Homemade mood light with LEDs

[Richard]

Hi. I want to make my own mood light.

Let's say that the mood light is 300mm square and 30mm deep and I want the
light to display just one colour.

The front part of the light will be a clear translucent panel, in any event
a panel to diffuse the light from the LEDs that are backlighting the panel.

It seems to me that my cheapest LED option is to simply buy some LEDs
and some VEROBOARD, and place the LEDs in a matrix, an array of LEDs.

Now the thing is, I've no idea what type of LEDs to get, or how many.

If I put LEDS 30mm apart in colums and rows in an array, I'd need 81 LEDs
(No LEDs on the panel border).

Can anyone please just put forward an educated guess on what I'm likely to
be needing. Would I really need 81 LEDs do you think?

Any idea of a suitable front panel material?

Thanks a lot. Rich.

 

[Richard]

I said:

Hi. I want to make my own mood light.

Let's say that the mood light is 300mm square and 30mm deep and I want the
light to display just one colour.

The front part of the light will be a clear translucent panel, in any
event
a panel to diffuse the light from the LEDs that are backlighting the
panel.

It seems to me that my cheapest LED option is to simply buy some LEDs
and some VEROBOARD, and place the LEDs in a matrix, an array of LEDs.

Now the thing is, I've no idea what type of LEDs to get, or how many.

If I put LEDS 30mm apart in colums and rows in an array, I'd need 81 LEDs
(No LEDs on the panel border).

Can anyone please just put forward an educated guess on what I'm likely to
be needing. Would I really need 81 LEDs do you think?

Any idea of a suitable front panel material?

Thanks a lot. Rich.

Well I just found now this;

http://www.colourcreation.com/images/PDF/halo 600L spec.pdf

Uses 6 LEDs! And it's 600mm square. 81 LEDs looks like overkill to me. :c)

 

[Richard]

It appears to use 6 off 1W RGB leds.

With a 1W led roughly equal in to 17 off 5mm leds this equates to
6x3x17 = 306 off 5mm leds
How much underkill do you need?

Isn't it just 6 x 17 = 102?

Just a bit underkill.

What this tells me is to go for a few bright LEDs. That looks like the way
in the case I described.

 

[Richard]

Isn't it just 6 x 17 = 102?

Just a bit underkill.

What this tells me is to go for a few bright LEDs. That looks like the way
in the case I described.

Wait a minute that's for 600mm x 600mm mood light.

So, does this make the number of regular LEDs needed 102/4 = 25.5