I created this because most other lights I have found just are not very bright , some have tons of options but they're just not that bright and my old eyes like bright lights even on the bottom of the page to pick out very small guitar fingering and notes bunched together or accents etc .
The lights are what are called cree led , but that is a brand name , the more generic name is high powered led but that name also causes confusion so let me show you what they look like .
These LEDs come in a lot of sizes and wattages. This size is from 1-5 watt , and the picture is of a 3W though 1W looks the same . But the big difference is these are very bright the 1W you can look directly into but the 3W no you will go blind . For this project I used 4 3W with lenses . The lenses will direct the light into angles or spots of light , I used 2 60 deg lenses and 2 120 deg lenses. The idea is to have some that are very spread and 2 that are more spotlights . I created the design for the 3d print case so that they will swivel in almost any direction , IE get any point on my music with light .
The electronics for this are a little complicated , in that voltage and current have to be limited . Standard 3w LED's need 3.7 volts and also need current limited to .8 amps each so you need a power supply that will keep a steady 3.7V at .8 amps , but of course I have 4 LED's and I wired them in parallel so that means voltage says at 3.7v but current is added up so 4*.8 = 3.2 amps at 3.7V. The power I used is called a step down with current limit capability .
The above picture is my step down in my 3D printed box (my design) with switch and power connector . The power connector will connect to a used laptop power supply that they were throwing out at work. I've collected a few of these over the years and are perfect for these kinds of projects . By the way most times these things (laptop power supplies) never die so don't throw them out give them to me :) This project is on version 3 , the first version blew up (or it just turned off) and the power supplies I used died , I put 2 chips on each board and the boards only were for a max of .800 amps and I doubled that so they died after about 5 minutes of on time . The 2 version I FU some measurements and I junked that and went to version 3. The gooseneck I found was the perfect size but it wouldn't hold the weight of 4 leds and 3d printed holders so I have to put a 12G wire for support, with it and thus it's a little ugly . In general it is almost too bright but that is OK with me , I guess a version 4 would allow it to be dimmed , but that would require more research into how to dimm the power supply , I think it will take a pulse width signal but would have to play with that and of course knobs and more electronics for that . Here are some more pictures of parts of it .
