Custom LED Canon

bpaston

New member
Well I have been lurking long enough and working on a project silently in the background. Since the begining of the cluster rage I have been taking notes from Evil and Jedi, and am about to embark on the journey so here we go. Below is sketch of the general idea behind this project...






photo1_zpsba070c80.jpg









Here we have the 90CRI Vero 10's, luxeon z cyan and blue, and the optic for the project.



photo3_zpse637f3a0.jpg





And in this pic is the circuit boards that will be doing the legwork for these lights. Thanks to o2surplus for these and the work he has put in designing and sharing with our community.


photo2_zps698bf5dc.jpg



The overall plan is to design and develop 5 seperate evil style MCPCB clusters revolving around a vero 10 as the center and using luxeon z for the colored leds, and luxeon m for the royal blue. The array will use a lens collimator as the optic. I think I shall deem it the Evil canon... :welcome: Please feel free to add your $.02.
 
As this project has progressed you can see in the original sketch I planned on using something larger than a vero 10, but using a vero 13 caused to many issues trying to keep the MCPCB under 100mm X 100mm. So the concept changed to the vero 10...some of these posts will be slightly accelerated as I am already into the production phase of the MCPCB, and trying to show this as a build thread from start to finish. With that being said below is a workup of the final MCPCB layout prior to going to the board house as a gerber file...

photo4_zps1207e87b.png


As you can see in the pic the MCPCB will have an overall measurement of 100mm X 100mm with an opening large enough to install a Bridgelux Vero 10. The remaining spots for leds are 4 luxeon m solder pads, and 22 luxeon z. The MCPCB will make use of a molex connector to allow plug and play capability vice solder pads. The design is for a total of 5 channels worth of control. Being 1 channel for the bridgelux, 1 channel for the luxeon m's, and 3 channels for the luxeon z's. Of which 2 channels have 8 leds, and 1 channel has 6.
 
Well at the time of writing this thread the gerber files have already been submitted to the board house, and should be in line to be produced. I was given an estimated time of 3-4 weeks before the shop who will be providing my led reflow services will receive them. So at this point it is a waiting game, and it seems as if the days are going by so slow. But in this down time I have been coming up with the next ideas for laying out and seperating the channels I want the leds to be on...So far I have come up with the following;

Im looking at running the following per cluster;

1 4k 90cri vero 10 BXRC-40G1000-B-03
4 luxeon m royal blue LXR0-SR00
5 luxeon z cyan LXZ1-PE01-0080
8 luxeon z blue LXZ1-PB01-0048
3 luxeon z lime LXZ1-PX01-0184
6 luxeon uv

With the plan to split them up like this;

* channel 1 / vero 10 4k 90cri (1 led)
* channel 2 / luxeon z blue (8 leds)
* channel 3 / luxeon z cyan (5 leds) & luxeon z lime (3 leds)
* channel 4 / luxeon z uv (6 leds)
* channel 5 / luxeon m royal blue (4 leds)
 
Steves is handling MCPCB production and reflow, but I am fairly certain they outsource the MCPCB.

Didn't know they did that, if you don't mind what are the MCPCBs running to have 5 made? I knew they would reflow for people but not make PCBs also. COOL!

I might have to jump in on that if it's something they will start stocking.....

:beer:
 
Didn't know they did that, if you don't mind what are the MCPCBs running to have 5 made? I knew they would reflow for people but not make PCBs also. COOL!

:beer:

Looking at $16.10 a board just to make the MCPCB plus shipping. As far as them stocking dont believe they will as it is a one off board I designed. But once together if it all works correctly I wouldnt mind having some more produced, if people were interested. But on top of the $16 a board your looking at a couple hundred dollars in leds and mounting cost per board. So definitly not a cheap project by any means. These are being designed to be hung roughly 3 ft above the tank from the ceiling, and light a 2 ft deep tank enough to support sps colonies. Basically an ecoxotic canon on crack with color controlable channels.
 
Last edited:
Looking at $16.10 a board just to make the MCPCB plus shipping.

That's not bad at all!

Did you design the board or did they do that included in the price?

Also how are you handling the luxeon z, having them shipped to Steve's or are they ordering them for you ?

If you don't mind again what's the total delivered cost going to be per Board after LED mounting?

Great build idea. Only thing I thing I would have done different is added some red and a lot more Violet.......

althought if not red enough you could always swap the vero for one of the 3000k 97 cri chips.........with all the lime and cyan you could still dial in a nice white light but with better rendering of red reflected corals like some of the acros and montiporas
 
That's not bad at all!

