Allow me to introduce myself.

Hiya, my names Jared and I'm a hobbiest, maybe intermediate level electronics enthusiast. I read nuts and volts if that tells you anything. I grew up watching battlebots and making sumo wrestlers from cassette deck motors. These days I'm playing around with high powered led's, but circuit design is well beyond the scope of my current level of understanding. So after a mild session of googling for electronics forums, I stumbled across your doorstep. So without further adieu, here are some poorly constructed ignorant questions from a new guy.

I have an led on a mcpcb, on a heatsink with thermal grease to help with heat management. The optimal operating junction temperature for this diode is below 60f or 15c. I want to basically gut a digital thermometer and place the sensor on the hottest part of the pcb to monitor the temperature, but I'm looking for more elegant solutions. What am I looking at besides a thermistor and a single line display? Any help, links, et cetera would be appreciated, and if this is totally in the wrong section lemme know. THANKS!

you could make a simplistic current control using the thermistor and a bjt. depending of whether your thermistor was a ptc or ntc, the config would change.

something like this --


why do you need the display ? Do you to want to just see the temp and control it by some other means ? If so, your display could be a Led bargraph package along with an LM3914 or similar driver fed from a thermistor/ resistor junction.

kripacharya said:

you could make a simplistic current control using the thermistor and a bjt. depending of whether your thermistor was a ptc or ntc, the config would change.

something like this --
View attachment 85479

why do you need the display ? Do you to want to just see the temp and control it by some other means ? If so, your display could be a Led bargraph package along with an LM3914 or similar driver fed from a thermistor/ resistor junction.

Click to expand...

The display is for visual feedback of the junction temperature, which I'd like to monitor at will. Thanks for the quick response by the way. I'll look into bipolar junction transistors. Tell you the truth, I had a thermistor in mind. NTHS0805N02N1002J is the p/n. Looks like it's a ntc.

https://elcodis.com/parts/2242543/NTHS0805N02N1002JE.html

I've seen examples of code written for the arduino, but I'm sure there's better (read: dedicated and far less costly) semiconductors I should be looking at. As far as temperature regulation, the heatsink and fan should keep the temps low and the high wattage led should try its best to fry itself. Monitoring the temp will give me an idea of how well the heatsink is working.

https://www.edaboard.com/blog/1809/

Hey look at that. A turn key solution. Thanks search bar!

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Hey look, another one!

http://embedded-lab.com/blog/?p=916