"Full Spektrum" LED color ratio

[zachts]

In the short term slide the 120w panels slightly closer to the ends of the tank and angle them inward a few degrees to hit that middle spot and keep your suffering coral going.

 

[wilkerschnepf]

Just checking in, didn't get any more work done on my led project this weekend. We had our water supply line rupture in the front yard, so I spent most of the weekend digging that up and repairing.

Also spent the evenings building my 3D printer, my father in law "gave me" for Christmas. He was breaking down one of his many printers and gave me the motors and some limiting switches, and other odd and ends. A couple hundred bucks in parts to finish it and tada. I'm up and working with my very own 3d printer. Hope to put it to good use making things for the fish tank.

I will resume designing my led rig tomorrow.

 

[perkint]

Nice

Tim

 

[wilkerschnepf]

Alright well i have reworked my led ratio based on your suggestions. Let me know if this is a better arrangement for a 36" light rig:

16 Luxeon ES Royal Blue
8 Luxeon ES Cool Blue
3 Bridgelux vero10 3000K 95CRI
3 Bridgelux vero10 5000K
6 Luxeon ES Lime
4 Luxeon ES Deep Red
4 SemiLED Hyper Violet
8 Exotic True Violet
6 Luxeon ES Cyan


Here is a google sketchup image of the basic design. I have enough aluminum t slot to do 5 rows of leds. Not sure if 15 LEDs on a 36" section is too many. I plan on adding a fan to each fixture as well. I might do more royal blue, not sure how a single luxeon es compares to a luxeon M. Also, I don't see any 5000k high CRI leds available at the moment, any suggestions?

 

[jedimasterben]

Alright well i have reworked my led ratio based on your suggestions. Let me know if this is a better arrangement for a 36" light rig:

16 Luxeon ES Royal Blue
8 Luxeon ES Cool Blue
3 Bridgelux vero10 3000K 95CRI
3 Bridgelux vero10 5000K
6 Luxeon ES Lime
4 Luxeon ES Deep Red
4 SemiLED Hyper Violet
8 Exotic True Violet
6 Luxeon ES Cyan


Here is a google sketchup image of the basic design. I have enough aluminum t slot to do 5 rows of leds. Not sure if 15 LEDs on a 36" section is too many. I plan on adding a fan to each fixture as well. I might do more royal blue, not sure how a single luxeon es compares to a luxeon M. Also, I don't see any 5000k high CRI leds available at the moment, any suggestions?

You actually don't need the deep red at all since you're using high-CRI whites.

Vero 10 5000K 90CRI


There is really no such thing as a 'Luxeon ES'. There are Luxeon Rebel and Rebel ES, still don't know why Steve's still mislabels them. The white and royal blue from Steve's are Rebel ES, all others are Rebel. The Luxeon M is equivalent to four Luxeon T (which are about 15-20% more efficient than the Rebel ES).

You'll want to avoid spacing individual LEDs out. Keep the LEDs in clusters and then spread out the clusters. If you don't, you're going to have extreme color banding.

 

[wilkerschnepf]

The deep reds i left in are more to use as a nighttime viewing thing for me. I have a red LED flashlight next to the tank that I use sometimes after lights out when I see a weird critter. I may just leave them off durring the normal light schedule.

As far as the LED spacing, my previous setup was this way and I really like the shimmer "disco" effect on the sand. I find it very true to real life when I have gone diving. In my previous build i was only using WW, cw, blue, and rb, but I did not notice the individual colors on the sand bed. Just the overall effect of light reflecting off the agitated surface water. The LFS, a couple blocks from my house, uses all radion lights on their tanks and I don't see that same effect that I would like. I am not using lenses on any of the leds and I hope that the color blends enough that I still see the same shimmer on the sandbed but not streaks of individual colors. I guess i can build one half of my setup and put it over the tank and then decide if I get the effect I am after.

I went and saw a 150G reef tank using a photon 48" fixture with a variety of LED colors. I didn't see any color banding but also didn't see the same shimmer I like.

 

[wilkerschnepf]

Any other input on the LED count and color ratio? I am hoping to start ordering leds on Monday or Tuesday. Happy Valentine's Day, all!

