DIY LED Array build

der_wille_zur_macht said:
Are you concerned about # of drivers from a cost perspective or a complexity perspective?
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A bit of both. Tying together that many Meanwells is going to require at least a good junction box or power center. Pretty much like the one that I did for my 225. I am thinking that I would want to do this in banks or sets of four tanks.

PS - you've probably already considered this, but with 16 4' tanks you're going to be well into the wholesale bulk discount volume on these components, so it might make sense to shop carefully before you buy anything. I dunno if manufacturers would be willing to deal with an end customer, but at the least I'd hope you got a discount from a vendor.
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Yes, I am starting to source out what I need and budget accordingly so this build is going to be long and drawn out depending on what I can order first.


ETG was giving the group buy on nano-reef.com a quantity discount......
http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/inde...owtopic=194886
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Thanks, I will look into that.

I started the ball rolling by getting 2 of the the Meanwells so I can properly plan out the build as I go. I can't afford to order so much stuff and not have a solid plan for putting it all together first.
 
Altpers0na said:
http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=192645&st=40&p=2179996&#entry2179996

from that group buy link,
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Too expensive. The coverage shown is on a 8x8x6 inch tank. I need something to cover 24 x 12 x 10 so I would need more than one of these per section.

Nice idea though.

Altpers0na said:
i think i like this better
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I think the pricing is right but I would need more information about what type of output I would be getting as well as the light spread. Maybe I will order one to kick around but I need to be sure I can wire this to the Meanwell without too much surgery.

There is also the issue of heat.
 
shackscs said:
Too expensive. The coverage shown is on a 8x8x6 inch tank. I need something to cover 24 x 12 x 10 so I would need more than one of these per section.
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IMHO that unit has it's place on nanos and others concerned with an artsy presentation, not when trying to light a bulk size of growout tanks, or behind a hood. You could DIY a similar 3-LED fixture for cheaper, but it wouldn't have the polished appearance.


I think the pricing is right but I would need more information about what type of output I would be getting as well as the light spread. Maybe I will order one to kick around but I need to be sure I can wire this to the Meanwell without too much surgery.

There is also the issue of heat.
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That headlamp unit is built on a single Cree XR-E P4 (plus a bunch of low power LEDs we can ignore), which is pretty much the lowest bin XR-E you can easily get. Output is ~80 lumens/watt, so about 30% less than the Q5 bin commonly used. Again though the unit is wildly overpriced compared to DIY'ing for a large rig. P4 XR-E can be had under $4/ea in bulk. (I'd still never use them, because you'd be burning 30% more watts to get the same output so in the long term you'd lose money compared to just spending more on Q5's up front.)
 
I agree om all counts. This does not look to be something that would work into my plans.

I got confirmation that the Meanwells have shipped so the fun begins.
 
with the amount of drivers you need, maybe you can talk them into a group buy of some sort. I'm pretty sure you'll have enough people on RC who want to get in on it.
 
g8gxp said:
with the amount of drivers you need, maybe you can talk them into a group buy of some sort. I'm pretty sure you'll have enough people on RC who want to get in on it.
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there was a group by done before the one that evil did that i posted the link to above. i'm pretty sure it included the meanwells & they got a group discount on them. shoot evil a msg over on nano-reef

....but doing a group buy on here is tricky. the ones i have seen get tried, some of the mods interpret the UA that doing so makes you a "retailer" of sorts which has it's own rules/headaches. or at least that is the impression i have gotten

probably outta get clarification on how to proceed w/ something like that before getting started. i made a post once offering to give something to somebody if they wanted to pay the few bucks of shipping & i was chastised for selling, so it can be a grey area
 
Nanotuners.com currently sells both the Cree XR-E Q5 White and Royal blue for $6.29/each. I ordered 6 of each last night for my build.

edit: RapidLED.com also sells kits that include dimmable powered drivers, the Cree LEDs & Lenses, and thermal adhesive.
 
Last edited:
If you guys balking at driver cost want to wait a day or two I'm writing a thread on not bothering with them that I'll be putting up.
 
Wow!

Bring it on.

I was looking at about 16 drivers @21.00ea. If you have a better system, I am all ears.

Make sure you post a link here as I am you are going put it in its own thread.

Waiting......... :)
 
kcress said:
If you guys balking at driver cost want to wait a day or two I'm writing a thread on not bothering with them that I'll be putting up.
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Looking forward to it. I'm happy with my DIY driver solution but it's going to be a pretty big time commitment. I'm probably going to be soldering for weeks to come up with the 20+ drivers I'll need for my 360. :D
 
Doin' the same thing with the drivers :)

Doin' the same thing with the drivers :)

Here's the circuit layout for 8 drivers (yet to be tested, just waiting on digikey at the moment) ...

Ok, well RC doesn't like large images, so to make it readable, it's here http://www.0x0000ff.com/imgs/drivers.gif instead :)

I haven't built and verified this yet, or I'd be writing the thread that kcress is going to do, but couldn't resist showing :) Features:
  • Wide tracks for signals so they can cope with the required current. The required trace width using 1oz/ft^2 copper is 11.8 mil at room temp. I've roughly doubled that to 20 mil trace-widths :)
  • Copper ground pour just about everywhere, in this case mainly to aid the heat dissipation
  • Brings out the PWM signals on the chips to allow a microcontroller to dim individual strings of LEDs, but also allows bridging of contacts to just turn 'em on
  • Reduced component count, total cost comes to about $3.75 for each driver of a string of 6 LEDs
  • Nice easy surface-mount (SMT) components and CNC-router friendly layout
  • Change the current on each channel by just changing the 0.2R resistor (500mA) to 0.1R (1A), 0.11R (900mA) or 0.14R (714mA)

I have a CNC router at home to engrave the circuit on copper-clad board, and I have a SMT mini-oven. In the past I've happily done 240-lead quad-flat-pack chips with leads separated by 0.5mm, so 1.27mm lead-separations are a walk in the park :)

I'm rather looking forward to linking this up when the LEDs arrive. In my case, with 90 LEDs, the total driver cost is < $60, whereas 15 buckpucks is ~$300 inc tax/delivery. Saves me about $250.

Simon
 
der_wille_zur_macht said:
Simon, care to share your criteria in choosing the STCS1 chip?
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Well, I wouldn't say an exhaustive search of the options was performed [grin] - there may well be a better one available, but ...
  • According to the datasheet it supports up to 40V input with 0.5v overhead, and 1.5A max output. That's a comfortable headroom over what I'll actually want it to do.
  • It supports PWM dimming
  • It's cheap at $3.19 each or $2.80 for 10 and very few additional components required
  • The circuit is basically lifted directly from the datasheet and replicated so it has a better-than-average chance of working :)
  • The device runs cool, from all accounts. Despite that, I poured a lot of copper to try and help things along.
  • It's small & surface-mount so I can fit several on a board, but it's easy surface-mount. I have an SMT oven, but you could trivially solder this thing by hand if you used conductive thermal adhesive for the center pad.

I thought of bumping the voltage up and getting more LEDs per driver, but it's just not worth it in terms of the cost of the PSUs. The 24v ones are cheap (24V @ 8.3A for $20) whereas the 36v ones are far more expensive (36v @ 8.5A for $97); both of these from mpja.com. The drivers are so cheap, it's not worth it.

Simon
 
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