Meanwell LDD driver: for those who want to dim to 0 using Arduino

[letoan]

The common thinking is that you need one 2w LED for every 15 sq in. of tank surfacemaybe a couple extras considering the depth of your tank. m144-160 should be plenty. I wouldn't count the greens, they don't do anything for photosynthesis. and keep in mind that you will end up with a VERY blue tank if you run allthose blues and cyans at over 20-25% (they put out a LOT of blue). This will be a very blur tank, your blue/white ratio is over 5/1.
I hope UV is not really UV, that does not belong on a reef tank, but rather violet, in which case you may want to double or triple the number of them.

Scratch the UV , I meant violet. Do you really need that much violet? As for the green, I'm not counting it to do any photosynthesis, it's just for my eyes.

 

[letoan]

480W 48V one? http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_301402_-1

I would have dropped the red-orange and green, lowered the number of blue, upped the violet, and made the royal blue/white ratio more like 2:1 instead of 1:1. Also, you sure you want to run the cyan, blue, green at 1000mA?

Thanks Eud, that's the same power supply I'm looking at. The hardest part is config the LEDs somehow that one single power supply can drive.

As for the royal blue/blue:white ratio, how does 45 white, 75 royal blue, and 15 blue sounds?

On cyan/blue/green, I just pick whichever driver that those LED max can handle, I doubt that I'll ever going anywhere near 50% with those light. Is it better to give it a driver that could drive them at max or should I use the 700ma driver instead?

 

[letoan]

Good idea is to use at least two PS's. If one fails, you still have light until you can replace the bad one.

My plan was to have one spare on hand just in case.. I like the 2 power supplies idea as well, if 1 couldn't push out enough juice.

 

[Eud]

Letoan,

I'm not a super expert on full spectrum color ratios or on the total number of emitters. The lighting forum at nano-reef.com is a good place for that. Not sure how that has developed, but there are lots of folks there that are making full spectrum LED's their forte. They can help with the ratios and would probably be excited by such a large build. That's a lot of LED's.

The nice thing about the LDD drivers is that you don't have to worry about matching the total current like with the DIY CAT chip drivers. You just have to match the total power desired on the LED's to the capacity of the power supply.

 

[WmTasker]

Not an electronics guy so I will ask all the stupid questions

I use ELN 48P's in the current setup which takes a 0-10V to be applied to the dimming circuit. Initially I applied the PWM from the arduino directly and leds appeared dim. So everyone told me I need a 10V signal and that did help, the LEDs are very bright.

So my understanding from that class is, although the PWM duty cycle could be 0-255 it only cycles the voltage that is being applied. so we could cycle from 0-255 using an arduino but a 5V at 255 will provide the same intensity as a 10V at 125 :worried:

How are you converting the 5v to a 10v PWM signal?

 

[letoan]

Letoan,

I'm not a super expert on full spectrum color ratios or on the total number of emitters. The lighting forum at nano-reef.com is a good place for that. Not sure how that has developed, but there are lots of folks there that are making full spectrum LED's their forte. They can help with the ratios and would probably be excited by such a large build. That's a lot of LED's.

The nice thing about the LDD drivers is that you don't have to worry about matching the total current like with the DIY CAT chip drivers. You just have to match the total power desired on the LED's to the capacity of the power supply.

Thanks Eud, I'm reading now, wow lots to take in, I always thought just blue and white... Lol not anymore.

 

[sfsuphysics]

I need to start a build thread but in the mean time figured I would post a picture of my completed driver box.

It looks like you've done something like this before I felt my wiring looking fairly clean (at least on the LED side of things) but damn.

I still need to find a project box to stuff everything in too.

 

[shark boy]

You think that's little!!

You think that's little!!

Was anyone else surprised how little these things are?

I got some LDD-700s I didn't know the LDD-700Ls were a differant size!!
Didn't figure it made a differance since I am useing a 24v power supply.
It will save space......

 

[CrazyEyes]

Oh wow! Those are tiny.

