NEED SUGGESTIONS:
I put together an array of various leds to emulate the "look" of metal halides.
At this point it is just a thought exercise.
The sort of unique part is it uses some IR chips and takes advantage of the "full spectrum" led which add a broad phosphor converted red band. You will see why in a minute.
Also uses amber for the mercury spike part and a TON of green.
Pretty sure that the amount of green will look excessive to the eye but it was what the "recipe" called for..
Details, borrowed a chart of the radions ect.
As you see the big difference between the Radium and the 14k Ushio is mainly in the strength of the 450 blue and less in the violet range oddly enough.
The mixing list is pretty self explanatory.
So that is the basics..
Beside building tweaking ect the next part is a challenge to me.
My normal mantra is one color one channel but I want to break it here.
I've played w/ combining certain channels to make various intermediate tones like lime or horticulture magenta with a twist.
I had to round up some colors to make even diode counts.
I also did it differently using Luxeon Rebels the best I could. They make "full spectrum" diodes but are called purple 12b or 25b ect in the hort series. They also make some uv in the Z series but are now called something else. Luxeon UV U1. Both of which would probably be mounted on star boards. REst I believe one can find "pre-made".
Oh and the whole thing can be done w/ cheap "Epistar" diodes on flea bay.. for about $80 or so.
$1 /3w diode but need to buy in lots of 10.
Anyways the board is borrowed from Orphek Amazonia which is 80 diodes.
That is basically 8 "channels". I have 10 "colors" and decided to try to condense it to 7 x 10 array.
Like so. Shifting the below diodes to 7 channels gives me things like
amber/420
full spec/cyan
Royal blue
470/390/420
amber/IR/deep red
and 2 green channels
Someone once thought since nobody ever emulated mh's well why I would think I'm smarter then past designers.
Well I'm not smarter I just think I look at the data differently.
Like who in their right mind would think you have more green than royal blue diodes..
Need lots of green add green, amber spike add amber and there are new things like the "full spectrum" ect diodes
T oadd a red "wash" like the mh salts do.
And unlike "days of yore" there are
tons of others to now use as well like uv/violet, lime, mint, high cri whites ect are out there.
My only worry here is that leds in the green range are nowhere near as spikey as metal halides in that range.
The look is unpredictable in that range.
One reason I kept green on it's own channel.
One reason I wrote off lime/mint.. too spread. Reg green is horrible enough.
Hopefully the concept is in the ballpark.
I've got the spectra files on a lot of the ones missing from SPECTRA though you may need to change the lumens or mW. And "full spectrum" ect.
IF you look at the different project keep in mind the "LED" ones are 1W. Divide by 3 to match the rest
Oh and I 'm reserving the 8th channel for an "actinic" add-on.. or something. Don't know atm and may not have the space if I do something like is shown on the left.
OH and to be even more perfectly clear, this is only a "look" match not a "better than growth" match.
Anyways .. there you have it.
Anyone bored????
One fun thing is by selectively dimming the blue range one can shift from "20000K" (really no K) to about 14,000.
It does take a ton of blue dimming though.
and look.. no whites!
