Diy led

[CMcNeil]

Mark you should be happy with the growth.i know my acros,acans,chalices,and zoas are growning just as good under my LED's as they did under T-5 or MH.the colors are insane compared to MH or T-5 and the shimmer is IMO better than MH.overall im happy with my LED lights and glad i did try them out.the heat to the tank is literally zero,i have a sump fan that hasnt ran once since i switched over.i notice my heaters run more now than ever before since the lights produce no heat to the water.i will say everyone switching over to LED's need to acclimate the corals to the new lighting.i did have some bleaching issues early on but was able to stop that buy dimming my bulbs down and slowly inceasing the power of the past few months.im still not at full power yet but i am running my 18 royal blues at 7.5v and the cool whites at 6v now.i plan on driving the bulbs at 9v when i finish acclimating the corals to the lights.i started off running both banks of bulbs at 3v and increased one bank of bulbs at a time 1.5v every two weeks.next week i will increase my second bank up to 7.5v and wait two weeks again before increasing the blues to 9v.soo basicly in one more month i will be running all bulbs at full power which for my setup is 9v.

 

[bucks448]

brassmonkyballs - thanks for the usefull information - i will be saving that for later!

I will say you guys are lucky if you are getting that channel for $2/ft. I went online and it says $2.85 + $40 shipping to other coast!


If anyone bought too many of these or is planning to order more in the next month or so, please let me know. i would like a few more, but well under the min required. I should have ordered more the first time! I will pay the flat rate box shipping from you to me.

A tip I got from Jae was to search for just "metal" in your area, then call around to any metal or metal fabricator shops to see if they have or can get you some. Searching for aluminum will just return siding and pool cages.

I found that its easier to ask them for exactly what you want, like 4 - 6' pieces rather than a price per foot. Also, get pricing from a few different places. If I do the math the first place I called wanted $3.13 per foot. The place I just called was $1.88 per foot, and I jumped on it.

 

[bigt0706]

Oh boy..then they're either mis-labeling them or they're outputting 5A....when you get a fixture wired up see if you can take a current reading.

so all wired up if u run them 5 bulbs in a series with 6 strans they put out
650ma i try to add 4 more to make 7 strans and it droped the ma down to 450 and powered the 4 bulb set up to 1300ma

 

[bigt0706]

when u add the 5th bulb to the 7th stan it drops them all to 600ma so in order to get these ballast to run the bulbs at 700ma u can only run 25 bulbs 5 in series 5 in parallel

 

[GUILLO1]

there in a 8 groups of 10 in series so 40 off each leg , your paralleling the series

hey I just got my replacement power supplies but the only have 1 set of wires for the output. You think they will still work out? The other ones that were for 220V had 2 sets and I see Jeas have 2 sets aswell.

this is a picture on mine showing just one set of output wires

 

[bucks448]

They will work. Picked mine up Saturday. Jae said the two outputs were the older design. Just wire each series back to your output, brown is positive!

 

[bigt0706]

thats the way all the new ones have been shipping in

 

[brassmonkyballs]

so all wired up if u run them 5 bulbs in a series with 6 strans they put out
650ma i try to add 4 more to make 7 strans and it droped the ma down to 450 and powered the 4 bulb set up to 1300ma

Can you take a picture of your circuit? If I understand correctly you have 7 strands in parallel..6 with 5 in a series, 1 with 4 in series. It seems to me that 7th string was added in series to the parallel set......logic being 450ma x 6 = 2700ma plus the 1300 = 4000ma.

How are you measuring? The resistor method or between LEDs?

The good news is the 650ma is perfect though that driver is not 100W but thats ok so long as you know its mis-labeled.

If the 7th was at 1300ma and the other 6 at 450ma I assume you noticed a wicked difference in brightness?

 

[brassmonkyballs]

when u add the 5th bulb to the 7th stan it drops them all to 600ma so in order to get these ballast to run the bulbs at 700ma u can only run 25 bulbs 5 in series 5 in parallel

Yeah the driver is not outputting per its rating or its labeling. I still don't know how you got 1300ma....something was wired strange....easy to do. Current is only effected by the number in parallel and the current is constant. Voltage self adjusts by the number in series.

 

[bigt0706]

yes there was a huge diff in brightness , i am testing through leds , i am happy wih the 650ma or 600ma

 

[bigt0706]

i didnt expect anything to be exact from the manufacture

 

[brassmonkyballs]

yes there was a huge diff in brightness , i am testing through leds , i am happy wih the 650ma or 600ma

Yeah that level will be perfect. Thats why I love testing this stuff though....its the only way to truly know. You just passed on some very valuable information. Nice work.

 

[brassmonkyballs]

hey I just got my replacement power supplies but the only have 1 set of wires for the output. You think they will still work out? The other ones that were for 220V had 2 sets and I see Jeas have 2 sets aswell.

this is a picture on mine showing just one set of output wires

it will work out for 80 LEDs if thats what you want to power. 36v 5.6A give you 10 in a string and 8 strings in parallel at 700ma.

 

[bigt0706]

Yeah that level will be perfect. Thats why I love testing this stuff though....its the only way to truly know. You just passed on some very valuable information. Nice work.

thanks im to curious i like to paly around with things to see what u can get ,

now to figure out how to wire my buddies he planned on running 80 and the 40 off the ywo 200w ballast but now that they come with one leg we got to figure out whats going to work for him

 

[GUILLO1]

can you guys show us a diagram on how you wired the 80 or 88 leds in 8 series so some of us electrical dummies can understand.

 

[brassmonkyballs]

thanks im to curious i like to paly around with things to see what u can get ,

now to figure out how to wire my buddies he planned on running 80 and the 40 off the ywo 200w ballast but now that they come with one leg we got to figure out whats going to work for him

Someone else PM'd me looking for a driver recommendation because of same thing. 2 200W drivers and 120 LEDs. I can not find any info on that driver but they usually operate in a range and if its 24-36V the you should be able to run 60 off each one with unbalanced strings which would be fine. would be 4 strings of 8 and 4 string of 7. If you can find out of that driver operates in that 24-36v range this is how to do it.

If not, the Meanwell PLN-100-48 will run 40 of them in 3 strings of 13-13-14 or 14-14-12....etc. And the Meanwells put out as labeled

 

[bigt0706]

u will run the leds 10 in a series +,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,- then 8 groups of ten
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
u will run all the postives to geather jumping from the first led in each groupe and so forth with the negatives

 

[bigt0706]

can you guys show us a diagram on how you wired the 80 or 88 leds in 8 series so some of us electrical dummies can understand.

i could drawl u a nice layout but im on a 10 year old laptop so not much i can do for u on here computer wise

 

[GUILLO1]

u will run the leds 10 in a series +,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,- then 8 groups of ten
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-,+,-
u will run all the postives to geather jumping from the first led in each groupe and so forth with the negatives

the beggining and the end of every string does it have to be a separate wire going to the power supply? Or can one negative wire be shared for all the srings?

 

[brassmonkyballs]

the beggining and the end of every string does it have to be a separate wire going to the power supply? Or can one negative wire be shared for all the srings?

no...the positive lead from the driver goes to the positive end of the leads..jsut one spot....the negative goes to the other end where all the negatives are connected.