• Its Cold Outside... Oh wait now its warm?

    schwarzrmsu • 01/09/2020 at 12:36 • 0 comments

    Winter is in full effect, but we are having some interesting temperature fluctuations this week.  This morning it was quite cold at 23F (-5C) outside.  Below is the color of the temperature outside:

    Later that night the temperature rose to a warmer 47F (8.3C).  This is the color of the temperature outside:

    This is a great example of how the Weather Color Strip can show you visually the temperature outside without having to look up the weather online.  You can simply look at the color that is always there to gauge the temperature outside.

    Hope you found this interesting.

  • RGB LED Color Balancing Experimentation

    schwarzrmsu • 11/29/2019 at 02:07 • 3 comments

    The RGB LED's are a major piece to Weather Color Strip, and mixing of the RGB elements is also important in order to accurately show the color of the temperature outside.  The colors are mixed by calculating duty cycles for Red, Green and Blue LED's based on the temperature information parsed from a weather API.  The duty cycles are determined using this graphic I have made:

    The problem I have noticed is the color spectrum can be green heavy, red heavy or blue heavy depending on the color balancing of the RGB elements.  Ideally I would like to see an even spread of blue/green at lower temperature and red/green at higher temperatures.  Currently I have tried four different strategies and would like to document the results:

    1. Equal Resistance
      1. Each LED (Red, Green and Blue) will have the same current limiting resistor value
    2. Equal Current
      1. Each LED (Red, Green and Blue) will have the same current
    3. Equal Intensity
      1. Each LED (Red, Green and Blue) will have a scaled max current so each LED will have an equal intensity
    4. 3:6:1 Color Mixing Ratio
      1. Create an overall target for intensity.  30% will be red, 60% will be green and 10% will be blue.

    The LED's I used are Cree SLV6A-FKB-CK1P1G1BB7R3R3.  Digikey page is below:

    https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/cree-inc/SLV6A-FKB-CK1P1G1BB7R3R3/SLV6A-FKB-CK1P1G1BB7R3R3CT-ND/6138648

    You will notice that the LED voltage drops in each formula are changing slightly.  This is change is due to changes in LED current.  This voltage drop is very important when calculating ideal LED resistor values.  Relationship between LED current and voltage drop can be found in the following graphs:

    Another important section of the datasheet are the Relative Luminous Intensity curves.  These curves show the relationship between current and luminous intensity.  These are important when trying to calculation the ideal LED currents:

    Equal Resistance

    For this strategy I simply used a common resistor values for Red, Green and Blue LED's.  I chose a simple 1k resistor.

    Actual resistances, currents and intensities are summarized below:

    RED GREEN BLUE
    RESISTOR VALUE (OHM) 1000 1000 1000
    LED CURRENT (mA) 10.16 9.000 9.050
    INTENSITY (mcd) 355.6 960.000 181.000

    Equal Current

    For this strategy I tried to make the LED current for Red, Green and Blue to be 10mA.  Below is some math on how I calculated the LED resistor values:

    RED GREEN BLUE
    RESISTOR VALUE (OHM) 1000 887 887
    LED CURRENT (mA) 10.16 10.124 10.169
    INTENSITY (mcd) 355.6 1079.895 203.382

    Equal Intensity

    For this strategy I tried to scale each LED current in order to have the same intensity for each LED (Red, Green and Blue).  I was trying to achieve a target intensity of 400mcd.  Using the Relative Luminous Intensity curves, I figured out how much current each LED would need in order to achieve 400mcd. Below is some tables/math on how I calculated the LED resistors values:

    RED GREEN BLUE
    20mA INTENSITY (mcd) 700 1600 400
    RELATIVE INTENSITY (@ 400mcd) 0.571 0.250 1.000
    REQUIRED LED CURRENT (mA) 11.429 5 20

    I have calculated the necessary current values to achieve 400mcd of intensity.  Now I can perform similar calculations completed in the equal current strategy to calculate resistor values:

    Actual resistances, currents and intensities are summarized below:

    RED GREEN BLUE
    RESISTOR VALUE (OHM) 887 2430 442
    LED CURRENT (mA) 11.342 3.745 19.910
    INTENSITY (mcd) 396.956 399.451 398.190

    3:6:1 Color Mixing Ratio

    This strategy involves having specific intensity ratios for red,...

    Read more »

  • Weather Color Strip LED Strip Proto 2 Release

    schwarzrmsu • 11/23/2019 at 14:49 • 0 comments

    Uploaded Weather Color Strip LED Strip Proto 2 files and updated all relevant material to reflect this latest revision.

  • Weather Color Strip Module Proto 5 Release

    schwarzrmsu • 11/23/2019 at 14:32 • 0 comments

    Uploaded Weather Color Strip Module PROTO_5 files and updated all relevant material to reflect this latest revision.