Submitted 11 months ago by snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
They have the same function and every other type of light refers to them as a ballast, even the newer electronic power supplies for Neon and Argon are called Ballasts with no Iron core transformers needed since the late 1980s.
LED power supply are more like power supply, the in the simple form create a direct current.
Ballast have the ability to create a boost, and only make a square wave.
So, it’s kind of doing different things. Ballasts are reducing current to protect things. From the wikipedia article:
An electrical ballast is a device that limits the current through an electrical load. These are most often used when a load (such as an arc discharge) has its terminal voltage decline when current through the load increases. If such a device were connected to a constant-voltage power supply, it would draw an increasing amount of current until it is destroyed or causes the power supply to fail. To prevent this, a ballast provides a positive resistance or reactance that limits the current. The ballast provides for the proper operation of the negative-resistance device by limiting current.
A constant-voltage power supply used for a single-LED (such as these loose LEDs is simply dropping the voltage, but there’s no need to to add more than a resistor…and depending on the power supply and your particular circuit, there might not actually be any need for that resistor.
an LED driver, is typically some form of microcontroller. RBG and RBGW led’s are increasingly receiving digital control signals rather than being controlled by modifying it’s power supply for example, NeoPixels which have to be driven by some type of microcontroller. (for example a purpose built controller, or something like a feather or pi pico or arduino)
Boosted this post based only on your name and pic
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
The way that it was explained to me it that “driver” is shorthand for “constant voltage driver” and ballasts provide an initial startup voltage the is different from the constant one they go on to provide.
EatYouWell@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sounds kinda like how your car will draw a few hundred amps to start but it’s fairly low after that.