10-10-2017, 12:38 PM
The ones Big Clive takes apart usually have 4u7 or thereabouts. Not really sure why they bothered, frankly.
The worst ones I've experienced are those trendy filament types. I don't mind the orange/yellow colour so much, but the flicker is terrible. I had a meal in a restaurant that was lit exclusively with these, and I couldn't wait to leave. Just awful...
I've repurposed some LED strips from an old 600mm square ceiling fitting. They're not the most efficient or nicest colour, but that doesn't matter for this application. I'm just in the process of building a linear PSU for them - about 42V at 300mA - with a brightness control on the current source. For lining up radios, they provide flicker-free, RFI-free light, and minimal wasted heat (which is useful anyway in a cellar workshop). I think the PSU will waste less than 3 or 4 watts all told, which is hardly worse than the original switching supply that failed. And I'm setting it up now to make it easy to modify in the future should I buy some different LEDs - just a transformer swap should get me to 12V at 1 amp, for example. I might even write it up, although I don't think it's all that interesting really...
The worst ones I've experienced are those trendy filament types. I don't mind the orange/yellow colour so much, but the flicker is terrible. I had a meal in a restaurant that was lit exclusively with these, and I couldn't wait to leave. Just awful...
I've repurposed some LED strips from an old 600mm square ceiling fitting. They're not the most efficient or nicest colour, but that doesn't matter for this application. I'm just in the process of building a linear PSU for them - about 42V at 300mA - with a brightness control on the current source. For lining up radios, they provide flicker-free, RFI-free light, and minimal wasted heat (which is useful anyway in a cellar workshop). I think the PSU will waste less than 3 or 4 watts all told, which is hardly worse than the original switching supply that failed. And I'm setting it up now to make it easy to modify in the future should I buy some different LEDs - just a transformer swap should get me to 12V at 1 amp, for example. I might even write it up, although I don't think it's all that interesting really...
