At NAB the CS8's that were on display had led arrays that were a bit different than anything I had seen before. I talked with Nick at FF and learned that he got them from www.LEDLIGHTSWORLD.com. The part number is SMD3528-600. The primary difference is that the typical LED strip is 60 lights per meter. These are double the count to 120 per meter. The other change was using 4 rows of lights. 90 degrees on each side of the boom with two additional strips between them on at about 60 and 120 degrees on the bottom. So I installed them on booms 4 and 6. This quick video, hard to fly and aim a camera even on a tripod, shows the result. I have a single red led on boom 7, a double red on boom 5 and a single green on boom 3. The single LED's are from www.rc-lights.com Flight distance was out to about 90m. Password is LED As a comparison the from boom has the typical setup of a 6 inch red led strip, one on each side. The difference in brightness is very apparent. I've got some red's on order to replace those, maybe not a 4 strip setup but will experiment with that one.
Gary Thanks for sharing. Did you go with the waterproof versions? Did you see on the spec page how the green is over double the brightness of the red? I'm thinking about getting green for boom 5.
Yes! spent 2hrs on Friday looking for those LEDs after talking to Tabb. I have the blue on my tail kit now, but loose orientation after 80meters. Found that the green on my hexa2 stand out much better against the sky. I'll see about bumping them onto the QC webstore. Thanks Nick! Greetings, Adam
As Nick told me watch out a dusk/night. Ne mentioned he made up a jumper (resistor) to lower the voltage if he knew he was going to do a night flight.
Those LED's are the best I have found thus far. I like things extra bright for maximum orientation feedback and safety. For evening and night shots I have a port built in to my LED wire harness where I can substitute a regulator in for the continuity plug. For full voltage/max brightness during daylight shooting I use the plug (similar to a bind plug- simply passes direct voltage by completing the circuit). When I need to dim the lights I plug in a three pin regulator from Dimension Engineering. It has a small pot on it which allows me to dim the LED's as needed. Not only easier on the eyes but helps eliminate lens flare issues too. nick
Hey Gary, How do you have all 4 rows of lights soldered up? Are you just bringing all 4 rows to one connector? that would be tough with a little jst - which would match the 12v out on your ff control set. or are you jumping each cut section to the next with wire?
Two of the sets go straight to the FF Motor Control JST's. JST on each of the sets on boom 5 and 7. Other one goes to the MK PDB Extension Board which flashes the from boom when it hits the warning level. Each strip has two wires that are joined into a single pair which then run to the JST. (4 pairs into 1 pair).
I understand the need for lighting, one upgrade I'm going to do, but how bright is to bright? Does it affect the filming at all having that much light comming from the bird?
I have more of these LED's on my bird than Gary does and they are very bright for sunlight but IMO they are not too bright for late day/night shooting as I do not see any parts of the lights in my shots. I have 54 LED's on Booms 1, 3, 5, and 7. They are really awesome lights they just suck up a lot of power where I needed to put them on a seperate battery to keep my fight times up. Since I am running so many lights I am thet exception than the norm though as I think you would be fine running them on the main batteries without a reduction in flight time.