UV leds

[minellix]

Has anyone used the UV leds for Halloween lighting and willing to share video on how they look and the effect they give ???

[Braveit1]

A long time ago in a galaxy far away (2011) there was a group buy for a might mini spotlights containing colored led wall washers and a board to fix a standard spot light housing. An option was a UV led. This was just before Pixels were getting popular. The board was 24v and there were many issues at the time calculating the correct resistor values which led to many people blowing the leds with the original boards or using a constant current source instead of the resistors. Fast forward to today and we have retail UV LED spotlights available with much better lifespan. I used mine only the one year.

Previous thread with same question UV leds (doityourselfchristmas.com) and UV LED Showdown (doityourselfchristmas.com) for reference.

[Keith R]

Braveit 1 is correct as I purchased the UV LED's for one of my Mighty Minis. I made mine constant current instead of using the resistors. Although I have had some LED failures through the years, they were probably not due to over amping the LED's.
I do agree that the UV LED's do not do as good a job as, say, black light tubes. The LED's can be more directional, but they put out a noticeable light, which can light the area (not desirable).
Having to purchase a separate power supply and figuring out a board to mount the LED's makes this almost impossible to do feasibly. I agree, that you should look into a retail option or even better yet, buy the fluorescent types. Even the small ones may get the desired effect.

[jchuchla]

Thanks mike for posting that. I was just about to dig up that thread.
I'm now using mostly 20 or 50W UV LED floods. I've still got some application where the lensed 2x6 versions work better for throw. One of the most important things i learned is that different UV colors react to different UV wavelengths. the whites are better at 365nm and the oranges better at 395nm.
The other important thing to note is that many UV LEDs are self destructive. Especially the cheap ones. It seems like they just change out the led die while leaving the rest of the LED to use the same materials as any other color. The UV light will quickly degrade the plastic resulting in a burned looking LED that doesn't put out much light in a rather short time. Some as quickly as a few weeks. I found this especially true in the strip style leds and the 3w led packages.
In the end, nothing looked as good as the 400w mercury vapor lamp. But it wasn't worth the effort. It used a ton of power, and it burned so hot that it'd shatter whenever it rained. (which is much of october in the chicago area)

[dirknerkle]

A few years ago I read that when it comes to UV LEDs, it's best to run them in an under-current and under-voltage setup instead of pushing them to their max. I don't have any measurable proof that this works, but my 12v UV's will be starting their 8th year now, and there are no brown-outs or non-producing units and I've been running them at 10v and about 75% intensity the whole time.