5v flood lights - do they exist

L

lancer1991

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I try searching and every one I find is 12v. I'm running 5v pixels so trying to stay in 5v. I'm beginning to wonder if I get a 12v and crack it open and find a replacement LED if one can be found to make what I want.
 
The amount of current it would have to carry to pull the wattage needed would quickly exceed the resistance of the wire. Rather than hack a 5v floodlight, I think your time is better spent finding and repurposing a wall brick you have that runs 12v. Or higher (like 18v, which a laptop charger would typically do), and buck convert it.

I do that very regularly now, non-destructively.
 
Most floodlights use constant current driver circuits to control the LED modules (I have some). I'm not aware of 5v versions of these. It may be easiest to get a separate 12V PSU for your floods, you can use the same data line as the 5V pixels. Make sure the ground of your 5 and 12V PSUs are linked in that case. Also floods tend to be quite power thirsty, this may be an issue for your 5V wiring too.

You can also get RGBW floodlights which I can recommend, that work with WS2811 data and use 4 channels each.
 
I think the secret to making a 5v LED flood is the quantity of LEDs you put together. Two 5v LEDs make more light then one, and three make more than two. Put together a dozen of them and focus them in the same direction either with a lens or with tubing and you can make a workable 5v flood.
 
Use a 12V flood and either power it with a dedicated 12V supply or use a 5V-12V boost converter (NOT a buck converter) to power it. In the latter case I'd take 1pet2_9's comment to heart - it's going to take a lot of juice from the 5V line. A possible solution might be this powered by this.

The boost-converter 'solution' is going to draw about 2.5A from the 5V input if you're using a 10W flood, and twice that for a 20W flood. I wouldn't recommend going above 20W in this situation because of the large current draw from 5V supply.

Let's see what other people say.
 
As a comparison point, cell phone chargers have been living in the 5v, 2.1A, 10W range for quite awhile. Recently people have been dissatisfied with how fast that charges your phone, so USB-C charger cables are getting more popular, which double up the number of wires delivering charge (or at least, double the pins, thicker wires). Raspberry Pi 4's do the same. That gets you to 3A, 15W. You can imagine those cables are not very long, by pixel standards, but the mass producers are already running into limits. This is probably why you won't see a whole lot of mass produced 5v floods. But if you DIY it, this is a one-off application and you won't have to build in all the margin like they do. If your 5v run is short enough and wide enough, and the flood is small enough, you could make it work. I just don't think it's the optimal path to go down; not unless there is some other compelling reason to stay married to the 5V power domain. It's just not that scalable. (or to put in hobbyists' terms:. once you get something working once, pretty soon you want to do it 20 times, bigger, everywhere).
 
1pet2_9 said:
As a comparison point, cell phone chargers have been living in the 5v, 2.1A, 10W range for quite awhile. Recently people have been dissatisfied with how fast that charges your phone, so USB-C charger cables are getting more popular, which double up the number of wires delivering charge (or at least, double the pins, thicker wires). Raspberry Pi 4's do the same. That gets you to 3A, 15W. You can imagine those cables are not very long, by pixel standards, but the mass producers are already running into limits. This is probably why you won't see a whole lot of mass produced 5v floods. But if you DIY it, this is a one-off application and you won't have to build in all the margin like they do. If your 5v run is short enough and wide enough, and the flood is small enough, you could make it work. I just don't think it's the optimal path to go down; not unless there is some other compelling reason to stay married to the 5V power domain. It's just not that scalable. (or to put in hobbyists' terms:. once you get something working once, pretty soon you want to do it 20 times, bigger, everywhere).
Click to expand...

A 5V flood is going to be terribly inefficient by comparison with a 12V flood, requiring almost twice as much current or providing only about 1/2 the number of LEDs. The extra power is wasted in whatever current-limit circuit is in place (one current-limit device per LED, instead of one per 3-5 LEDs, or so, at 12V). Also, four-wire floods seem to drive the LED output current through the RGB control wires, requiring much more current per transistor driver.

Edit: I suppose that the flood manufacters could put a 5V-12V (or 5V-24V) boost converter internal to the flood.
 
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P. Short said:
A 5V flood is going to be terribly inefficient by comparison with a 12V flood, requiring almost twice as much current or providing only about 1/2 the number of LEDs. The extra power is wasted in whatever current-limit circuit is in place (one current-limit device per LED, instead of one per 3-5 LEDs, or so, at 12V). Also, four-wire floods seem to drive the LED output current through the RGB control wires, requiring much more current per transistor driver.

Edit: I suppose that the flood manufacters could put a 5V-12V (or 5V-24V) boost converter internal to the flood.
Click to expand...

I thought the idea behind the boost converter plan was to minimize the run length of the 5v? Wouldn't you stick that in the box with the 5v power supply instead?
 
The original poster presumably had to run 5V power all over the place for his pixels. There were two separate thoughts in my post - what the original poster could do in the absence of 5V floods versus how might 5V floods be designed.
 
One could create awesome 5v rgb floods out of APA102 pixels that are 144/m or similar. 12v 10w rgb floods are over rated .

A 20W rgb cob is decent but still over rated . RobG's 100W rgb floods are great but not 5v .
 
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