Diy Led Build - For Real This Time.
About 1 year ago I built a DIY LED as a trial run. I learnt a few things, found a few things I didn't expect & I have had time to sit, ponder and re-evaluate what I wanted.
Below is what I have come up with and will be building. As it is DIY I can also tweak it a little however I suspect it will be far superior to what I currently have.
What have I had?
My setup for the past 10 years or so has been 2 x 250W MH lights. Until recently (about 18 months ago I moved the tank into a "fish tank room") I supplemented these with 2 x Actinic tubes - I just never moved the Actinic tubes from the hood to the room as the plan was always to go LED's. I also added 3 x Moontubes and a Moontube Controller a few years back (fishbowl innovations brand).
I had never really been happy with the sudden "off" action of the halides. Turning on was never an issue as they slowly lit, from yellow through to White (well I thought it was white, until I'd replace the bulbs from time to time and saw how yellow they got with age). I also have an issue in Summer with the tank room over heating due to the heat thrown by the halides (on a summers day it could heat the room by as much as 10 degrees which made keeping the tank cool a real issue). Also worth noting is the fact these 250W halides actually run at 280W each.
So what did my first attempt look like?
Well, after much research and um'ing and arh'ing I decided to go down the DIY route - a lot of credit going to @MagicJ and @Rob - without them I probably would have bought into the Maxspect P series.
I started this thread to learn what I could and lots of members were on board to assist with experiences and opinions
http://www.thereefuge.com.au/threads/diy-led-lighting-questions-for-those-who-have-done-it.5158/
Below is a pic of where I ended up with what I am calling v0.1 Basically it has 7 channels of lighting configured as such:
I'm not sure why to this day, however it looks really blue when I put if over my tank (and in the photo - it is far less blue when turned on in a large open space room). I was a little disappointed with the overall colour balance and took the light to @Rob house - the colour balance looked great over his tank and was a nice white with a hint of blue tinge - exactly what I wanted. Strange :(
I did my best to keep the wiring neat, but with that many LED's clustered so tightly together it was hard. I wanted tight clusters to keep the disco effect on the sand bed to a minimum and get a nice even spread of light (hence no lenses)
So what is the plan now?
Soon after I finished v0.1 http://ledgroupbuy.com released their Lumia 5.1 Reef chip - http://www.ledgroupbuy.com/lumia-5-1-100w-full-spectrum-5-channel-led/
@MagicJ already had his hands on one by the time I saw it and had it running - http://www.thereefuge.com.au/threads/lighting.7893/#post-112825
It looked perfect. A little more conversation offline with @MagicJ and I was convinced this was for me.
So I put and order in. The plan is to have 3 x modules (1 for each hole in the bracing like above). Each module with have 1 x 18" MakersLED heat sink, 2 x Lumia 5.1 chips, a PSU capable to running the full 200W if I decide to, 2 x LDD driver boards (1 per chip using all 5 channels), a DC-DC converter (to power the cooling fans) and of course the cooling fans themselves. I plan to run:
The bare heat sink after I drilled a few holes and fitted grommets to run the wires through
Chips mounted and wires run on the underside
And the wires labelled with the chip number (1 or 2) and channel (A-E). Keeping these consistent through to the Driver board will help with the dimming later
Cooling fans mounted directly above chips
Here is a pic of the caddy where everything will be mounted in. As it is in a tank room aesthetics aren't a really priority. The caddy has rollers on the top and these fit door hanging rails so the module can easily be slid left or right about the tank, without be turned off, for tank maintenance. At this stage only a 240V cord with a molded plug and a CAT5 cable will come out of the board - at a later stage I may also change these to be sockets. You can also see the PSU hooked up to the driver boards and DC-DC converter.
The 5 individual channels running (in no particular order) and finally the chip running with all channels on. (iphone pics don’t really represent the colours very well)
On my first trial run over the tank the light appeared blue again - not as blue as v0.1 but not white like I expected. It must be something to do with the colour of the walls in the tank room. I am not too concerned as I can correct this by either moving a few channels up to 700mA or (the more likely scenario) using @MagicJ controller to bring the blue's down a bit. I could also slap a coat of white paint on the room's walls but that seems like to hard work. Some initial observations:
The answer seemed really easy - stop fiddling around with little dinky holes for the light to pass through and make a bigger one. So I cut a big square out from under the heat sink (the holes in the centre of the cut out below are what was there in the pics above).
So now it looks like this
So much more punch for my money....
All up, using the same power meter I measured the halides with this module runs at 120W. It is approximately running about 50% of its capacity so if I need more light in the future I can just throw bigger LDD's in the driver board. As I am a softies fan and will move into some LPS soon I think what I have will suffice. I will end up with 360W of LED over an 8x2 foot print (but can increase it to 600W). The light sources will originate from 6 points (6 LED's) so the coverage should be very even.
Whats next?
Below is what I have come up with and will be building. As it is DIY I can also tweak it a little however I suspect it will be far superior to what I currently have.
What have I had?
My setup for the past 10 years or so has been 2 x 250W MH lights. Until recently (about 18 months ago I moved the tank into a "fish tank room") I supplemented these with 2 x Actinic tubes - I just never moved the Actinic tubes from the hood to the room as the plan was always to go LED's. I also added 3 x Moontubes and a Moontube Controller a few years back (fishbowl innovations brand).
