Led Build

[nkd5024]

So I finally decided to take the plunge and replace the two 250 watt metal halides over my 75 gallon with led's. I have built one fixture before for my brothers 24 gallon nano, so I have a bit of experience.

Since this is my second build I decided to get a little more in depth and add some cree XP-E greens and reds to help match the color spectrum of the halides a bit better. The one thing I didn't like about the first build I did was how it was purely white/blue light.

I decided on a ratio of 12 royal blue/ 8 cool white/ 2 green(530nm)/ 2 red (225nm) for each fixture. The leds will be mounted on a 6"x9" heatsink and driven by 5 Meanwell ELN60-48P drivers. They will be dimmable, controlled by an arduino microcontroller via PWM that I plan to build specifically for the leds.

I thought it may be helpful to anyone thinking of doing an LED build for the first time if I posted the build process. The led's ordered from rapidled were shipped out yesterday and should be arriving in a few days and the arduino was ordered through amazon yesterday.

Nick D.

 

[rigleautomotive]

Great.I will get the popcorn.
Thanks for sharing

 

[jwoyshnar]

The red, did you mean 625? Anything under 400 is not visible to the human eye. Not sure if you are aware of this but the combination of red 660nm, blue 470nm and turquoise 495nm placed closely together will give off a white light that brings out the oranges and reds in your tank. I made a fixture of royal blue, cool white, turquoise, cyan, red and blue 420 and I couldn't be happier with the results.

 

[nkd5024]

jwoyshnar, Yes I meant 625 lol.

So you didn't add any green (530) in the mix?
I was going to go with the osram red (660nm) you mentioned but rapidled was out of them and I didn't feel like finding them somewhere else and figured the cree red (625nm) would be close enough.

Would you recommend adding the cyan's into the mix?
What was your reason for leaving out the green's?
The blue 420's, are they Cree Violet UV led's?

 

[tnyr5]

You definitely want some 420 nm in there, it helps with color & growth.

 

[nkd5024]

The 420nm is the Cree violet UV leds correct? I was under the impression that they were more for actinic type lighting like the 420nm t5's. Didn't think they helped much at all with growth just a whole lot of color.

 

[jwoyshnar]

jwoyshnar, Yes I meant 625 lol.

So you didn't add any green (530) in the mix?
I was going to go with the osram red (660nm) you mentioned but rapidled was out of them and I didn't feel like finding them somewhere else and figured the cree red (625nm) would be close enough.

Would you recommend adding the cyan's into the mix?
What was your reason for leaving out the green's?
The blue 420's, are they Cree Violet UV led's?

The turqoise is greenish. The mix rectified an issue I had with my fixture. I built my fixture with just the white and blue and it gave a purple tint. I took out a few white, added the mix of cyan, turqoise and red 660. It did away with the purple color I was getting and all reds and oranges popped

 

[nkd5024]

Who makes the turquoise led's that you are talking about?

Using only the green's and royal blue leds does leave me low in the turquoise range. Do you have an opinion on whether the cree red 625nm is really that much different from the osram 660nm red's, for our application at least? I think i'll see how the green and royal blues look and if I can tell something is off I will definitely add 1 or 2 cyans per fixture to see if it helps.

Thanks for all the input

 

[jwoyshnar]

I believe they are made by Bridgelux, ive been using that brand for about 1 1/2 years now without issue.

 

[nkd5024]

So my order came in a lot earlier that I expected, so I got a nice surprise this morning!

<br>Everything in the order<br>

<br>

Leds - 19 cool white, 30 royal blue, 4 green, 4 red, 4x royal blue moonlight (450-460nm). I got a few spares of blue and white just incase.

2x 6x9 inch heat sink with hanging kits and acrylic splash guard
2x 92mm cooling fans
1x 12 volt ac/dc transformer
2x Arctic Alumina thermal adhesive
5x Meanwell ELN-60-48P drivers
1x 12v 350ma moonlight driver
48x 60 degree lens
40+ feet of different colored wire
60/40 rosin core lead solder and water soluble flux
5x generic male wall plugs

I also stocked up on electrical tape I personally use the liquid variety as I think it helps keep any salt spray or water out better than wrapping connections with tape. I also bought a variety of heat shrink and various other items.

More pictures to come as I progress with the build throughout the day.

 

[nkd5024]

Drilled a hole in the back of each of the heat sink to have the wires come out the back.

Here are the two fixtures with the leds epoxy'ed in place. The four leds that are awkwardly out of place are moonlight's.

Unfortunately as I decided to go with the PWM dimming instead of analog 10v, I won't be able to test the fixtures until my arduino arrives within the next 5 days as the drivers require a dimming signal in order to run.

 

[nkd5024]

Here is the completed led fixture all wired up with 60 degree lenses,fans, and hanging kit installed.

