Boffin1:
You are saying its OK to pulse it at 100mA, my manufacturer says 30mA - hmm .Some TV remote controls use the internal resistance of the battery to limit the current through the IREDs, perhaps your running 192 LEDs from a couple of AA batteries is doing the same, how many LEDs are on at the same time ?
Whichever, its bad practice.
I run my 25mA rated LEDs at 18mA, and out of the last 25,000 LEDs since October, I have had only a couple of failures, so I stick to that current.
I am pulsing the latest project ( 50% ) at 21 mA, still well inside of the recommended current.
I never said it was ok to pulse 100ma to anything, I described what I think the author of the document that the OP posted was trying to elaborate, but was unclear on how they made their calculations, I gave an example of made up numbers, and i clearly stated that I made the numbers up.
Your manufacturer is talking about "safe limits", most of the datasheets that I've looked over show LEDs at a 20ma max. I dont know how much current the LEDs Im using are running at, but they are running at 5V from wall wart USB battery chargers, one is 500ma, the other is 800ma. When both are hooked up to a kill-a-watt, it shows 1 watt running both (it floats between 0 and 1) so my guess is it draws about 1/2 amp. I do know that the red LEDs are 1.8-2.2 VF) so 5v should be way too much for it.
I have another set that I have just completed, and I've run it from a 6 volt lantern battery, and from 4 AA batteries.
I have read that you can safely double the safe limit when using a duty cycle less than 50%, but I havnt done any testing with that. I have run 74hc595s way over their 70ma limit, for a few days without issue.