Project EMERALD log! (SWM F30R mod)

I like Emerald.

Nice little host. Not too sure where you can go after MELD... I suppose the host was chosen for a reason with all those little 3mm LEDs. Wonder how many XQ footprint LEDs you can fit in each 3mm space?

Pulled up a chair, brought some tasty snacks and refreshments, this is going to be good.

First update: here’s my first draft of the schematic for the new driver

So main white channel, blue, red, green, IR, and two separate UV wavelengths. Nice.

Questions:

- How do you plan to use the host? Color mixing will not be very good unless done in the main reflector I'd think.

- Still using a voltage regulator for the color/IR/UV emitters, yes?

- Do you think the two UV wavelengths are too close together? They will more or less be used for the same thing?

- What level are you driving the main white emitter at (no value on R7)?

- What UV and IR emitters are you using? I want to get my hands on some emitters like this as well so if we can save bucks and do a group buy please mention something on these forums!

Sorry for so many questions. Your projects are always pretty close to home for me so I really like to see how you do things for my own learning process :)

- Matt

where is the order form?

+1 on what Matt asked and said.

I want to keep it with the original arrangement and use the reflector for white only. You’re right that the beams won’t be great, but 99% of the use will be on white so I put much more importance on that beam being perfect. I’m hoping I can find some optics that will fit in the space between reflector and outside wall so I can get something halfway decent on the color emitters. It will also help that for R, G, and B I can have 2 emitters opposite each other so at least it won’t be off-center.

Yes, I chose a new buck-only CV regulator for this one that can supply up to 3A, and each color emitter will use a resistor to set current.

In my experience 405 and 380 act very different, but maybe I haven’t seen other options. Do you know of any emitters that go much shorter than 380?

The buck regulator for the white channel is fairly devoid of details because I happen to have a bunch of boards in my scrap bin that have a complete MAX16820 setup, and I plan to salvage all the components. I think the values are 0.068 which gives about 3A.

For the 405nm, I’ll use the Luxeon UV. For the 380, I have a LED Engin LZ1 that I think is 380 (it may be slightly lower). I would prefer to use the Lux UV for both because its package is more convenient, but I think the LZ1 I have is shorter wavelength than Luxeon offers. I’m not 100% sure which I’ll use. For IR I have an Osram Golden Dragon—unfortunately large package but the best high-power IR emitter I’ve used.

getting started on the layout, looks like I’ll need to do a daughter board to make it fit:

Thanks for the explainations :)

In regards to the UV and IR LEDs, LEDEngin make two that I'd personally use:

The LZ1-10U600 36nm UV LED

and

The 850nm LZ1-10R400 IR LED. Much smaller package than the Golden Dragon.

The IR price is OK, but the UV price sucks (and cutter only sell in lots of 10 with Mouser et all being much more expensive).

joined the audience :-)

The LZ1 comes in 365nm as well, but those Luxeons are so small and elegant, and go as low as 380nm as well.

This morning’s layout progress. Got the weird tri-lobe board edge in and did some component grouping:

started the main & daughter boards. got the outlines set and basic component arrangement established. here’s the current challenge: locating the 4 pins that pass from main up to daughter while avoiding impeding on the space for battery contacts and the shelf (exposed case material, must be unmasked copper) regions.

I can recommend Mill-max pins for PCB interconnects. They'll give you the cleanest connection. They also have an insanely large range...

https://www.mill-max.com/product_finder

They do through hole, surface mount, press-fit, solder-fit and so on. They'll have something you can use I'm positive of it.

Woohoo, finally got the shipping notice for mine (added stuff holding the shipment up). Should be here Wednesday. Think I’ll go ahead and do a review on mine before I tear it apart.

Got everything fully routed. The daughter board looks like it’s ready to order. The main board has everything connected, but I still don’t like the look of it… may need more work

work of art!

Love the sweeping turns of the traces on the right…beautiful!

Did you make a round polygon pour?

“Ratsnest: nothing to do”. Beautiful, I bet it even passes DRC huh.

I really like all the extra copper pour on the daughter board. I’ve started doing that too, I like the finished look better plus the extra heat sinking it provides.

The trick is to do a big polygon around everything that’s not any particular shape. Then when you have a circular board edge, the pour will automatically isolate from it by whatever distance you set in DRC and it matches the shape exactly