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Do any DIY'ers have a plan for building LED styled lighting for the video production community?

filmbilly's Photo
Posted Nov 13 2009 12:18 PM
4804 Views

LED lighting is fast becoming a viable, efficient, green alternative to tungston, hmi and fluorescent production lighting for the film and video industries. The LED lighting sources are cool (they don't heat up rooms and make the talent sweat), they use 95% less energy, they are dimmable and can change color temperature with the twist of a knob, can run AC or DC and have a lamp life of over 50,000 hours. There are many advantages to LED lighting systems but they are prohibitively expensive for many video producers. A 1x1 foot light panel costs about $1700 dollars and when working with the fixtures they feel like they were purchased at Walmart. I am wondering if anyone has a plan for DIY LED lights.

Examples:

http://www.bhphotovi...5600K_1x1_.html

http://www.litepanels.com/

http://www.filmandvi.../roliledli.html

3 Replies

+ 1
  MarcdeVinck's Photo
Posted Nov 13 2009 01:16 PM

Check out Peggy. It can power, and control up to 625 LEDs! It's open-source, and totally hackable.

http://www.makershed...ductCode=MKEMS3
 : Nov 13 2009 03:44 PM
Marc,

Peggy is great! I am guessing that you can dim and change color temperature etc. Do you know the dimensions of the unit? Can several of these be controlled by one micro controller? Mounting several of these together to create a single fixture would be fantastic. Create a frame and yoke and you're cookin' with gas!
0
  DonWW's Photo
Posted Jun 18 2010 07:40 PM

Perhaps an LED floodlight would suit your needs? The DIY holiday lighting community has a few designs like this one that fits a standard 150W halogen lamp fixture. The development is discussed here.

You can find boards for controlling/dimming this and other LED fixtures at DoItYourselfChristmas.com. I'd suggest looking mostly at DMX boards as simple stand-alone DMX controllers are available from music dealers - they're popular with DJ's and bands.