Diy led

[funkman262]

I have and the par was surprisingly low for some reason. I was getting about 100 at the sand bed and 250 at the surface. They're about 5 inches above the water. My lights are on dimmable buckpucks so I would be able to adjust the intensity anyway. What I'll probably end up doing is adding more royal blues to increase the par a bit and give a higher kelvin rating because my tank looks too white for my liking.

 

[GUILLO1]

did you order the same LEDs?

yes I got the whites from the same company and the royal blues from another.

lots hole to drill
please keep post your DIY work in progress

Can you tell me how you wired the 88 LEDs of the power supply. I got the drawing from Ava but tis not to clear.

 

[bigt0706]

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

 

[Bugcrusher]

Are there enuff folks still looking to buy leds to start a group buy? Might be able to drop our price/piece if so.

 

[GUILLO1]

so I finally got all the LEDs attached to my heatsink (frame) and I drilled a bunch of small holes to hide the wires on the top of the frame. I drilled alot of holes and only broke 2 drill bits. My friend Jeremy took my fixture home and he will be doing alot of soldering tonight. Fixture might be up and running over my tank tomorrow.

This is what the small holes I drilled to hide the cables look like.

 

[GUILLO1]

picture with all LEDs mounted on frame

 

[GUILLO1]

LEDs are almost all wired up. As you can see most of the wire will be hidden on the top side of the C-channel. With the lenses on the wire is hidden some more. drilling all them small holes was a pain but it was worth it. It's going to look so much cleaner that leaving the wires exposed.

 

[mlivvy]

I considered drilling holes but at the time worried about the heat melting the insulation on the wires.

 

[brassmonkyballs]

if u try to run 30 leds on the 85w ballast u wont be able to run them at 700 ma as it will be pulling over the 4.2 amp load 700ma=3/4 amp

The math doesn't work that way BIGT...The LEDs run at 700ma. The driver puts out 4.2A therefore you have to run parallel strings....current simply gets divided by the number of strings in parallel...42/7=6....so you run 6 strings in parallel and each LED gets 700ma. Next comes the voltage...this driver is 16-20V and each LED needs 3.2-3.6V so divide 20 by 3.6 and round down to the whole number...5 in series. So...build 6 strings consisting of 5 LEDs in series, then hook these 6 strings up in parallel and you get 30 LEDs, each at the proper current running off an 85 watt driver...and in fact only using 75 watts.

Hope that helps

 

[M_55G]

this looks pretty cool. good job

 

[brassmonkyballs]

This is a great thread. The "3W LED" term is kinda mis-leading by most manufacturers and sorta useless. These are closer to 2W and the Cree XPGs over 4W. Lumens is the key and lumens/watt is more meaningful. Mathematically these look great if the quality is there and the ratings are true. I'm very interested to see how these low cost LEDs perform long term and if they really are 18000k. I'm a Cree fan but this is hard to ignore. Thanks for the info!

Flworkd how big is that tank.....if I read your tagline there it says 4'x8' reef. Is that the one and if so how deep is it? Do you have any longer term experience with FEDY LEDs...ie, longevity when pushed to the max 700ma and true color temp?

 

[bigt0706]

They suggest to run at 700ma they max at 1200ma

 

[flworkd]

nice clean job done..

 

[flworkd]

This is a great thread. The "3W LED" term is kinda mis-leading by most manufacturers and sorta useless. These are closer to 2W and the Cree XPGs over 4W. Lumens is the key and lumens/watt is more meaningful. Mathematically these look great if the quality is there and the ratings are true. I'm very interested to see how these low cost LEDs perform long term and if they really are 18000k. I'm a Cree fan but this is hard to ignore. Thanks for the info!

Flworkd how big is that tank.....if I read your tagline there it says 4'x8' reef. Is that the one and if so how deep is it? Do you have any longer term experience with FEDY LEDs...ie, longevity when pushed to the max 700ma and true color temp?

I got no way to test true color temp. but I know how to compare with my eyes, between just blue LED and royal blue LED

my tank 24" deep.

