LED | PartQuest™ Explore

Member of the PartQuest Explore Development Team. Focused on modeling and simulation of analog, mixed-signal and multi-discipline systems covering a broad range of applications, including power electronics, controls and mechatronic systems.

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Analog LED Driver with Thermal Protection using FloTHERM Netlist

Mike Donnelly
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Mike Donnelly

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11 years 2 months

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Member of the PartQuest Explore Development Team. Focused on modeling and simulation of analog, mixed-signal and multi-discipline systems covering a broad range of applications, including power electronics, controls and mechatronic systems.

Description

This LED spotlight example demonstrates the value of simulating both the electrical and thermal aspects of power dissipating circuits together, simultaneously.

In this design, a Vishay NTCLE100 Thermistor is used in a detection circuit to monitor the enclosure temperature. It is used for thermal shut-down protection, to keep the enclosure temperature well below the "Tg" (glass transition temperature) of the spotlight's Nylon 6 polymer lens. This is particularly helpful when operating at higher external ambient temperatures.

The "Thermals" (thermal dynamics) model was automatically generated from a full 3D-CFD analysis of the spotlight board layout and enclosure, using FloTHERM. The model is in the IEEE Standard VHDL-AMS format, so it can be directly imported into the SystemVision "1D" circuit and system simulation context. The ability to include an accurate model of the thermal environment is key to having "thermally-aware" circuit function design and board layout processes.

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Copy of LED Dimmer Circuit using 555 Timer - on Thu, 08/06/2020 - 15:40

nmbhujbal
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nmbhujbal

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Description

This LED Dimmer Circuit uses a 555 Timer to control the PWM duty cycle of the current drive. Rather than apply proportional but continuous current to the LED for dimming, which can cause color shifts, modulating the duty cycle allows the LED to operate at its nominal current during the “ON” portion of the cycle. Because the frequency response of human vision is limited, using a PWM frequency of 250 Hz avoids the perception of flicker for the observer.

The LED model has an internal monitor for the "perceived" light output (light-blue waveform), which is a low-pass filtered version of the instantaneous light output. The filter pole frequency is set to 15 Hz to represent the bandwidth of the human eye. The value of the dimmer setting (green waveform) is increased from 10% to 90% at time 100msec. The LED current pulses (purple waveform) are shown just before and after the duty-cycle transition.

Part of this design is based on a dimmer schematic found on-line:

http://www.555-timer-circuits.com/led-dimmer.html

That original circuit is actually incorrect, one of the diodes needs to be reversed. There was a comment from a reader who said he built the circuit as shown and it didn’t work. This is a good example of the value of simulating circuits before building hardware!

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Copy of Joule Thief Transformer Physical Design For LED Lighting - on Thu, 07/30/2020 - 16:46

nikolaevsa87
Designer230465

nikolaevsa87

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4 years 9 months

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Copy of Joule Thief Transformer Physical Design For LED Lighting - on Tue, 07/21/2020 - 11:25

349754
Designer230091

349754

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Copy of Joule Thief Transformer Physical Design For LED Lighting - on Thu, 07/16/2020 - 06:08

NecoBOy
Designer221446

NecoBOy

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Copy of LED Driver with Auto-Dimming for Thermal Protection - on Fri, 06/19/2020 - 14:27

alain stas
Designer208121

alain stas

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Description

This LED lighting example demonstrates the value of simulating both the electrical and thermal* aspects of power dissipating circuits together, simultaneously.

In this application example, a Vishay NTCS0603 Thermistor provides feedback of the enclosure temperature. This feedback is used to control PWM dimming of the LEDs, thereby limiting the internal temperature when operating at high external ambient temperature conditions.

This is a "Live" design, the user can change key parameter values and then run new simulations to see the results. These parameters include "r_mirror", the resistance of the current mirror that controls the capacitor charging rate of the 555 timer, and thereby set the PWM frequency. The user can also change "r_offset" that controls the temperature level at which the dimming operation begins. Finally, the user can set "r_iLED_set", to control the ON-state operating current of the LEDs.

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* To reduce the time needed to simulate the transition and settling at 6 different temperature levels, all thermal time constants were reduced by approximately 1000x. The actual thermal response time constant of the NTCS0603 is approximately 3 seconds (depends on mounting), not 3 msec! Also, the enclosure thermal capacitance value would more likely be 3 (J/degC) instead of 3 (mJ/degC), giving a thermal time constant for the enclosure of 10 (degC/Watt) * 3 (J/degC) = 30 seconds. This time scaling does not affect the static relationship between the outside temperature and PWM dimming.

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Copy of LED Dimmer Circuit using 555 Timer - on Thu, 06/11/2020 - 19:05

oorbes
Designer230321

oorbes

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4 years 9 months

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Description

This LED Dimmer Circuit uses a 555 Timer to control the PWM duty cycle of the current drive. Rather than apply proportional but continuous current to the LED for dimming, which can cause color shifts, modulating the duty cycle allows the LED to operate at its nominal current during the “ON” portion of the cycle. Because the frequency response of human vision is limited, using a PWM frequency of 250 Hz avoids the perception of flicker for the observer.

The LED model has an internal monitor for the "perceived" light output (light-blue waveform), which is a low-pass filtered version of the instantaneous light output. The filter pole frequency is set to 15 Hz to represent the bandwidth of the human eye. The value of the dimmer setting (green waveform) is increased from 10% to 90% at time 100msec. The LED current pulses (purple waveform) are shown just before and after the duty-cycle transition.

Part of this design is based on a dimmer schematic found on-line:

http://www.555-timer-circuits.com/led-dimmer.html

That original circuit is actually incorrect, one of the diodes needs to be reversed. There was a comment from a reader who said he built the circuit as shown and it didn’t work. This is a good example of the value of simulating circuits before building hardware!

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Mike Donnelly
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Mike Donnelly
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nmbhujbal
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nikolaevsa87
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349754
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NecoBOy
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alain stas
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oorbes
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