Another LED question

[Rusty66]

Hi again folks,
following on from my last post, im experimenting with 3 watt LED's and have been running them in parallel with a 3 watt driver for each led.. A friend mentioned that it is better to run them in series with a higher powered driver.. At the moment im running these in lots of 6 and 4.. its all automotive emergency flash stuff, and steve here was very helpful with the mosfets i am using to switch these..

Your thoughts on the series / parallel thing and the importance of the correct current limiting circuits.... Seeing these are just flashing and not "on" for any more than 1 second max, is it necessary?

Its a big learning curve for me, and im enjoying the learning curve a lot! both the successes & letting the smoke out of the box!

Cheers'
Rusty

 

[(*steve*)]

If you have a single driver for each LED, then this is OK. Id you want to have fewer drivers, then one designed for a higher wattage, but the same current can be used to drive several LEDs in series.

At the moment you have some amount of redundancy. If a driver fails, only 1 LED will stop. However 3 drivers probably take up more room than 1 higher powered one, and may be marginally more efficient.