DIY LED Lights

[kjonulak]

I thought I would document my LED light build for one of my new aquariums. Before I get into the LED build, let me show you my new aquariums. I ordered them from CDA. The larger aquarium is around 260 gallons and the smaller one is around 130 gallons. These pictures were taken at CDA. The aquariums are currently sitting in my garage awaiting their install.

 

[kjonulak]

I guess I can only upload 5 images at a time. Here are the pictures for the smaller aquarium.

 

[kjonulak]

Ok now on to the LED Lights. First some background info on me. Many years back, I graduated from DeVry Institute of Technology with a Bachelors degree in Electronics when it was located on 24th and Camelback. I worked for a company called Hewlett-Packard for about 20 years as a field service tech and then at several of the manufacturing facilities designing field support into magnetic tape, magneto-optical and CD/DVD recording devices. After leaving the corporate world I started my own web development company. During this time, I had at least 20 FW planted aquariums and started designing LED lights to grow plants underwater. At the time, LED lights on aquariums were only DIY, the commercial brands didn't have any available. I then started into reef tanks and transferred what I learned about LED lights and started building LED lights for SW reef tanks. There was actually enough interest, that I sold off my web design business and started a new company building LED light systems for FW and SW reef aquariums. I even built a number of LED lights for a friend that grows african violets. He has 100's of AV plants.

So for my new builds, I decided to build the LED lights for just my larger aquarium. The aquarium will have an upper canopy and I can hide the heatsinks. For my smaller setup, the tank is a rimless and the lights will be visible so I decided to go with a couple of the Radion Gen 4's and a Gen 3 in the middle. One of the more difficult items when building DIY LED lights is finding nice looking fixtures. There was a company that I use to purchase empty light fixtures from. They have since stopped making them.

I can go into as much detail as needed, and if you have any questions please ask. There are certain products that have used and I like, they are not the only products available, but I have found them to work well for me and how I build my lights. I can go into cost details if needed. Now with that said, most likely I could have purchased a nice set of LED lights for my big tank, but I wanted the ability to control the number of different color (wavelength) LED's. I also wanted to spread out the LED's to help minimize dark areas in the tank. I also overbuild my fixtures. Just my nature. In addition, this allows me to run the fixtures at a lower power level and still have higher PAR levels. I will also be testing out a diffusor material I picked up based on an online conversation I had with Ryan at BRS. The diffusor will reduce PAR levels so I'll have plenty of power to compensate for the loss due to the diffusor. I'll get into that much later on.

As for how LED's work, if you don't understand how they work, just ask and I can go into that. For now, I will leave that out unless there is interest.

 

[kjonulak]

Ok my larger aquarium is 70"Lx36"Wx24"D. I decided to build 4 lights. The middle 2 lights will be centered on the aquarium running with the length of the aquarium. They will be placed one in the front middle the other towards the back middle. The remaining 2 will be placed one on each end running perpendicular to the front of the tank.
Requirements for lights:
All will use the same heatsink style (T-slot) No drilling/tapping of the heatsink. Been there, done that. I also use an LED holder that requires no soldering. I hate soldering just as much as I hate drilling and tapping of heatsinks.
All will be the same length (~33")
All will be the same width (~10")
All will have the same number of fans for cooling.
All will have the same number and type of LED's.
All will have 6 channels of light control (UV, RoyalBlue/Blue, Cool White, Warm White, Red and Green). I will be using a Bluefish light controller and it has 6 channels of dimming control. I know there is a lot of debate regarding the Red and Green LED's. I use them for a number of reasons. I feel that they do help with the coral colors, they make the fish colors pop better, if you want to grow the more colorful macroalgaes it does help them. I don't run them at high levels either. If you look at the breakdown of sunlight those colors are there and yes the reds will get filtered out quickly in the ocean.
LED type will be CREE, unless CREE doesn't have the type needed.
Power supplies will be MeanWell LPF series.