 

[wilkerschnepf]

I ordered all of my LEDs this week, except the bridgelux vero 10s. Digikey is out of stock on the 2700k 97 CRI chips that I wanted to order. Is there a noticeable difference between the 2700k and the 3000k? I need to decide to wait for the 2700k to be in stock or go with the 3000k 97 CRI chips.

 

[wilkerschnepf]

Also, I am now a little perplexed by what to do for driver for the vero 10. It looks like they should run at 700ma and take about 29V? So I can run at most 1 per ldd700, because the ldd maxes out at 52V? If that's the case I don't think I have enough ldd700s.

 

[R_Mc]

What's the heat sink you're using here? Wondering if it will be sufficient for the Vero 10's. They put out a decent amount of heat if you run them up near their max. Additionally, you want the added colors to be very close to the Vero, otherwise you risk your tank looking like a plasma electric dance hall. and certain chips are more sensitive to heat - violets / reds.

A solution - if you really can't get them much closer is to use diffusion media (diamond / satin).

The problem here is that you generally will have to have the light closer to the tank. If you can't, then you should add reflectors outside of the diffusion material to direct the light down into the tank (same as T5's).

 

[zachts]

Also, I am now a little perplexed by what to do for driver for the vero 10. It looks like they should run at 700ma and take about 29V? So I can run at most 1 per ldd700, because the ldd maxes out at 52V? If that's the case I don't think I have enough ldd700s.

700mA will be crazy bright from the vero10. you might just wan't to run 3 in parrelel of one driver. (they won't be spot on even without building mirror circuits but close enough I think, as each chip already contains two parrallel strings of 9 diodes. The one's I've played with have been very closely balanced in terms of forward voltage.) It's also a lot of heat in a single spot, equivalent to running 9 single diode LEDs in the foot print of one star chip, so lower current is a good thing.

As for sourcing the 2700k, looks like only place with any instock that will sell less than 40 at a time is Farnel, expensive though.

3000k will be very similar in color but does not contain quite as much of the red phosphors and emits slightly more blue light. A suitable substitute IMO if you don't wan't to wait.

 

[wilkerschnepf]

What's the heat sink you're using here? Wondering if it will be sufficient for the Vero 10's. They put out a decent amount of heat if you run them up near their max. Additionally, you want the added colors to be very close to the Vero, otherwise you risk your tank looking like a plasma electric dance hall. and certain chips are more sensitive to heat - violets / reds.

A solution - if you really can't get them much closer is to use diffusion media (diamond / satin).

The problem here is that you generally will have to have the light closer to the tank. If you can't, then you should add reflectors outside of the diffusion material to direct the light down into the tank (same as T5's).

The "heat sink" I am using is 25mm aluminum t-slot. I will try and find some more info on the surface area of the aluminum t-slot vs a conventional finned heat sink. It has a fairly large surface area and i will be building an aluminum housing that will incorporate a fairly large cooling fan and vents to pull air over the entire assembly. I picked up a sheet of aluminum today to play with this weekend and will post pictures of what i come up with for an enclosure. I haven't seen any other builds using the vero 10 and aluminum t-slot so i guess i am willing to be the test subject. Honestly I haven't even seen a vero 10 led first hand, and no experience with them so i am sort of flying by the seat of my pants here. I have an ir thermometer and will post some temp readings once i get this thing built and running.

Have you seen any fixtures built with leds spaced and your "plasma electric dance hall"? I hear lots about this disco effect all over the place, but have never seen it myself. Like i mentioned before i had a fixture running ww, cw, rb, and b leds spaced like i will have these and couldn't make out any distinguishable color differences on my sand, rock, or coral. This fixture will have a lot more "colors" and more space between similar colored leds, so i really have no clue what the end result will be. With a spread of 120 degrees i feel like the colors should blend very well just a few inches below the leds. I could absolutely incorporate your diffuser in my enclosure if i do get some weird spotlighting. Or alternatively i could try and group the leds into clusters. Nothing is set in stone with this build only a general idea of my thoughts. Do you have a place that sells the diffuser at a good price? It looks similar to the stuff at home depot for the overhead florescent lighting. I don't know if i would loose a lot of par to the diffuser, but i have access to a par meter as well so i can take reading with different setups.

