RGB Floods lights

[EE351]

Hi all,

I'm looking to add some RGB flood lights to next year's show. I'm thinking about going with the following:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001281753748.html?spm=2114.12010615.8148356.2.759b30500g6HPR

My criteria:

1. uses ws281x chip, to be driven by Espixelstick.

2. relatively bright.

3. must be RGB.

Does anyone have any experience with this type of flood or something similar? Any suggestions on other floodlamps?

Thanks!

 

[jchuchla]

I've been using the 20W 24V versions that RobG designed. They work very well, until you have a wiring fault (rabbits!) and that tends to fry the board requiring replacement.

I've heard that the version sold by Wally's lights is a good one:
https://www.wallyslights.com/collections/flood-lights/products/20w-flood-with-xconnect-pigtails

 

[iflights]

I use 50 watt DMX floods for stage lighting. I really needed the punch as I have dark red brick.

Here's a link to a sequence from this year. You can see at 38 seconds, the 16 floods really cover well.

https://youtu.be/1Pb4oR0FX4k

 

[2k05gt]

I decided to make my own, this is as far as I got...

 

[szaske]

I know this is an older thread, but thought I'd response for people who stumble across this thread looking to add flood lights to their display. I purchased some RGB flood lights from Ray Wu a few years ago. They're DMX controlled, which work fine if you have SanDevices controller. I'm not sure if Falcon controllers handle DMX. Anyway they had one annoying problem, they each had separate DMX and power connectors, which meant I'd need to run both a DMX wire and power wire to each light. I decided to build my own connectors combining the two wires into one. I'm super happy with how it worked out, and it was actually a pretty easy conversion. Now I can daisy chain my flood lights together. This attached diagram explains my alteration.

 

[EE351]

So I recently found these floods, you can get a 50% discount using the code 50TRKRXV

https://www.amazon.com/Olafus-Dimmable-FloodLight-Waterproof-Multicolors/dp/B089LKDT3L

Since these are wifi enabled, I bet there's an ESP8266 or ESP32 chip inside that can be reprogrammed to accept e1.31 data. 2 for $20 is pretty good, I ordered a set to check them out.

 

[angus40]

So I recently found these floods, you can get a 50% discount using the code 50TRKRXV

https://www.amazon.com/Olafus-Dimmable-FloodLight-Waterproof-Multicolors/dp/B089LKDT3L

Since these are wifi enabled, I bet there's an ESP8266 or ESP32 chip inside that can be reprogrammed to accept e1.31 data. 2 for $20 is pretty good, I ordered a set to check them out.

It would be interesting to see the guts of these . I have reservation about them being esp WiFi though .
Almost all WiFi devices I have seen have Esp in their label .

 

[EE351]

It would be interesting to see the guts of these . I have reservation about them being esp WiFi though .
Almost all WiFi devices I have seen have Esp in their label .

Most of these cheap RGB lights are manufactured by a parent company called tuya and rebranded by other companies before they are sold.

If it does have an ESP chip, it may be possible to reflash without opening, however it looks like they did start using a different wifi chip for newer models according to this link:

https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Tuya-Convert/

It looks like there was some limited success flashing WLED to control a similar flood light:

https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED/issues/798

 

[RichieNorthcott]

I know this is an old post, but....

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002395721736.html

I have used these successfully for retro-fitting RGB floods to WS2811 protocol. I used the RGBW version but I believe they sell RGB too. I'd recommend the RGBW since the white is much cleaner than the RGB white mix. These devices respond to 4 bytes in the WS2811 data.

 

[2k05gt]

I have been trying to make some Ws2811 Pixel Flood Lights, my main issue was a waterproof case to use outside.
I have not had any luck in finding a product that will house the Control board and have a heatsink for the LED.

So my workaround is this.

The Waterproof case

The Heatsink

The Controller and 10 Watt LED

Not sure how waterproof it's going to be but I will give it a try.
I wish the cover was Clear and not frosted though.

Might have to drill a hole into it and put a lens on the cover?

 

[RichieNorthcott]

Looks good - you might need a constant current driver rather than the simple resistor arrangement you have, but the circuitry for those is more complex. BTW I know you are using WS2811 - there are commercially available boards for both 3 and 4 channels (RGB and RGBW). I used these units, and replaced the LED chip with a RGBW version, so essentially just used the case. There was enough room in the rear 'box' for the control board (just)
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32969479776.html

Also I noticed this year constant current driver boards have appeared for DMX too, like this:https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003298983356.html, for 350mA and 700mA LEDs

Currently I have the RGB and W as two separate 'elements' in Vixen, in theory it should be possible to use the new RGBW colour mode and treat it as a single item.

Something else to watch out for is you'll find to get 'white' from your RGB intensities need to be very different for the three channels (probably). On the LED chips I have, the red is MUCH stronger than the green and blue so I needed different dimming curves on the the three channels in Vixen. xLights may have a similar arrangement.