Wiring and LED placement.
This is where things get finicky and time consuming. It took several days of scratching my head and tinkering to really figure out how best to string this many led's together. Jason came up with a fantastic mouting pattern and had a good chunk of it mapped out ahead of time, but I needed to translate it a bit more for how it was going to connect to the drivers and GHL Profilux EVG-AP-2F Ballast control boards.
The whole idea for this build, was to have a very distributed array of leds that can really shine with left to right style dimming. Vertex LED fixtures already do this, but in a DIY build it's fairly complicated to achive without a 3rd party controller. Thankfully Jason has a GHL Profilux III (which can do this dimming behavior really easily with one of the more current firmware releases.).
The Array is broken down so there is a Blue channel, and a White Channel every 12 inches. This will alow for a whopping total of 12 individualy dimmable sections of the fixture. The Profilux can use this with time shifting to simulate clouds going left to right, sunrise/sunset etc. Its surprisingly easy to program, but more on that later.
Here is the basic wiring pattern for each of the three 2 foot pendants (sorry this is hand drawn, I had to sketch it out while drawing with my 3 year old niece):
Then here is a rough idea of what I have to wire for the interface for the profilux.
Each pendant will require the use of two EVG-AP-2F Boards. Each board will be responsible for powering and dimming 3 Drivers (2 Blue bound to single channel and a Single White Driver). So basically there will be 1 EVG Boards every 12 inches.
Every 12 inches of light fixture is going to yield a wire harness with an 8 wire connector. This connector will will be waterproof (I usually use Marine boat trailor harnesses) and carry power for the 2 x Blue banks, 1 x White Bank, and 12V to power the cooling fans. This way I can build each pendant the same way, with the same wiring harness. They can be taken out, cleaned and maintained easily, and will be interchangeable with each other.
On a more simple LED build I used 4 wire connectors:
These are not photos of Jasons build, just examples of the connectors I plan on using.
I am still looking for a set that will be the most appropriate, but I think Lordco will have what I need. I'm hoping 6 of them dont set us back too much, but this is one of those touches that can make a DIY build much more durable (no corroding contact points).