I had never really been happy with the sudden "off" action of the halides. Turning on was never an issue as they slowly lit, from yellow through to White (well I thought it was white, until I'd replace the bulbs from time to time and saw how yellow they got with age). I also have an issue in Summer with the tank room over heating due to the heat thrown by the halides (on a summers day it could heat the room by as much as 10 degrees which made keeping the tank cool a real issue). Also worth noting is the fact these 250W halides actually run at 280W each.
So what did my first attempt look like?
Well, after much research and um'ing and arh'ing I decided to go down the DIY route - a lot of credit going to @MagicJ and @Rob - without them I probably would have bought into the Maxspect P series.
I started this thread to learn what I could and lots of members were on board to assist with experiences and opinions
http://www.thereefuge.com.au/threads/diy-led-lighting-questions-for-those-who-have-done-it.5158/
Below is a pic of where I ended up with what I am calling v0.1 Basically it has 7 channels of lighting configured as such:
- 12 Cool White driven at 700mA
- 4 Neutral White driven at 700mA
- 12 Blue driven at 700mA
- 12 Royal Blue driven at 700mA
- 8 Violet 405-420nm driven at 350mA
- 4 Turquoise driven at 500mA
- 4 Cyan driven at 500mA
I'm not sure why to this day, however it looks really blue when I put if over my tank (and in the photo - it is far less blue when turned on in a large open space room). I was a little disappointed with the overall colour balance and took the light to @Rob house - the colour balance looked great over his tank and was a nice white with a hint of blue tinge - exactly what I wanted. Strange :(
I did my best to keep the wiring neat, but with that many LED's clustered so tightly together it was hard. I wanted tight clusters to keep the disco effect on the sand bed to a minimum and get a nice even spread of light (hence no lenses)
So what is the plan now?
Soon after I finished v0.1 http://ledgroupbuy.com released their Lumia 5.1 Reef chip - http://www.ledgroupbuy.com/lumia-5-1-100w-full-spectrum-5-channel-led/
@MagicJ already had his hands on one by the time I saw it and had it running - http://www.thereefuge.com.au/threads/lighting.7893/#post-112825
It looked perfect. A little more conversation offline with @MagicJ and I was convinced this was for me.
So I put and order in. The plan is to have 3 x modules (1 for each hole in the bracing like above). Each module with have 1 x 18" MakersLED heat sink, 2 x Lumia 5.1 chips, a PSU capable to running the full 200W if I decide to, 2 x LDD driver boards (1 per chip using all 5 channels), a DC-DC converter (to power the cooling fans) and of course the cooling fans themselves. I plan to run:
- Channel 1 - Neutral White (base white spectrum) @ 500mA
- Channel 2 - Royal Blue (base blue spectrum) @ 500mA
- Channel 3 - Hyper Violet (enhanced growth) @ 350mA
- Channel 4 - Deep Red / Turquoise (enhanced colour spectrum) @ 350mA
- Channel 5 - True Violet / Cool Blue (enhanced growth and colour spectrum) @ 500mA
The bare heat sink after I drilled a few holes and fitted grommets to run the wires through
Chips mounted and wires run on the underside
And the wires labelled with the chip number (1 or 2) and channel (A-E). Keeping these consistent through to the Driver board will help with the dimming later
Cooling fans mounted directly above chips
Here is a pic of the caddy where everything will be mounted in. As it is in a tank room aesthetics aren't a really priority. The caddy has rollers on the top and these fit door hanging rails so the module can easily be slid left or right about the tank, without be turned off, for tank maintenance. At this stage only a 240V cord with a molded plug and a CAT5 cable will come out of the board - at a later stage I may also change these to be sockets. You can also see the PSU hooked up to the driver boards and DC-DC converter.
The 5 individual channels running (in no particular order) and finally the chip running with all channels on. (iphone pics don’t really represent the colours very well)
On my first trial run over the tank the light appeared blue again - not as blue as v0.1 but not white like I expected. It must be something to do with the colour of the walls in the tank room. I am not too concerned as I can correct this by either moving a few channels up to 700mA or (the more likely scenario) using @MagicJ controller to bring the blue's down a bit. I could also slap a coat of white paint on the room's walls but that seems like to hard work. Some initial observations:
- I am getting great shimmer on the rock work and sand bed - better than my MH
- The light seemed a little dull on the sand bed and under rock work
- There is no sign of the disco effect on the sand bed. I will spend more time looking very closely when I clean the glass, but I am really pleased thus far with what I have seen.
- There appeared to be a slight spotlighting effect from the chips, not spreading the light as much as I thought. This is without lenses so I would have thought the light should have spread really well.
The answer seemed really easy - stop fiddling around with little dinky holes for the light to pass through and make a bigger one. So I cut a big square out from under the heat sink (the holes in the centre of the cut out below are what was there in the pics above).
So now it looks like this
So much more punch for my money....
All up, using the same power meter I measured the halides with this module runs at 120W. It is approximately running about 50% of its capacity so if I need more light in the future I can just throw bigger LDD's in the driver board. As I am a softies fan and will move into some LPS soon I think what I have will suffice. I will end up with 360W of LED over an 8x2 foot print (but can increase it to 600W). The light sources will originate from 6 points (6 LED's) so the coverage should be very even.
Whats next?
- I need to finish the other 2 modules. The caddies are already built so it’s just a matter of finding time to wire them up.
- Get my hands on a dimming controller and wire it into the PWM sockets on the boards. Planning on using @MagicJ DIY controller - http://www.thereefuge.com.au/threads/diy-arduino-led-controller.5655/
- Program the controller