Did you design the board or did they do that included in the price?

Also how are you handling the luxeon z, having them shipped to Steve's or are they ordering them for you ?

If you don't mind again what's the total delivered cost going to be per Board after LED mounting?

Great build idea. Only thing I thing I would have done different is added some red and a lot more Violet.......

althought if not red enough you could always swap the vero for one of the 3000k 97 cri chips.........with all the lime and cyan you could still dial in a nice white light but with better rendering of red reflected corals like some of the acros and montiporas

I designed the board from scratch.

I sourced all the luxeon z's myself, steves needed a 250 quantity minimum per color.

Total cost mounted is still up in the air, but I do plan on including a parts and price list once all is worked out.

Well all luxeon z's are top luminous flux bins so all violets will be run at 1 amp and put out a total of 7500mw total or 1250mw an led. But the violets could always be put on one of the 8 led channels and the blues moved over to the 6 led channel. Which would allow 8 luxeon uv's at 1250mw a piece for a total of 10,000mw.

The 90 cri veros and 97 cri veros actually have a very similar spectral graph from what im told, but it is an eyes only datasheet for the 90cri. But at this point if I did not like the 90 cri I could easily switch over to the 97 cri, which is why I designed the MCPCB like I did.
 
Not sure about the rules on here with posting actual sites, but I got it from a very popular auction site. :dance:

Ugh and I can't PM! Well this is very cool so following. Why so much Royal blue by the way?

At some point Jedi will be along no doubt in my mind....
 
Ugh and I can't PM! Well this is very cool so following. Why so much Royal blue by the way?

At some point Jedi will be along no doubt in my mind....

Well I plan on running the vero 10 at possibly 700ma which will be 1620lm, and as per Jedi a 1:14 ratio looks good. Being I havent seen one in person I am just relying on his opinion. Running the 4 luxeon m's at 1 amp will give me about 24840mw which is very near a 1:14 ratio...and I have no doubt he will pop up soon enough.
 
You will really like those M's I promise. I went with his recommendation on them, and couldn't be happier. I have 4 at about 12" above the tank, they cover a 36x24" tank very well.
 
photo_zps4f43ff95.jpg


Here is the tank that the lighting will be going over...the tank is 60" long 20" wide and 20" deep. Plan is to hang from the ceiling which is about 9.5', and the tank is sitting on a counter height stand 36". So roughly 6.5' from bottom of tank is the mounting point, but the overall length of the heatsink this will be mounted to will move it closer to the tank. I am figuring I will be about 5' from bottom of sandbed to the actual point of light on the fixture.
 
Planning on 5 of those beasts to light that 60"?

Thats the idea...I would like to use a total of 5 for even coverage and to simulate sunrise, sunset, and cloud coverage through my apex. For the sunrise sunset effect I would like to see it brighten / fade from right to left like the sun would. So I dont believe I really need 5 but I think it would be better spread wise, but who knows I guess once I have them hanging I will see what really works.
 
I designed the board from scratch.

I sourced all the luxeon z's myself, steves needed a 250 quantity minimum per color.

Total cost mounted is still up in the air, but I do plan on including a parts and price list once all is worked out.

Well all luxeon z's are top luminous flux bins so all violets will be run at 1 amp and put out a total of 7500mw total or 1250mw an led. But the violets could always be put on one of the 8 led channels and the blues moved over to the 6 led channel. Which would allow 8 luxeon uv's at 1250mw a piece for a total of 10,000mw.

The 90 cri veros and 97 cri veros actually have a very similar spectral graph from what im told, but it is an eyes only datasheet for the 90cri. But at this point if I did not like the 90 cri I could easily switch over to the 97 cri, which is why I designed the MCPCB like I did.

My eyes have seen it but I cant share without Bridglux express permission. It takes a bit of persistance to get a hold of the spectral graphs for the 90CRI models. The 97's simply have a larger percentage of Red phosphor in relation to the other spectrum. The 97 CRI data sheets are publicly available.

The 90 CRI 5000k for example is pretty well balanced for greens and red phosphor for reef use as a main white source, but with the addition of cyan and lime you may(possibly) end up wanting more red from the vero to balance out (fortunately they are only a few dollars and will be easy for you to swap out if needed.

Alternatively one might add 3 reds instead of limes and combine limes and cyan with 2 limes and 3 cyan (or visa versa) on that channel to give a little better control of overall color temperature regardless of the Vero chip used. I'ts really just a balancing act and much is up to personal preference in the end.
 
Back
Top