Diy led

Steven M said:
Some pics of my fixture, keep in mind the 88 white leds are running at 320mA and the 36 blue are at 690mA. The blue leds have two diodes and the whites one. FEDY does not tell witch one is Epistar/Bridge lux Chips. The small driver is a constant current driver and works fine for 30 or 36 leds.
Blue only
005.jpg

006.jpg

White only
007-1.jpg

008.jpg

All led
009-1.jpg

010.jpg

If anyone wonts to stop over and see the fixture send me a pm. I would like to get the par reading of the setup as it is running now.
Click to expand...

were in fl i have a par meter i dont need to see the setup but dont mind sharing
 
letoan said:
Is it just my eyes, or these Fedy LED are not bright enough?

I'm running 112 Fedys (1 white:1 blue ratio) with 4 Mean Well drivers on an 68" heatsink.

When I set it ~8" above the water, the color is pretty dull.. Nothing compare to MH.

I glued all 112 Fedys with 60 degree optics, is this the problem?
Click to expand...

catching up on the reading and a couple things/questions come to mind letoan and True.

The 1st being do not assume the Meanwell comes set to 1300ma. I know we have been led to believe that but mine have all come set to 1000ma....no big deal measure and find out and adjust it if needed. It may be 1300 but until you measure you won't know.

2nd thing is we too often interchange Blue for Royal Blue in our discussions. Letoan which are you using? Blues should not be used for the main blue in the tank. That should be Royal Blues. Further, Royal Blues are approaching UV on the spectrum and out eyeball does not fully appreciate the 'brightness' of a royal blue. Lumens is a perceived level of brightness...by the human eye. Royal blues do not lend themselves well to perceived brightness...hence they are usually only 30-40 lumens. However there is a considerable PAR spike that you can't appreciate without taking measurements.

Next thing I question on your setup is the use of 1:1 18,000k and (I hope) Royal Blues. I have no doubt this would look dim. A better ratio would be 2 18000k whites to 1 RB IMO. Thats what I am running and I have to dim it and it seems many of the FEDY fixture DIY'ers are doing the same ratio.

Given its a 68" heatsink I will assume its a 72" tank. How deep is it? What is the spacing of your LEDs, how many rows, space between rows? Optics shouldn't be your problem here but if spaced far apart and then using optics you can get more spotlighting than mixing which could result is it appearing a little dull in my experience and 8" off the water is not too high depending on depth of the tank.

The biggest thing for me based on the info you gave is the 1:1 ratio.

Hope that helps
 
brassmonkyballs said:
catching up on the reading and a couple things/questions come to mind letoan and True.

The 1st being do not assume the Meanwell comes set to 1300ma. I know we have been led to believe that but mine have all come set to 1000ma....no big deal measure and find out and adjust it if needed. It may be 1300 but until you measure you won't know.

2nd thing is we too often interchange Blue for Royal Blue in our discussions. Letoan which are you using? Blues should not be used for the main blue in the tank. That should be Royal Blues. Further, Royal Blues are approaching UV on the spectrum and out eyeball does not fully appreciate the 'brightness' of a royal blue. Lumens is a perceived level of brightness...by the human eye. Royal blues do not lend themselves well to perceived brightness...hence they are usually only 30-40 lumens. However there is a considerable PAR spike that you can't appreciate without taking measurements.

Next thing I question on your setup is the use of 1:1 18,000k and (I hope) Royal Blues. I have no doubt this would look dim. A better ratio would be 2 18000k whites to 1 RB IMO. Thats what I am running and I have to dim it and it seems many of the FEDY fixture DIY'ers are doing the same ratio.

Given its a 68" heatsink I will assume its a 72" tank. How deep is it? What is the spacing of your LEDs, how many rows, space between rows? Optics shouldn't be your problem here but if spaced far apart and then using optics you can get more spotlighting than mixing which could result is it appearing a little dull in my experience and 8" off the water is not too high depending on depth of the tank.

The biggest thing for me based on the info you gave is the 1:1 ratio.

Hope that helps
Click to expand...


Thanks BMB. You're right about the Mean Well drivers, I tested my string yesterday, they're under as assumed 1300mA. I cranked it up, thing looks brighter now.

I think I have Royal Blue, I hope, since that what I ordered from Fedy :)

My tank are 72-18-20.

Yes, 1:1 ratio is overkill with blue, I have to dim the blue down to about 30% less than white. I did ordered extra white, I'll going back to the original plan of 2:1.

Thanks again for the diagram from a few pages back, this project working out great.
 
I'm thinking it's about time to get my LED project started, but first I'd like to ask a couple of final questions of the experts.

My tank's footprint is 96" X 36". I hadn't done enough research when I placed my order with the club's group buy and ended up not ordering enough Royal Blues.

