Ultra high performance desk lamp - LED & battery

desked

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Greetings,


This seems to be the best global source of high-performance LED & battery knowledge. We were wondering if you might provide some guidance for building an "ultra-high-performance" desklamp lamp. This is quite similar to a flashlight.

The lamp will be used for comfortable reading, hobbywork, computerwork & SpeedCubing (solving rubick's cube at high speed) both day and night.
Ideally, the lamp has:

- No flicker
- Adjustable brightness
- Adjustable white color

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More background FYI - The SpeedCubing challenges are especially interesting as the best cubers are solving around about 5 seconds.

-- So "any" stroboscopic flicker plus the typical 120Hz line flicker can be both distracting and increase the time it takes for a cuber to recognize colors (latency). We want to entiresly avoid PWM and AC issues if possible.

-- So a "fuller spectrum" light that helps a cuber to quickly differentiate the six colored stickers is important (especially: red-orange, green-blue, white-yellow).
_______________________________
**** Our initial idea was to pick up a few commercial A19 bulbs from Philips (say 2700K and 5000K), remove the LED PCB assemblies, and run them with a rechargable battery pack (say lipo from cordless tools or RC toys, or just an old led acid battery). We could change brightness and white color with a simple analog scheme TBD.

We would like a slick LED solution but maybe need to complement this with sunlight and an incadescent bulb.

Running through these forums for the past week or so, we "uncovered" some higher performance LED options:

==> Soraa's Vivid 95CRI seems to have even nicer LEDs. The MR16 are available from 2700K to 5000K (we could bypass the onboard driver). They also have that nice filter disc system to increase beam to 60* and decrease color below 2200K. Their constant current bulbs seem to only go up to 3000K unfortunately.

==> We also saw that people in other threads recommended the Yuji and Xicato products. The Yuji High CRI (VTC) products look interesting but are staggeringly expensive. Their SMDs are less expensive but probably a non-starter for the DIYer

https://store.yujiintl.com/collections/vtc-series

==> The Xicato XTM is another option

http://www.xicato.com/sites/default/files/documents/DDS XTM Artist Series 170221_1.pdf

https://led.cdiweb.com/ParametricSe...lete:0,p_manuf_id:1589,p_product_family_id:3)

Any recommendations would be highly appreciated!
 

archimedes

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Hi @desked ....

I think you may be better served by moving this thread to either "Fixed Lighting" or possibly "LED" subforum, as this is not (strictly speaking) a flashlight.

Do you have a preference ?
 

desked

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Hi @desked ....

I think you may be better served by moving this thread to either "Fixed Lighting" or possibly "LED" subforum, as this is not (strictly speaking) a flashlight.

Do you have a preference ?

archimedes - either subforum is fine. Thanks!
 

nitebrite

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Re: Ultra high performance desk lamp - LED & battery

They already have these. Check out lightology.com. I am a good customer there. For "ultraperformance" you are looking at $1,000+. over $2,000 you should get exactly what you like. Do not get the $200-$500 Chinese stuff or you will be unhappy. There are some very nice lights over there. If you are by Chicago often you can pick it up the same day to Five days.
 

desked

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Re: Ultra high performance desk lamp - LED & battery

They already have these. Check out lightology.com. I am a good customer there. For "ultraperformance" you are looking at $1,000+. over $2,000 you should get exactly what you like. Do not get the $200-$500 Chinese stuff or you will be unhappy. There are some very nice lights over there. If you are by Chicago often you can pick it up the same day to Five days.

Thanks for the tips nitebrite. Especially relating to the tempting Chinese lamp fixtures.

The lightolgy site is well worth checking out! Wonderful fixtures but is a bit rich for our blood and outside the DIY nature of the project.