Based on the above info, I started working on my schematics. Here is what I came up with.
I'll explain later on why the schematics are broken out into 2 layouts one being UV, Blues and Cool Whites. The second being Red, Green and Warm Whites.

 

[kjonulak]

So a single light will consist of the heatsink with LED's and 2 power boxes or modules. I like to use enclosure boxes from Bud Industries (CU-3286-MB). These boxes can hold 4 of the MeanWell LPF series power supplies, but since I will have 6 of the MeanWell LPF power supplies, I am going to split them 3 and 3 into 2 boxes. So one of the power box/modules will contain the MeanWell power supplies for the UV, Royal Blue and Blue and the Cool White LED's. The 2nd power box/module will contain the MeanWell power supplies for the Warm White, Red and Green LED's. The 12Vdc for the cooling fans will also run through the 2nd power box. There is also a ground cable that will run from the heatsink through the power boxes.

The twist lock connector on the front of the power box supplies the power to the LED's. The 12Vdc also runs through this connector. I used a standard computer type 120Vac female plug on the back of the box. So if I had a site that required short or long power cords I could order the correct length. No need for extension cords. Above the power plug is the plug for the 12Vdc required for the fans. The 2 RJ-45 internet connectors are used to provide the dimming signals from the Bluefish light controller. I will get into that detail in the next post.

So here are what the finished power boxes will look like. This is a previous power box I made for a different light. When I was building LED light professionally, I wanted to have a finished product, I didn't want wires from the various power supplies and 120Vac exposed. These enclosure boxes worked perfectly for what I wanted. The MB designation for the enclosure box indicates that the box has a mounting bracket so that the boxes can be mounted or secured to a wall or plywood.

Since I will have 4 lights, I will need 8 power boxes total, 4 for the UV, Blues and Cool Whites and 4 for the Warm Whites, Reds and Greens. The nice thing with having multiple power boxes that are the same is that troubleshooting an issue is much easier. I can swap power boxes around to find where I am having an issue.

 

[kjonulak]

LED Dimming Controls

LED Dimming Controls

Early on I stated I wanted to use the MeanWell LPF series of LED power supplies. The MeanWell LED power supplies are designed to power LED's. They have the power supply and LED driver built into one package. The LPF series have 2 models one model does NOT provide the ability to dim the LED's the other models are designed to dim LED's. The dimming inputs on the LPF series has 3 ways to dim LED's; Resistive, PWM and Analog. One feature with this type of dimming is that with no dimming signal, basically an open circuit, the power supply with cause the LED's to fully turn on. This is great when testing the units to make sure everything is working as expected.

So resistive would be either using a fixed resistor value or a potentiometer (variable resistor) think of a volume control on an old style radio where you turn the dial to get more or less sound. With this method of dimming you can dial in the light levels you want on each of the channels and then you could use a timer to turn the lights on of off at specific times.

The PWM signal is what's called a pulse width modulation signal and the Analog signal goes from 0-10Vdc. For those of you with Apex controllers, I believe they have some Analog outputs which can be used to control lights or flow pumps. So if you have enough 0-10Vdc outputs on your Apex you can control the lights vs using the Bluefish or similar controller.

The Bluefish controller can do both PWM and Analog (either 0-10Vdc or 0-5Vdc) there are some LED power supplies that require the use the 0-5Vdc signal. Default with the Bluefish controller is 0-10Vdc.

Because I want my 4 different lights to act as one big light, I need to connect all my 6 channels of LED dimming control signals together. So all the UV LED's need to get the same dimming signal, All the Blue LED's need to get the same signal, etc. The way to make this happen is to take the respective signals coming from the Bluefish controller and distribute those signals to the various inputs on the MeanWell LPF power supplies. The signal schematic shown below is how I plan on doing that .