At this point, my stock consists of:

5 Mean Well HLG 185-30B drivers
60deg. optics (Fedy)
330 18K whites (Fedy)
24 RBs. (Fedy)

I intend to run 288 white and 72 RBs (4 to 1 ratio).

My questions are:

1. does the white to blue ratio seem OK?

2. I need to purchase 60, or so, additional RBs. As Fedy has a minimum 100 LED order limit, I was thinking about getting the RBs from satisled.com (link). Does everyone feel that the SatisLed RBs are equal in quality to the Fedys? The Fedy's RB are a 2 chip led whereas the SatisLed RB seems to be single chip.

Thanks for any help!
 
Tom , You know I'm no expert . In fact you have read a lot more on this subject than I have . I am going to run two 18,000 Ks to one Royal Blue . That way I can adjust the Mean Well Drivers to get the color temp I want ? Just my $.02 worth .

Ted
 
GlassReef said:
I'm thinking it's about time to get my LED project started, but first I'd like to ask a couple of final questions of the experts.

My tank's footprint is 96" X 36". I hadn't done enough research when I placed my order with the club's group buy and ended up not ordering enough Royal Blues.

At this point, my stock consists of:

5 Mean Well HLG 185-30B drivers
60deg. optics (Fedy)
330 18K whites (Fedy)
24 RBs. (Fedy)

I intend to run 288 white and 72 RBs (4 to 1 ratio).

My questions are:

1. does the white to blue ratio seem OK?

2. I need to purchase 60, or so, additional RBs. As Fedy has a minimum 100 LED order limit, I was thinking about getting the RBs from satisled.com (link). Does everyone feel that the SatisLed RBs are equal in quality to the Fedys? The Fedy's RB are a 2 chip led whereas the SatisLed RB seems to be single chip.

Thanks for any help!
Click to expand...

Its going to come down to personal preference but 4-1 seems a bit much. The 18,000k are cold white...there's really no blue in them that my eye see's. Most, me included, are liking 2 18,000 to 1 RB.

My speculation has been that the Satis product is the same but cannot confirm 1st hand. I also was not aware the FEDY was 2 diodes.

Think hard about your mix though. I am running 2 FEDY 18,000k to 1 Cree RB in 2 tanks and in both cases i have the 18,000ks dimmed way down to get the look I prefer which is a slight blue tint. Friends of mine running T5s would like it to be more blue if it were them so its personal preference.
 
4-1 mix will be way to white i ran 3-1 and then a royal blue strip ,still debating on wether to switch to 2-1 mix
 
I think the solder fumes have got to me...I'm ready to hook up the "input" power to the FEDY Driver cord but confused as it states ACN Brown and ACL Blue? Is ACN = negative and ACL = positive?

Sorry for the dumb question but being very cautious here.
 
Last edited:
I got the PAR levels for light array and I have to say I'm quite impressed.

Note: my fixture is 18 inches above the water surface of my standard 120 gallon tank (48x24x24.)

Got a reading of 575 at the water surface and 210 on the substrate.

Configuration... 78 LEDs (26 RB and 52 18000K whites)
 
Typlus5 said:
I think the solder fumes have got to me...I'm ready to hook up the "input" power to the FEDY Driver cord but confused as it states ACN Brown and ACL Blue? Is ACN = negative and ACL = positive?

Sorry for the dumb question but being very cautious here.
Click to expand...

not dumb....N is neutral and L is line....AC is Alternating Current...but it doesn't matter...its AC so just hook them up either way and you're good to go.
 
truebeliever71 said:
I got the PAR levels for light array and I have to say I'm quite impressed.

Note: my fixture is 18 inches above the water surface of my standard 120 gallon tank (48x24x24.)

Got a reading of 575 at the water surface and 210 on the substrate.

Configuration... 78 LEDs (26 RB and 52 18000K whites)
Click to expand...

Nice...any optics being used?
 
Truebeliever71, so how many watts are you running total? I have a 90g tank, so 48 x 18 x 24. I would be able to run a similar setup but maybe make the pattern a bit more sparse or just not as deep.
 
Paradiddle7 said:
Truebeliever71, so how many watts are you running total? I have a 90g tank, so 48 x 18 x 24. I would be able to run a similar setup but maybe make the pattern a bit more sparse or just not as deep.
Click to expand...

I am running 3 - 60Watt power supplies, so that would be 180Watts total.
 
michael_in_nc said:
The problem is that the IV characteristics of the LED's (diodes) is very "sharp". That is, a very small voltage change results in a *large* current change.
Click to expand...
Thanks michael, I see what you mean about the *large* current change.
Got the IV (forward voltage) for each led measured.
The strings are running at 320mA. Par measured at 10" off the led.
At 3.25V par 165
3.30V par 200
3.31V par 250
3.33V par 340
Still have to move some around and get the IV up.
 
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