DIY LEDs - The write-up

[lpsouth1978]

My 400 watt halide basically blew up on me the other day. I am currently borrowing a 250 watt halide from a LFS, but need to replace my light. I have decided to do a DIY LED build for the Solana. I have done a couple of smaller builds before and have had GREAT success.

I just want to know what others thought are and get thoughts from the experts in this thread.

Here is what I was thinking: (keep in mind that I am the King of overkill)

12 - 19000 - 21000k Cold White 3W LED's
12 - 9000 - 12000k Cool White 3W LED's
24 - Royal Blue 3W LED's
6 - Blue 3W LED's
3 - Red 3W LED's
3 - UV Purple 3W LED's
total = 60 3W LED's
Also 4 - Royal Blue moonlight LED's

I was planning on 60 degree optics on everything except the Red, UV, and moonlights. I would have liked to do 80 degree, but 60 is the widest angle available for these LED's. All LED's will be run using 700mA dimmable drivers. I plan to have a total of 11 strings of 6 LED's consisting of 4 white strings, 4 RB strings, 1 blue string, 1 Red and UV string, and 1 moonlight string.

I am planning on ordering the LED's from www.satisled.com. These are chinese LED's and will probably not be as efficient as Cree LED's, but the price is fantastic and I have read some other threads from people that have used these and they are VERY happy with them. The Cold White 19000 - 21000K LED's cost only $1.39/ea. I can get four of these LED's for the cost of only one Cree. Also the optics are only $38.00 for a box of 160, that's less than $0.24/ea.

I know that this is a lot of LED's for a 34 gallon tank, but I like to be able to completely customize the color by turning different strings down, and I am thinking about upgrading to a 90g corner tank and want to build the light so that it will work for that too. Let me know what you think.

 

[Jimmy54]

Ok, some pics of my fixture. Obviously not finished yet, still balancing the strings.
The light you see now, is just 10%.

 

[tonythefish]

i am running 120 leds in a 180 24" deep I have to keep everything 1/2 way down to bottom of tank to keep from bleaching out when I first get something . It looks like I may need to wait ~ 2 weeks before moving up . I try to buy from places that already have LEDs

 

[TheFishMan65]

Jimmy IMHO the difference probably a solder joint somewhere that was bypassed when individual reading were taken. 0.5 volts / 1 amp means a 1/2 ohm of resistance somewhere. You had 0.31 at what current?

 

[brassmonkyballs]

My 400 watt halide basically blew up on me the other day. I am currently borrowing a 250 watt halide from a LFS, but need to replace my light. I have decided to do a DIY LED build for the Solana. I have done a couple of smaller builds before and have had GREAT success.

I just want to know what others thought are and get thoughts from the experts in this thread.

Here is what I was thinking: (keep in mind that I am the King of overkill)

12 - 19000 - 21000k Cold White 3W LED's
12 - 9000 - 12000k Cool White 3W LED's
24 - Royal Blue 3W LED's
6 - Blue 3W LED's
3 - Red 3W LED's
3 - UV Purple 3W LED's
total = 60 3W LED's
Also 4 - Royal Blue moonlight LED's

I was planning on 60 degree optics on everything except the Red, UV, and moonlights. I would have liked to do 80 degree, but 60 is the widest angle available for these LED's. All LED's will be run using 700mA dimmable drivers. I plan to have a total of 11 strings of 6 LED's consisting of 4 white strings, 4 RB strings, 1 blue string, 1 Red and UV string, and 1 moonlight string.

I am planning on ordering the LED's from www.satisled.com. These are chinese LED's and will probably not be as efficient as Cree LED's, but the price is fantastic and I have read some other threads from people that have used these and they are VERY happy with them. The Cold White 19000 - 21000K LED's cost only $1.39/ea. I can get four of these LED's for the cost of only one Cree. Also the optics are only $38.00 for a box of 160, that's less than $0.24/ea.

I know that this is a lot of LED's for a 34 gallon tank, but I like to be able to completely customize the color by turning different strings down, and I am thinking about upgrading to a 90g corner tank and want to build the light so that it will work for that too. Let me know what you think.

I would like to tell you its a lot but.....I have a 40B frag tank that i used FEDY 18000k LEDs on and I believe they are exactly the same LED. Its a 36" long tank and I used 40 FEDY 18000k and 20 Cree RB. I am running the Crees at 100% and the FEDY's at about 60%. Its a very nice color and the frags seem to like it. Just based on Lumens/watt at 700ma I decided I needed twice as many as if they were all Crees....admittedly its too many but being dimmable its not a problem and like you said they are dirt cheap.

That all being said they run extremely hot compared to a Cree. In fact I ran them for a couple hours without fans blowing directly on the heatsink and it was almost hot enough to burn and blister my hand. It scared me. I now have 2 120mm fans blowing on the fixture and its warm to the touch. So keep them cool! by comparison my 120g with 72 Crees all running 900-1000ma with the same type fans is cool to the touch.

 

[brassmonkyballs]

i am running 120 leds in a 180 24" deep I have to keep everything 1/2 way down to bottom of tank to keep from bleaching out when I first get something . It looks like I may need to wait ~ 2 weeks before moving up . I try to buy from places that already have LEDs

Are you using any optics? How much white to RB did you use? and how far above tank is the fixture?