All thats left to do is figure out the nicest looking way to connect the hundreds of wires coming out of each fixture. I would really like to find a way that would result in a single thick wire coming from each fixture and then I could make some sort of acrylic box where I could store the drivers and have them each plug into a DC connecter on the outputs.

 

[nkd5024]

I was looking through some old computer/electronic pieces and found a decent sized heat sink from an old processor in a broken windows 98 along with the fan. I decided that it was also time to upgrade my sump lighting, as I went the cheap way originally and just used an old 30" PC light fixture I had lying around for a few years.

Finished and installed.

It's a lot less cluttered in the now.

The Arduino and the basic parts for it should come on Saturday, so at least I can start building the controller and the programming for sunrise, clouds, lighting, etc.

 

[nkd5024]

So it's been a few days so I thought i'd update my progress.

I spent the weekend making sure the programming for the arduino works as I like. As of right now I have the Arduino uno, with a sainsmart lcd/5 button shield, and a temperature probe for the leds temp.

I have the program (sketch) about 90% done. I currently have a manual dimming option using the lcd screen and buttons for white/blue/and red green separately. I also added a 2 hour sunrise/sunset using the white and red/green leds only for the first hour then adding the blues slowly.

I have heard the lighting can freak out some fish so I may or may not add that with the random cloud/storms which I still have to program in.

I also added a feature so that if the power goes out during the day, the arduino will remember the time and avoid redoing the sunrise. It might help to mention that I did not add on a realtime clock as the arduino has a millisecond counter that I use for time keeping. Also, using the temperature probe, if the temperature of the heatsink is to high for the led's to operate correctly, they will shut the led's off. I really doubt this will ever occur but I feel its a good precaution.

Now for some pictures,

Arduino Uno in a plastic drill bit container I had lying around, that was painted and drilled. I plan to eventually have the lcd screen come out of the front so you can view it without opening the box, but right now the buttons are 1/4 in" lower than the lcd screen so I wouldn't be able to press the buttons without unscrewing the whole arduino from the box.

Radio shack was selling 6 male audio phono plugs for $2.00 and 8 female phono jacks for $4.00 which ended up being the nicest looking and cheapest connecter to use. All the led's, Dimming circuits, and Meanwells all plug directly into the controller box.

I decided, as to save a few bucks I am just going to run the +/- cables for the green/red leds and the moonlights between the two fixtures. I have an inkling that within 5 minutes of them being hung i'll hate the look of the wires running between them and will most likely change it. I will post a picture of the hung fixtures later on tonight.

 

[nkd5024]

This morning was the first test, starting with the sunrise feature.

That is what the tank looks light when the first light comes on at 15% for white and green/red. I would have liked it if they actually came in from 0% and slowely got brighter, but from what I have been reading there is a minimum current the leds must be given to put off more than a tiny amount of light, which seems to be around 180 milliamps for the blue and whites, but lower for the green/red as they have a lower maximum operating current.

 

[nkd5024]

Full power

Leds at full power

 

[nkd5024]

The previous picture of full power turned out to be roughly half power. I adjusted the meanwells without the pwm signal from the arduino, assuming the 9 volts supply would simulate 100% pwm from arduino.

 

[IamTomm]

That looks awsome. I ussualy don't understand what is going on in a led build but yours make it seem simple.

 

[nkd5024]

Is actually quite simple to build some leds for a tank, dimming them with an analog 0-10v signal is also not difficult, the arduino makes it a bit more challenging though.. I had everything working as planning and than all of a sudden the blues stopped dimming. It ended up that one of the transistors on the dimming circuit was broken and stuck in the on position.

Everything is good now with the dimming of the blues and whites. Only issue now is that I accidentally plugged the green/red array of leds into the blue led power and blew them up as their max power is only 700mA for red and 1000mA for green. So there goes $35 bucks, haha. I actually gives me a nice excuse to redo the positioning of the leds as I have a small strobe affect going on an don't really want to get a light diffuser as it will cut down the light a lot. So I am planning to arrange the leds into three or four small groups on the heatsink.

 

[nkd5024]

So now that I got the arduino working, the addiction of building cool things with them is setting in...

After doing some research, with the Arduino mega, I would be able to replace my neptune apex which for some reason acts funny every couple weeks and needs to be completely re-setup.

I also found that their is a weather report called METAR data which is a very detailed report of the weather for locations all over the world. So I was thinking that if I replaced the apex, why not have it access the metar data and have that control my tanks lunar phase, sunrise/set, storms/clouds, etc.?

I could even go so far so to have the tanks temperature mimic that of the place I choose, although I doubt it would change very much and after a few years this may not be the best idea. :worried:

So as of now, the green/red replacement leds have been ordered, and the new arduino mega controller is starting to be planned!

If anyone has any other suggestions of things to do with the new controller, let me know.

I was also wondering if there is a LED driver that can PWM dim around 4 3watt leds? If I am going to go all out with the controller I might as well have full control over red and green leds separately instead of together.

Nick D.