 

[flworkd]

This is fantastic!!! I'm gonna have to do this! Thanks to Joseph for turning my attention to this. I'm just worried about too much par now and scorching my coral.

most of my coral likes LED light but few corals are not
some coral more darker color but some coral start bleaching
if start bleaching , don't wait just put it lower place

 

[bigt0706]

The math doesn't work that way BIGT...The LEDs run at 700ma. The driver puts out 4.2A therefore you have to run parallel strings....current simply gets divided by the number of strings in parallel...42/7=6....so you run 6 strings in parallel and each LED gets 700ma. Next comes the voltage...this driver is 16-20V and each LED needs 3.2-3.6V so divide 20 by 3.6 and round down to the whole number...5 in series. So...build 6 strings consisting of 5 LEDs in series, then hook these 6 strings up in parallel and you get 30 LEDs, each at the proper current running off an 85 watt driver...and in fact only using 75 watts.

Hope that helps

i know theres more math to it then that but if u are running them at the 700ma will will exceade the 4.2 amp rating not allowing them to run at full potentilal u can run 25 and be under the 4.2 amp to run 30 the ballast would need to be 4.6 amp rating

 

[brassmonkyballs]

i know theres more math to it then that but if u are running them at the 700ma will will exceade the 4.2 amp rating not allowing them to run at full potentilal u can run 25 and be under the 4.2 amp to run 30 the ballast would need to be 4.6 amp rating

if you can explain this statement then we can notify the IEEE that Ohms Law and all the Power Formulas that have been around for 100 years are in fact incorrect.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be disrespectful or a jerk but I want to make sure people who don't have any experience electrically know how to properly figure this out when doing DIY. Consider this please: (1) The proper way to calculate this is the simple math I showed in my response with formulas that have been around for over 100 years, (2) the manufacturer tells you 30 LEDs, 5 series connected LEDs in a string, 6 strings in parallel, (3) people are already using these drivers wired this way with this many LEDs so I'm not sure why you continue to dispute this. Fact is its an 85W Driver using about 75W in this configuration with 30 LEDs being driven at 700ma.

Last point and I promise I'm done....if we assume max voltage of 3.6V at each LED and 700ma thru each LED then each LED is putting out 2.52W. 2.52W times 30 LEDs equals? 75.6W. Reality is the voltage is more like 3.4 at each LED further lowering W.

 

[GUILLO1]

so my friend Ace is done with all the soldering but he ran into a pretty big problem. They shipped me the wrong power supplies (drivers) from China. They sent me 220 volt ones instead of 110. Reason I went with the chinese driver is becuase one driver will power 88 LEDS. So i'm just going to need 2 drivers for my set up. If I went with the meanwell drivers I would need to use 8 drivers.

look how clean the fixture is going to look. Once I put the lenses you won't even see some of that wire.

Ace tested some of the other LED strings with my other meanwell driver.

 

[brassmonkyballs]

There's some other options for drivers other than the Meanwell ELN-60-48D. How many do you want to power and are you looking for Dimmable? If you don't want to wait for China shipment I can point you to some options....

Nice build!

so my friend Ace is done with all the soldering but he ran into a pretty big problem. They shipped me the wrong power supplies (drivers) from China. They sent me 220 volt ones instead of 110. Reason I went with the chinese driver is becuase one driver will power 88 LEDS. So i'm just going to need 2 drivers for my set up. If I went with the meanwell drivers I would need to use 8 drivers.

look how clean the fixture is going to look. Once I put the lenses you won't even see some of that wire.

Ace tested some of the other LED strings with my other meanwell driver.

 

[bigt0706]

if you can explain this statement then we can notify the IEEE that Ohms Law and all the Power Formulas that have been around for 100 years are in fact incorrect.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be disrespectful or a jerk but I want to make sure people who don't have any experience electrically know how to properly figure this out when doing DIY. Consider this please: (1) The proper way to calculate this is the simple math I showed in my response with formulas that have been around for over 100 years, (2) the manufacturer tells you 30 LEDs, 5 series connected LEDs in a string, 6 strings in parallel, (3) people are already using these drivers wired this way with this many LEDs so I'm not sure why you continue to dispute this. Fact is its an 85W Driver using about 75W in this configuration with 30 LEDs being driven at 700ma.

Last point and I promise I'm done....if we assume max voltage of 3.6V at each LED and 700ma thru each LED then each LED is putting out 2.52W. 2.52W times 30 LEDs equals? 75.6W. Reality is the voltage is more like 3.4 at each LED further lowering W.

its ok some people are just born a**es like yourself ,