 

[chrishet]

Thx all for posting your thoughts and results – this is a huge knowledge transfer thread! I finally have a crap load of parts to put together, including my LED’s, a bunch of LDD's/boards, Mean Well SP-320-48 48v 6.7 Amp Power Supply, and a MakersLED 36 in Fix I do have a question on how many LED’s I can run per string…what do you guys think about this?…is pushing to 15 LED's per string ok or should I spread it out a bit...I have some spare LDD's so that is not a prob....
• 30 Cree XT-E Royal Blue’s – 2 LDD-1000H’s
• 15 Cree XT-E Neutral White’s – 1 LDD-700H
• 12 Exotic Hyper Violet’s – 1 LDD-600H
• 6 Exotic Turquoise – 1 LDD-700H
• 6 Cree Blue’s - Shared (Turquoise) LDD-700H
• 6 Exotic Deep Red’s – 1 LDD-700H
• 2 - ? Moon Lights – 1 LDD-300H

 

[frogg21]

Does anyone have an Arduino taking a 1-10v analog dimming signal and converting it to a 5v PWM ? One can buy a knock off Mega 2560 that will give at least 10 pins of pwm for under $20. It should be a simple analog read then a map function to write to a pwm pin.. I just made about 12 CATS fry, so time to switch gears to the LDD I really want to have an APEX control some LDD's.

 

[WmTasker]

Does anyone have an Arduino taking a 1-10v analog dimming signal and converting it to a 5v PWM ? One can buy a knock off Mega 2560 that will give at least 10 pins of pwm for under $20. It should be a simple analog read then a map function to write to a pwm pin.. I just made about 12 CATS fry, so time to switch gears to the LDD I really want to have an APEX control some LDD's.

I know both arduino mega 2560 and the LDDs use 5v PWM. They should pair together nicely.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Silly question. Can you use the mega 2560 for just dimming purposes?

 

[WmTasker]

Yep. As long as you need a 5v PWM signal.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Yeah they're the LDD-700H's. I know there are 5 wire, red/black which go to the LEDs. Then the blue/yellow go to the power supply correct? Now, the existing white wire which you would use for dimming purposes if I was going to use a rgb controller. Do I hook that white dimming wire to the actual Arduino board?

 

[Eud]

Does anyone have an Arduino taking a 1-10v analog dimming signal and converting it to a 5v PWM ? One can buy a knock off Mega 2560 that will give at least 10 pins of pwm for under $20. It should be a simple analog read then a map function to write to a pwm pin.. I just made about 12 CATS fry, so time to switch gears to the LDD I really want to have an APEX control some LDD's.

I'm waiting for a Steves LEDs aquarium controller interface to do this. Waiting on shipping at the moment. He's getting the new version in stock now which includes an on-board voltage regulator so you can feed it with 5-35V and a 0-10V analog dimming signal and outputs 5V PWM. It's $45 for 4 channels of conversion, which is less than what I'd spend on an Arduino parts which I'd have to learn how to program, so it makes sense for me.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Yeah they're the LDD-700H's. I know there are 5 wire, red/black which go to the LEDs. Then the blue/yellow go to the power supply correct? Now, the existing white wire which you would use for dimming purposes if I was going to use a rgb controller. Do I hook that white dimming wire to the actual Arduino board?

White wire goes to the positive terminal of your PWM pins on the controller board, then the negative PWM pin goes to the same place as your negative DC output on the power supply .
lu
You might want to double check this but I think red & black ( Vin+ Vin-) are what go to the power supply, and yellow & blue (Vout+ Vout-) are what go to your LEDs

 

[CrazyEyes]

Oh christ, I hope the red and black go to the LEDs, already have the plug for it made. Ohwell, it's easy to fix. So radio shack sells both the Arduino Uno and Arduino Mega. The price difference is $30, which is justifiable if there is any huge advantage in going with the Mega. Thoughts? For now it will be just a LED controller but I plan on expanding it to do other things such as temp, powerheads, Ph etc.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Yeah, checked my LDDs and red & black are for the power side not the LED side, time to change your plug.

Can't comment on the Uno or Mega, I went the quick and easy route and did a Typhon.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Glad someone caught that. Thanks. I think Im just going to grab the uno.