Every Color of the Rainbow

I've made some significant progress this weekend! I extended the Glowy Green LED's to Blue and Red. I also soldered up a circuit to power the LED's instead of just hooking up each part individually. That got pretty crazy really quick with all the alligator clips all over the place. I'll explain more later.

The next part is to use the mosfets to allow the microcontroller to control the brightness of the LED's. This will allow me to change the color and mix them as I desire.

BRIGHTER THAN ALPHA CENTAURI

So, I've always been fascinated with mood lamps, green and blue glowy lights. I have, in the past, tried to make my own mood lamps. There is just something about the way that is changes color seamlessly from one color to the next.

So, I'm trying it again. What's going to make this time different and what does it have to do with a laminar nozzle? Both very good questions, I'm glad you asked. The lights are going to be for the fountain. I've always wanted a fountain, and I've always loved mood lights so why not combine them! The fountain is going to have some LED's and some fiber optics which will port the light right up the center to the water. When the water shoots out the light will be able to travel right through the water just like fiber optics.

I have a friend in Switzerland who is doing the same thing as I am doing. We share information back and forth. He has come up with a brilliant way to make the LED glow, and glow bright. Not to mention an easy way to the control the brightness of the light. Thanks to him I KNOW I cannot fail at this task.

Currently I am just working with 1 Green 5W K2 star from Luxeon. This light is soooooo bright. The one light can light up the entire room as shown below.
Just to give you an idea of how bright it is, a regular LED (like the one on your DVD player) uses 20mA of current. The K2 star is capable of using up to 1000mA. That's 50 times more current!!!!!!!




Because it uses so much current you can't turn it on without it being properly heat sinked. That's what that hugh chunk of Aluminum is. The heatsink helps draw the heat away from the LED and a fan blow over the aluminum and cools it down.

Just so you know this is only 1 LED. I'm planning on have at least 3 more if not 7 more. I will also need to purchase some fiber optics in order to port the light into the fountain. This will be a challenging but really rewarding task once it is completed.