link to a datasheet... but that seemed to be talking about four 8-bit analogue inputs (that could equate to the four pins of the MaxM Blaster - but I think it could be talking about the BlinkM MaxM)... seems to me (correct me to stop me buying one) that I could connect power to the two pins on the right and connect three digital output pins of my PIC directly to three of the four on the left and - hey, presto! - I have an ultra powerful RGB LED that's directly controllable by my PIC.

Or am I getting ahead of myself?

Any thoughts appreciated. Or better ideas about getting more brightness... actually, I have some 12v RGB LED strip that I bought a while ago, that could be very good too... I'd need some right angle connectors to fit them where I want to though.

According to the data sheet typical values for the LED on is 5 volts at 250ma's for normal running. That's only 1.25 watts of power. Is the power for the modules you're currently using 3 watts per color, or three watts total? Can you provide a link to the LED's you're currently using?

Yeah, the RGB star is 3 watts in total... not per colour. It's a TruOpto thing... but I think most are the same. I wasn't aware that you could even get hold of a 3 watts per colour RGB star, can you? Anyway, it's this RGB LED...

**broken link removed**

The online bumph for the BlinkM MaxM Blaster seems to infer that it's the bee's knees in terms of brightness... is that just a cool bit of advertising, then? I mean, it's not much more expensive than one of these RGB stars, so it could all be too good to be true, I guess.

The BlinkM MaxM Blaster is still a nice little package... with resistors already in place and nice headers to connect wires to etc., so could be easier to work with that the RGB stars. However, if I'm not getting much more benefit, it hardly seems worth it, really.

What are my best options for more brightness, then? 1 x RGB star, 2 x RGB star, 1 x BlinkM MaxM Blaster or some length of the 12v RGB LED strip? Anyone know what's the top dog in this space?

Hippogriff said:

that I could connect power to the two pins on the right and connect three digital output pins of my PIC directly to three of the four on the left and - hey, presto! - I have an ultra powerful RGB LED that's directly controllable by my PIC.

Click to expand...

EDIT: The BlinkM will not be as bright as your 3W star. It doesn't even need a heatsink.
Page 41 of the datasheet you posted shows the schematic of the circuit used. All you need to do is copy the circuitry like this:

kchriste said:

EDIT: The BlinkM will not be as bright as your 3W star. It doesn't even need a heatsink.

Click to expand...

Thanks for both pieces of information provided - but especially for the quoted bit above - just marketing prattle for the BlinkM Max Blaster then, obviously.

So, I reckon, two (or more) of the RGB stars working together would be very bright... and hot... and I could run them all from the same three pins of my PIC 12F683 I'm guessing (if I'm only interested in them all being identical colour and brightness)... but then I would probably need a bigger power supply than the 5v 1,000ma that I'm currently using.

Is that an approach that sounds like it should be fine?