sir bobby

I don't know if you noticed, but if you look carefully at the base of the front seats of my van, you can see all that was left of the original carpeting of the van, and sure enough, it's burnt orange shag! Every van! You weren't lyin! lol

Thanks for the comment! I believe that because my LEDs are all in parallel, if I added a current limiter, the LEDs would be in the same situation (at least according to this article: http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/print/volume-6/issue-2/features/led-design-forum-avoiding-thermal-runaway-when-driving-multiple-led-strings-magazine.html ).Some LEDs would start hogging more than their share of current, and thermal runaway would happen with them anyway.I could create a current divider between each LED to balance the current, but that means I would need to make 15 current dividers! (sounds way too expensive and time consuming for a little project like this)

Thanks for the comment!When I was making this intractable, I was looking into using constant current drivers. The trouble lies with the fact that I have my entire array in parallel. If I used a single constant current regulator, the same problem would arise, as the current would get split unevenly, (as each forward voltage differs slightly) and thermal runaway would happen. I would need to create a separate constant current driver or a current divider for each led. This is quite possible, but it sounds too expensive/too much work for a simple project like this!You're probably right about the LEDs eventually burning out, but I'm not too worried about it, because the whole led array was free/salvaged to begin with. Anyway, I've been using the light pretty regularly since I've built i...see more »Thanks for the comment!When I was making this intractable, I was looking into using constant current drivers. The trouble lies with the fact that I have my entire array in parallel. If I used a single constant current regulator, the same problem would arise, as the current would get split unevenly, (as each forward voltage differs slightly) and thermal runaway would happen. I would need to create a separate constant current driver or a current divider for each led. This is quite possible, but it sounds too expensive/too much work for a simple project like this!You're probably right about the LEDs eventually burning out, but I'm not too worried about it, because the whole led array was free/salvaged to begin with. Anyway, I've been using the light pretty regularly since I've built it, and so far no LEDs have burnt out (knock on wood)!