I'm running 72 on my 120 with no optics and everything up top seems to be perfect. not realted to those questions but yesterday as an experiment I added 60 optics to the front row on the RBs only and its pretty cool...the back is lit the same and everything on the sand is enjoying a little more light and its more blue in the front half of the tank now. We'll see how that does for a week or two. The beauty of DIY LEDs....unlimited experimenting and tweaking,

 

[brassmonkyballs]

Ok, some pics of my fixture. Obviously not finished yet, still balancing the strings.
The light you see now, is just 10%.

Very nice Jimmy. Interested after you get it over the tank to hear about those XMLs.

 

[patmack]

Very clean setup Jimmy!
How have people been hanging their LEDs? I have mine hung with zip ties at the current time. Ill get some pics up soon.

What have people been measuring for par? I did some measurements with all 144 LEDs on including 24 XMLs and the highest measured value was 350 in the tank. some areas seemed a little low...

 

[brassmonkyballs]

Very clean setup Jimmy!
How have people been hanging their LEDs? I have mine hung with zip ties at the current time. Ill get some pics up soon.

What have people been measuring for par? I did some measurements with all 144 LEDs on including 24 XMLs and the highest measured value was 350 in the tank. some areas seemed a little low...

my PAR values are posted a page or two back.

I built my canopy with a rail on each end and then used aluminum angle and built a frame which sits on the rails.

 

[kcress]

Jimmy; Very clean! A solid build. I see your reason for not wanting to re-wire some LEDs. It's not the usual peg-board wall of LEDs build.

It would seem the cover plate blocks a lot of light. Is that just to constrain the light? It's sharp looking what is it made of?

Are those black looking stars the XMLs?

That all being said they run extremely hot compared to a Cree. In fact I ran them for a couple hours without fans blowing directly on the heatsink and it was almost hot enough to burn and blister my hand. It scared me. I now have 2 120mm fans blowing on the fixture and its warm to the touch. So keep them cool! by comparison my 120g with 72 Crees all running 900-1000ma with the same type fans is cool to the touch.

Man.. That's got to say something about the efficiency! Sounds like worst efficiency than MH? A step backwards in trade for more flexibility.

To bad we can't come up with a direct comparison of the energy consumption of two similar (PAR) fixtures using the two brands. We could then come to some conclusions about initial cost verses operating costs.

 

[tonythefish]

2/1 ratio blue/white and I have optic on all Carclo Optics

 

[Jimmy54]

kcress; The coverplate is made of black perspex. It looks like it's blocking a lot of light, but that's because I didn't put the lenses on those LEDs yet like the first cluster in the front.
The thumbnail explains what I mean.

I've got the CW XM-Ls from China which have black star PCBs. The NW XM-Ls have white PCBs, these are the ones with the yellow wires between two XM-Ls and they come from a "joint-buy" in the US.

 

[kcress]

Ahh lenses. Yes. Thanks.

 

[Tron87]

Does anybody use buckpucks anymore?

 

[Tron87]

Also, would anyone be able to pm me their favorite vendors. My next build so far looks like I will need to draw from:
Ledsupply = drivers
RapidLED = Royal Blue XP-E LEDs, heatsinks, optics (55 and 60 degrees)
Dealextreme = cool white XR-E Q5 LEDs

 

[lpsouth1978]

Does anybody use buckpucks anymore?

I have used the buckpucks for all of my builds and have been very happy with them. I chose them because of thier small size and ease of use. I have only done builds for very small, 3 gallon, tanks so far and the meanwell drivers were just too big for what I was doing.

I just ordered 11 more buckpucks for another build that I will be doing in a couple of weeks.

 

[wfournier]

Also, would anyone be able to pm me their favorite vendors. My next build so far looks like I will need to draw from:
Ledsupply = drivers
RapidLED = Royal Blue XP-E LEDs, heatsinks, optics (55 and 60 degrees)
Dealextreme = cool white XR-E Q5 LEDs

Buckpucks only make sense in small builds IMHO. you can probably find better pricing on LEDs too.

 

[Tron87]

I would imagine that using meanwells greatly increases the amount of power cords and outlets needed.

Looking at Soundwaves OG build, he only needed two power cords I think, If he used meanwells he would have needed an entire power strip or two just to plug his light in. That seems kinda nuts to me.

you can probably find better pricing on LEDs too.

Got any more specific tips? that's kind of a tease right there.

 

[wfournier]

I would imagine that using meanwells greatly increases the amount of power cords and outlets needed.

Looking at Soundwaves OG build, he only needed two power cords I think, If he used meanwells he would have needed an entire power strip or two just to plug his light in. That seems kinda nuts to me.



Got any more specific tips? that's kind of a tease right there.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but there isn't any reason you can't hook up a bunch of AC/DC power supplies like Meanwells using one or two power cords. Just because they use AC doesn't mean that they need their own cord (as long as the wire is rated for that voltage/current, just like DC).

As far as vendors depending on the quantity Cutter and ledgroupbuy come to mind.

 

[kcress]

You can/should use an appropriate MeanWell(s) so you don't need scads of cords. More than one cord is probably not even legal code-wise but I don't recall. With the correct MeanWells or other brand drivers, you should never need more than one cord.