For those looking for a custom high-performance flicker-free task light, there is a guy from Wisconsin who does a nice job for about $500. He used a Bridgelux LED array in early development but we don't know what he uses now. We saw that staggerring heatsink on an industrial supplier's page somewhere. His blog was one of the inspirations for this project. . .

https://lumeniquessl.com/category/new-venture/tasca/
https://www.bridgelux.com/products
 

maukka

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Re: Ultra high performance desk lamp - LED & battery

I've been using Viltrox LED panels as my desk lamps for some time now. They can be run with 8-12V DC or a battery and have adjustable color temperature and very high CRI. No PWM either.

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desked

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Re: Ultra high performance desk lamp - LED & battery

Thanks for the tip Maukka! Indeed that is an interesting panel at a budget price.

I assume several people saw the teardown and measurements of that Viltrox panel on youtube by electronupdate. If you look on the recent written youtube comments, he said the panel was not good for "hobby and reading tasks." I wonder why...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnhBpNC9ZXs

What are the downsides to using that Viltrox for "hobby and reading tasks" in your view? How would a single high-end "white" LED be better or worse?
 

Keitho

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Since the factory built high end options seem to be too expensive, what about some light DIY (pun intended)? The first thing I thought of was this arc shaped task light I saw on YouTube: https://youtu.be/V5uycGosYq4

If you used a yuji light strip and a battery 12V power supply, you would have a great sub-$300 solution in a few hours with no shadows, no flicker, and high CRI. I'm thinking of building one of these myself, just because of the cool and unique looks.
 

desked

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Since the factory built high end options seem to be too expensive, what about some light DIY (pun intended)? The first thing I thought of was this arc shaped task light I saw on YouTube: https://youtu.be/V5uycGosYq4

If you used a yuji light strip and a battery 12V power supply, you would have a great sub-$300 solution in a few hours with no shadows, no flicker, and high CRI. I'm thinking of building one of these myself, just because of the cool and unique looks.

Thanks for the ideas Keitho. That guy also has a comprehensive walk through a yuji 100w COB with a basic dimmer and inexpensie computer watercooler; it is worth the 5 minutes to see his engineering and pot tweaking. . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh9j5mDU_hA
 

nitebrite

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Sorry, I did not know you only wanted DIT. TBH, unless you are just loaded getting upper end at lightology is a serious decision in ones life. I could see some Dot Com guy do his whole house. For me to get just one sacrificed other things for a whole year. So I can certainly see not going that route but the site is like candy to us here. I actually use a specialty CFL behind me while using a color match display. I have yet to find a Led that can beat the CRI and overall light quality. I have mentioned it here before. I do see flicker in most CFL but not this one at all. It is an extremely high quality bulb made in Germany. If you will accept trying a CFL it is like $15 and it is Edison base so goes in almost anything. I would use a diffuser but never a shade. Everything else I have is Led at this point. Off topic but installing those Cree can retrofits is a huge pain.
 

desked

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===> Thanks for all the input guys. I think I will try the Soraa MR16 3000K constant current lamp for good color rendition in a point source. Per the spec sheet, this bulb has:

*Operating current
- typical 300mA
- max 350mA

*Forward voltage
- nominal 28.4v
- range 25v - 30v
- PS reqd 20v - 35v (e.g. power supply with current amplitude dimming)

https://res.cloudinary.com/soraa/im...cs/mr16-constant-current/01343/spec_sheet.pdf

===> Now I need a good battery source to avoid flickering. I was wondering if anyone might offer some tips.

A. I thought 8 protected 18650 Panasonic/Samsung/... "midrange" batteries from one of these local suppliers recommended on the forum
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...d-18650-s-at-a-good-price&highlight=wholesale

B. Maybe this 8 battery charger
http://www.mtnelectronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=79&product_id=717

C. Any tips on a resistor scheme to help protect the LED?

D. As the battery drains, brightness will drop. What would you recommend as a simple way to manually adjust / compensate for brightness within a small range without flicker? (the whole point of using batteries).

Thanks again for your insight!
 
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