The Bluefish controller has 3 signal outputs using standard 3.5mm stereo connectors. So there are channel 1/2, channel 3/4 and channel 5/6 outputs. Early on I stated I wanted to use standard RJ-45 internet connectors and cables. These connectors are inexpensive, reliable and easy to wire. The cables come in all different lengths and you can get them at your local big box stores if needed. The key though was how to convert the stereo output of the Bluefish controller into standard Ethernet. I was going to build a device to do this, but then I saw that Icecap makes a stereo to RJ-45 cable that is wired for 2 sets of signals. I think the cable is meant for the Apex, which uses RJ-45 connectors to go to the Icecap Gyre pumps which has the stereo connector. This cable which was fairly inexpensive would work perfectly for my application. I still needed to build a device to split all the 6 channel signals and distribute them to the respective LED channels. For that I would use standard Ethernet components.

Since I can only load 5 images at a time I will load the images of the Signal Distribution Box in the next post.

 

[kjonulak]

Signal Distribution Box

Signal Distribution Box

So here is the Signal Distribution Box. The Icecap cables from the Bluefish controller will plug in at the bottom of the box. The standard Ethernet cables will plug into the respective RJ-45 ports and run to the corresponding power boxes/modules. Inside the box, I connected all the wires to the correct locations. I don't have a picture, but believe me it is a rats nest of wires. It will do the job, so that's all thats required.

 

[kjonulak]

I decided I better explain how LED's work because I need to explain how I decide which MeanWell power supplies I will be using with each of the LED types (UV, Royal Blue, Blue, Cool White, Warm White, Red and Green)

One important factor about LED's is that LED's are current driven devices, not voltage driven.

Most people are familiar with the typical volts i.e. 120Vac used in homes. If we look at a typical incandescent light bulb used in a home, these devices are voltage controlled.

In this type of circuit the voltage stays constant and the current changes. So what we need to understand is the relationship of watts to volts to amps, and how these relationships work for an incandescent bulb and an LED. The formula to calculate current is: watts / volts = current.

In a home circuit the voltage stays the same, but the current varies according to the type of device you are using. If you ever popped a circuit breaker (not GFCI) the reason you did is because you exceeded the current in the circuit not the voltage.

A typical 120 Watt incandescent bulb in a typical 120Vac fixture uses 1 Amp of current. Using the formula we calculate the math as follows: 120 watts / 120 volts = 1 amp. Now if we put 2 light bulbs on the same circuit in parallel then the voltage stays the same across both bulbs (120Vac), but the current goes up to 2 amps. Again using the formula we calculate the math as follows: 240 watts / 120 volts = 2 amps. So each bulb uses 120Vac @ 1 amp.

Add three 120 Watt bulbs in parallel the current goes to 3 amps and so on. So for a normal home light circuit, the voltage remains the same and the current changes. When you dim an incandescent bulb you lower the voltage across the bulb which causes the current to drop. This is important when I talk about how to dim an LED circuit. This is also why LED bulbs used in the home require a special dimming switch.

Reminder, LED's are current driven devices, not voltage driven. So now for an LED to keep the current constant in the circuit the voltage has to increase.

For this example we are going to assume that the LED power supply is providing 1 amp of current, and the LED is a 3 Watt LED so the voltage drop across the LED is 3Vdc. Since we know the current is 1 amp and the LED is 3 Watts the equation now becomes volts = watts/current 3 volts = 3 watts/1 amp.

Not so different than the incandescent bulb example, right. Well, not really.

Remember I mentioned that LED's are current driven devices. Now here is what happens when we put two LED's in a series circuit.

We calculated above that the voltage needed for each 3 Watt LED is 3Vdc @ 1 amp. So with 2 LED's in series we add the volts together and keep the current at 1 amp.

We now have 6Vdc (3Vdc x 2) across the the two LED's. So when we do the math we get 6Vdc x 1 amp = 6 watts.

If we put three 3 Watt LED's together in series we get 9Vdc for the three LED's still at the 1 amp which uses 9 watts.

