Tower Power

Description
Since 2010 the University of Idaho Association for Computing Machinery has put on several LED light shows by turning the Theophilus Tower into a giant pixel display. This was accomplished by placing strings of LEDs in the tower windows and controlling them through a series of chips and laptops. The current power supplies for the LEDs bring in roughly 16 VDC, the majority of which is dropped across the parallel strings of LEDs. Any excess voltage is then dropped across a transistor acting as a constant current source. This causes a lot of excess heat. To prevent the LEDs and chips from over-heating, several large heat-sinks need to be placed on the control chips. The goal of this project is to create new power supplies or re-design the current supplies to make them more efficient by reducing overall power consumption. Specifically the input voltage should be controlled so that the diodes in each string drop a voltage roughly equivalent to the input. This will eliminate the need for a transistor or resistor to compensate for any extra voltage. Current will also need to be regulated since each diode requires a current within the range of 270-300 mA to emit the light needed for the light show.