 

[zachts]

You can lose as much as 25% with the stuff from the hardware store like was pictured a few posts back. There is high quality stuff out there though I've found that a piece of plain old acrylic lightly buffed with various grit sand paper will get you an effective diffuser and you can just buff it a little and test then keep working till you get acceptable results with lower light loss. distance from the leds is the key with any diffuser, as is distance from the diffuser to water's surface. If too close to the leds the diffuser has little effect. If far enough from the water surface a diffuser may not even be needed. A bit of trial and error is called for since what works for me might not be satisfactory for you, and visa versa.

 

[Fredfish]

You can lose as much as 25% with the stuff from the hardware store like was pictured a few posts back. There is high quality stuff out there though I've found that a piece of plain old acrylic lightly buffed with various grit sand paper will get you an effective diffuser and you can just buff it a little and test then keep working till you get acceptable results with lower light loss. ...

I've often wondered about this. You can easily get grits up to 12,000. How fine do you go for a diffuser?

 

[Gorgok]

Those vero 10s seem interesting... I just wonder if i have any chance of refitting my lights with some of them with CAT4101 drivers and only a ~24V supply. Datasheet wise i might have to run lower currents, but maybe having multiple chips in parallel would make that not a big deal.

 

[perkint]

The vero 10s would have to be driven very low to get their fV down that low (from memory - not re-checked the datasheet). Especially if the driver drops the output voltage further (like the LDDs do) so you're actually hoping to drive them at 21V...

Tim

 

[zachts]

I've often wondered about this. You can easily get grits up to 12,000. How fine do you go for a diffuser?

If memory serves on the one I just did for my latest build I used 120 grit for a light scuffing (running perpendicular to the short dimension of the tank to effectively gain a slightly oval shaped beam spread) Then used some 600 or 1000 grit to get a little more diffraction until I was happy with the result. (went parallel with the length of the tank on the second pass, might have been more effective though to run the same direction on both but works well)

Here's a pic, I only put diffuser over the color and white clusters and left the RB and V (with lenses) clear for maximum penetration and more efficient use of the spectrum of higher importance to photosynthesis. Before I had a slight "disco" visible in some areas where there was a shadow cast by something near the top of the tank, after it is very even light that blends well and I still get some shimmer from the Vero 10 chip in the center but none of the color disco.

 

[zachts]

Those vero 10s seem interesting... I just wonder if i have any chance of refitting my lights with some of them with CAT4101 drivers and only a ~24V supply. Datasheet wise i might have to run lower currents, but maybe having multiple chips in parallel would make that not a big deal.

24v they do not even light up using LDD type drivers, maybe running straight off the supply with no driver (I've not tried that at 24v but they should light up pretty bright, 100-200mA draw I'd guess) but with the driver you get zero output. They are spec'd with a minimum of 22v to 32v roughly depending on drive current and die temperature so with a driver that is not dropping much voltage you could feasibly get a decent light output. though at 24v you don't even need a driver to prevent over driving them, a transistor could perform pwm dimming for you rather than a driver. I'd guestimate doing that you'd get about the same light output as if you were running a XPG at 1.5amps or so.

Using the standard LDD you need around 30v available to operate them. I don't recall how the CAT4101 works though.

 

[wilkerschnepf]

Zachts, is your aluminum c channel sufficient at keeping your vero 10 chips at an acceptable temp? Also what size is your fixture, and what size tank is it for? What amperage are you running your vero 10s? Sorry so many questions but i am not finding many threads to read with people using these stars and giving information on their setup. Thanks in advance.

 

[wilkerschnepf]

I started pulling all of my old LED light assembly apart last night and this morning. And pulled out a bunch of accumulated parts for my new build just to really get an idea of what parts i have on hand and what still need to order.

I have 15 LDD1000, 7 LDD700, 5 LDD500, and 2 LDD300. I am hoping that is enough to get this build done but i am sure it is plenty to get at least half built for my test bed. Heres a quick pic of my pile of parts.

I guess a few years of hanging over the tank without a splash guard has left a little corrosion on the old leds. I am surprised they were all still working after closer inspection.

I am going to try and get a wood prototype made of my enclosure today for test fitting purpose. My goal is to get my leds, t5s, ballast, driver boards, temp sensors, and fans in the enclosure. Just my power supply and led controller will be outside of the fixture, and planing on not having a crazy amount of wiring but it will need power for the t5s, power for the leds, temp and pwm control lines. I might use an hdmi cable for pwm and fan control, standard computer power jack for the t5 ballast, and a laptop type power connector for the power to the led driver boards.