So for a series LED circuit using 1 amp of current and 3 Watt LED's the voltage increases by 3Vdc as you add more LED's.

This is important because the power supply components needed to make your LED circuit work are specific to LED technology.

To drive an LED circuit you need a power device that varies its output voltage and keeps its current output constant.

The MeanWell power supplies I use are rated for a specific current output and a specific maximum Vdc. The specs on the LED power supply will determine how many LED's you can put in series on one LED power supply. I'll explain more about this later on.

So now that you understand that LED's are constant current devices, how the heck do we dim LED's. Well you vary the current going through them. Wait a minute we just talked about LED's as being constant current devices. Yes the are, but you can change the current level which will either increase or decrease the brightness of the LED. In home circuits we would change the voltage to dim a light, with LED's we change the current level. The MeanWell LED power supplies I use have a set of inputs which I mentioned in a previous post that can use either a resistive element, a PWM signal or an Analog (0-10Vdc) signal to increase or decrease the current output.


Real World Example

If I look at the specs for the CREE Cool White LED's I am using the data indicates the following:
Max Current 1500mA (1.5amps) Recommended current 350-1100mA Forward Voltage 2.85-3.4Vdc (as you change the current the voltage drop across the LED changes) Earlier I was using 3Vdc in my example. In the real world, the number will be dictated by the LED type. I typically use 3.3Vdc in my math equations unless an LED has a higher Vdc spec)

MeanWell LPF-60D-54 (the "œD" indication in the product number indicates that this power supply has the ability to be dimmed)
OUTPUT Specs

DC VOLTAGE: 54V (this is the maximum voltage that the power supply can provide. This is important because this will determine how many LED's I can have. Remember that 3.3Vdc I mentioned above.)
CONSTANT CURRENT REGION: 32.4 ~ 54V (what this spec indicates is that if the number of LED's you are using results in a total net Vdc of less than 32.4Vdc then the power supply will not provide you with the constant rated current of 1.12A) Since I always make sure I am above the minimum, I don't have to worry about this.
RATED CURRENT: 1.12A (1120ma) (maximum constant current that the power supply can provide. This is important, because you need to make sure the LED's you are using can handle this value. My CREE CW as per the specs above would be fine with this current value.)
RATED POWER: 60.48W (using our watts = volts x amps 60.48 Watts = 54Vdc x 1.12 amps)

Ok so how many of the CREE CW LED's can I put on this power supply? The math is easy on this one. It's the DC voltage of 54V/3.3V this number is 16.36 LED's. Since we can't have a partial LED, you would round down. I always round down when calculating the maximum number of LED's. So the maximum would be 16 of the CREE CW LED's. To stay above the power supplies minimum output voltage of 32.4Vdc (to keep the constant current) you would need a minimum of 10 LED's. 32.4V/3.3V which equals 9.81. When calculating the minimum number of LED's I always round up.

Ok that was a lot to take in and I'm hoping I didn't lose anyone with my explanation and/or the math.

If anyone has any questions, please ask there are no dumb questions.

 

[Jayreefer]

Thanks for the write up. Very good info.

 

[kjonulak]

Thanks for the write up. Very good info.

Thanks!

 

[dream54ing]

Thanks for the write up. Very good info.

Definitely some good info!!

Looking forward to see this thing up!!!

 

[kjonulak]

Definitely some good info!!

Looking forward to see this thing up!!!

I'm looking forward to seeing these lights above my new tank also.

 

[kjonulak]

I forgot to add this image which is part of the data sheet for the MW LPF-60D-54.
I put a red box around the version of the power supply that supplies the 54Vdc. In the part number LPF-60D-54, the 60 indicates the power (watts) of the supply and the 54 indicates the output voltage in DC (direct current). In looking at the data sheet you can see there are a number of other versions that provide different output voltages. As the output voltage changes so does the constant current value. That is why it is important to know the target current level for the specific LED that is being used. If the current is too low, you may not reach the desired PAR output you want. If the current is too high, you could possibly burn out your LED's.

