Ok, so I've been thinking about this for a while and have read everything I can find about this. I don't see why it won't work; but I don't know why nobody has done it yet, either.
Here's the plan:
An array of 10mm LEDs over my 70 gallon bow front. I've seen people try the 5mm LEDs in the past, but give up because it's too expensive. Well, I see the prices have come down a lot and the brightness of the LEDs has gone up! BestHongKong seems to have the best prices. I've heard the brightness fades after about 1000 hours, but that was with overdriven LEDs.
For example, I can get 130,000 mcd white (7000K to 10000K range) White LEDs and 40,000 mcd blue Blue LEDs.
1000 mcd equals 1 candela equals 1 lumen. So.... each white LED equals 130 lumens and each blue is 40 lumens. With LEDs this bright, you wouldn't have to overdrive them, and they should last the rated life.
They have a 12 degree viewing angle, so at 24", the spot would be 5.1 inches radius.
I want to use this board for mounting them:
Available for $5.59 .
I'll mount them 0.8 inches apart. This should give me great overlap, and the beam (at 12 degrees) will touch the one next to it at a water depth of 3.75".
I'll use these drivers:
They cost $19.99 at BallastWise
So my 36" X 12" array will have 1734 LEDs and will draw 141 Watts, which means I need three of the drivers. This is with 100 ohm resistors in series with 3 LEDs. You can see the schematic here: LED array wizard (source voltage is 12V, diode forward volatge is 3.4V, diode forward current is 20mA, number of LEDs is 1734).
So if I use a ratio of 3 blue to 1 white (just to even out the intensity difference, and because Solaris seems to favor the blue spectrum), then I'll have 1301 blue and 433 white. This will be a total of 52040 lumens from blue and 56290 lumens from white. Since my total area is 3 square feet (.28 square meters, round up to 0.3), I can now calculate lux. 108,330 total lumens divided by .3 meters equals 361,100 lux. Seems like quite a lot!!
Yes, it's a lot of soldering, but I theoretically have a huge amount of light for only 141 watts, and very easy to cool (just blow a fan over the top of the boards.
So here's the cost breakdown:
LEDs: $153 shipped for White. $271 shipped for Blue.
Driver: $100 for three shipped.
Project boards: $44.72 for eight shipped.
Solder: cheap
Solder gun: already got
Wire: cheap, because I'll use the LED leads for most of it.
Total: $568.72, plus labor and solder. Labor is priceless to me, so I won't even bother factoring it in. But just for fun, figure 3 LEDs per minute, equals 9.6 hours. Whew!!
So for $568, I have a 36" X 12" led light that is way brighter than Solaris. I can dim the arrays using my X10 controller and program it for sunrise, sunset and moonlight.
Ok, now everybody, tell me why it can't be done!!
Here's the plan:
An array of 10mm LEDs over my 70 gallon bow front. I've seen people try the 5mm LEDs in the past, but give up because it's too expensive. Well, I see the prices have come down a lot and the brightness of the LEDs has gone up! BestHongKong seems to have the best prices. I've heard the brightness fades after about 1000 hours, but that was with overdriven LEDs.
For example, I can get 130,000 mcd white (7000K to 10000K range) White LEDs and 40,000 mcd blue Blue LEDs.
1000 mcd equals 1 candela equals 1 lumen. So.... each white LED equals 130 lumens and each blue is 40 lumens. With LEDs this bright, you wouldn't have to overdrive them, and they should last the rated life.
They have a 12 degree viewing angle, so at 24", the spot would be 5.1 inches radius.
I want to use this board for mounting them:
Available for $5.59 .
I'll mount them 0.8 inches apart. This should give me great overlap, and the beam (at 12 degrees) will touch the one next to it at a water depth of 3.75".
I'll use these drivers:
They cost $19.99 at BallastWise
So my 36" X 12" array will have 1734 LEDs and will draw 141 Watts, which means I need three of the drivers. This is with 100 ohm resistors in series with 3 LEDs. You can see the schematic here: LED array wizard (source voltage is 12V, diode forward volatge is 3.4V, diode forward current is 20mA, number of LEDs is 1734).
So if I use a ratio of 3 blue to 1 white (just to even out the intensity difference, and because Solaris seems to favor the blue spectrum), then I'll have 1301 blue and 433 white. This will be a total of 52040 lumens from blue and 56290 lumens from white. Since my total area is 3 square feet (.28 square meters, round up to 0.3), I can now calculate lux. 108,330 total lumens divided by .3 meters equals 361,100 lux. Seems like quite a lot!!
Yes, it's a lot of soldering, but I theoretically have a huge amount of light for only 141 watts, and very easy to cool (just blow a fan over the top of the boards.
So here's the cost breakdown:
LEDs: $153 shipped for White. $271 shipped for Blue.
Driver: $100 for three shipped.
Project boards: $44.72 for eight shipped.
Solder: cheap
Solder gun: already got
Wire: cheap, because I'll use the LED leads for most of it.
Total: $568.72, plus labor and solder. Labor is priceless to me, so I won't even bother factoring it in. But just for fun, figure 3 LEDs per minute, equals 9.6 hours. Whew!!
So for $568, I have a 36" X 12" led light that is way brighter than Solaris. I can dim the arrays using my X10 controller and program it for sunrise, sunset and moonlight.
Ok, now everybody, tell me why it can't be done!!