 

[kjonulak]

LED Heatsinks

LED Heatsinks

I made 4 cardboard templates for the Heatsinks. I figured it would be easier to do this to determine the locations for each of them. I also marked the templates so that I can drill through them for the cable mounting system I am going to use. I was able to get one heatsink mounted today. Once all have been mounted I plan on taking them back down to add all the LED's and fans. I had the cable kits which were leftover from previous orders. I can then determine the correct height once the tank is in place.

Looks like I should get good coverage over the whole tank.

 

[kjonulak]

Power Box/Module Construction

Power Box/Module Construction

Since I can only upload 5 images at a time I will have a few posts showing the progress. The MeanWell power supplies I use comes with a protective sheathing on the wires. If I don't remove the sheathing, it is difficult to fit the wires into the enclosure boxes. So I remove them. Then started working on cutting the openings that I needed in the enclosure boxes. I did them free hand with a dremel tool with router and cutter bits.

My younger beagle (10 Years Old) was worn out watching me lol.

 

[kjonulak]

Power Box/Module Continued....

 

[kjonulak]

Power Box/Module Continued....

I use a product from AMP that is a quick connect/disconnect set of components. One part of the components is connected to the Power Box/Module. The mating part will eventually be connected to the wires that will run to the Heatsink/LED. There are a set of pins that are needed to make the pieces work. I connect the female pin to the power output wires from the MeanWell power supplies. The pin then pushes and locks into place within the holes. The one that I am using has 9 holes. There are others with less or more depending on what your needs are.

The male pins will connect to the wires that run to the Heatsink/LED and lock into the part that has the twist lock. There is a special tool required to crimp the pins to the wires. There is also a special tool to release the pins if you need to pop them out after they are locked into the holes.

 

[kjonulak]

Power Box/Module continued....

Production line is in full production. The Blue and White wires on the power supplies are used for the dimming controls. As I mentioned before I like using the RJ-45 internet connectors for my dimming connectors. In order to use the RJ-45 connectors, I need to use standard internet size wires. I transition from the standard internet wires to the Blue and White dimming wires on the power supplies using a straight barrel crimp. All I need to do is add the lids and these are done.

In the second picture you can see 2 long black components connected to red wires. These are fuse holders. The largest number of LED's that I use are the Royal Blue and Blue LED's. Regardless of color, all of the LED's are connected in series from the power supply power output positive and negative wires. With my RB and Blue LED's I would need 2 power supplies per light to supply all the LED's I am using. I wanted to use just one power supply vs the two. In order to do this I have to hook the two separate sets of the RB and Blue LED's and put them in parallel. Look back to my schematic for the UV, RB/B and CW LED's and you will see how this looks electrically. There is a catch when you do this. The power supply I am using is suppling 1.88amps. The RB and Blue LED's can only handle a maximum of 1.5amps. If I was to get a short in one of the 2 sets of RB and Blue LED's the full amount of the current from the power supply would then flow through the one good line and fry all my LED's. The fuse holders are there to prevent this. Inside the fuse holders are 1amp fuses. So if something shorts in the RB and Blue LED's the fuses will pop and save the LED's. During normal operation, if I was at 100% power on the RB and Blue circuit half of the 1.88amps would flow through each of the two circuits of RB and Blue LED's. Hope that makes sense. I did this to save on the cost of power supplies.

 

[kjonulak]

LED Heatsink Layout

LED Heatsink Layout

I've had some time to start focusing on getting the LED's laid out on my heatsinks. Each heatsink (4) will have the same layout.

LED's
UV: 10
Royal Blue: 22
Blues: 6
Cool Whites: 16
Warm Whites: 6
Photo Red: 6
Green: 6

 

[SawCJack00]

Awesome project! Looking forward to seeing the finished setups.