Minimalistic multichip DIY LED build

this is what i have in mind...

______B_____W_____B_____

______W_____B_____W_____

______B_____W_____B_____

I think this will provide better coverage like you said instead of one 50 watt.


Also If HLG 100-48-B wont support 5 x 20 watt royal blue can you help with what will? I would only like 2 dimmable drivers, 1 for royal blues and one for white.
Thanks!
 
If you use HLG-100H-54 B and that you accept 1.77 A - I´ll think it will work for 5 chip in serie.

Sincerely Lasse
 
Whelp, I got mine wired up today minus the Reefkeeper ALC for dimming and I must say that I hope that it's running on a low setting due to simply soldering the 2 dimming wires together because it's nowhere near as bright as I thought it would be....DO you guys think that is the case? This is the 100w 20K capable of being driven at 252w.

picture.php
 
OK I just un-soldered the dimming wires and tried it again and this time it about blinded me :-P Looks like we're in business ;-) I was running about 200 watts to it....At a hair under 6ft from the ceiling, I am getting a very bright white 6ftx6ft square on the ceiling with the 60 degree lens. The color looks nice in this setting but I won't know for sure if I like it or not until I hold it over a friends tank this weekend...
 
OK I just un-soldered the dimming wires and tried it again and this time it about blinded me :-P Looks like we're in business ;-) I was running about 200 watts to it....At a hair under 6ft from the ceiling, I am getting a very bright white 6ftx6ft square on the ceiling with the 60 degree lens. The color looks nice in this setting but I won't know for sure if I like it or not until I hold it over a friends tank this weekend...

This confuses me. If it is a 100 Watt LED and capable of handling 252 Watts I would assume that running them at 200 watts should only be be for a short duration. Why else whould they call them 100 Watt LED's. If you continue to run them at 200 Watts I would monitor the LED temperature very closely initialy. You do not want to them to burn out on you in a few days of running them 8 to 12 hours per day. With the huge cooling system you could be safe but being a little safe initialy is better than being sorry.
 
Hi everyone, I've been enjoying each and every page on this topic. I really have to thank maglofster for starting this thread, educating me in the most proficient way possible and brining some excitement into DIY for marine tanks!

I'm relatively new to the hobby of marine keeping but have been keeping tropical fish for years. My tank is only 180 liters...so would the lights below be ok to start (I have 90W T5 on there so far)? I really only want the lighting to create the shimmer effect and potentially allow me to have some softies in the tank in the next year or so.:)

Through my experimenting with LED's I found that locating them near the front of the tank and angling back to the reat bottom corner of the tank realy created an unbelievable amount of shimmer. You do not want to do this with all the LED's but only 2 or 3 of the six you will be using.

Like a lot of other people I have the same questions regarding suitable drivers etc... I went with ac-rc for the Epistar 20W 14,000K (x4) and Epistar 20W 445nm Blue (x2) lights. I decided not to use fan assisted cooling and purchased the passive cooling heatsinks for all 20W lights. I want to now organise how I'll arrange these and will potentially mount one fan over the whole device and channel the air towards all heatsinks...have to think about this a bit more.

I purchased the following two drivers to power the whites and blue LEDs separately and even though they are rated as capable of driving 5x20w and 3x20w respectively, would it be ok to run only 4x20w (white) on the first and 2x20w (blue) lights on the last?.:)

In most cases the rating on the drivers indicate the max that they can handle. Running them at 1/2 to total wattage they are rated at is very seldom an issue. However some drivers if you run them down below half power wiill actualy shorten there life and become less reliable as they are actualy consumng some of the excess power that would normally go to the LED's. In your case running 3 LED's on a driver rated te handle 5 is actualy at 60% so that should not cause any issues, the other one rated for 3 with you running 2 would not be an issue either since they are still running at 66% of power.

Finally, I've searched for an answer or step by step guide to this but how on earth do I wire up the drivers (230V mains supply) and house them (without purchasing a driver housing) so that I don't burn my house down?

For the whites:
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/220947560986?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

For the Blues:
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/270934060559?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

Any advice is greatly appreciated, can't wait to get my hands on the components to give my tank a make over! :)

the driver boards are 120 mm X 56 mm each. So you want an enclosure that is at least 150 mm X 150 mm to allow them both to be mounted in them. The incoming AC lines will work on any AC voltage between 110 and 230 Volts so you can run these together from one power cord, or seperatly if you go with two timers.

considering your not running near full power you want some ventilation in the enclosure to allow heat to dispensate iof these drivers do build up a lot a heat for you.
 
Once again - the Epistar LED in this type of chip is in reality 2.5 watts LED. If you want to run them as high as 200 watts - you need a cooling system thats handle this - and Kentrob11 cooling system is god enough. When I run the same chip at 100 watt with a cooling system capable to take care of 180 watt - I get arround 5 degrees C above ambient temperature at the chip´s backplate. The temperature is no problem if you have a god coolingsystem. The 20 watts chip with Epistar LED has the same 2.5 watts LED as the "50" and "100" watts chip and I have been running this type of chip during a long time att 2000 mA with a working temperaturen at 40 - 45 degrees without any problems. However when I use chip with 50 to 100 indvidually LED - for safety reasons I try to over-dimension the cooling system so I have as low temperature as possible. If you have the right cooling system you can run this type of chip close to max wattage for a long time.

Sincerely Lasse
 
@TropTrea

Thanks for the complete answer, this sets my mind at ease with the electricity!! I can definitely make an enclosure and mount a fan on the top of it!

Really appreciate the answer, just have to wait until the Items arrive to Ireland and clear customs! :)
 
Once again - the Epistar LED in this type of chip is in reality 2.5 watts LED. If you want to run them as high as 200 watts - you need a cooling system thats handle this - and Kentrob11 cooling system is god enough. When I run the same chip at 100 watt with a cooling system capable to take care of 180 watt - I get arround 5 degrees C above ambient temperature at the chip´s backplate. The temperature is no problem if you have a god coolingsystem. The 20 watts chip with Epistar LED has the same 2.5 watts LED as the "50" and "100" watts chip and I have been running this type of chip during a long time att 2000 mA with a working temperaturen at 40 - 45 degrees without any problems. However when I use chip with 50 to 100 indvidually LED - for safety reasons I try to over-dimension the cooling system so I have as low temperature as possible. If you have the right cooling system you can run this type of chip close to max wattage for a long time.

Sincerely Lasse

Lasse, Do you incorporate any type of monitoring system on your coolers to alert you if a fan should fail? or how do you detect a failure incident? which is bound to happen at some point in time?---Rick
 
Thanks for the responses guys...I'm really looking forward to getting this over a tank to see the color rendition...for a 20K, there doesn't appear to be much blue in it which is great for me! I heald a couple of things with red in them in the light and the colors looked pretty true so we'll see...
 
In some of the systems I have a monitoring system with a fan controller. I get "bip´s" if it fail and I get too high temperatures. In some of the system I do not have any monitoring. My experience says that a fan seldom just stop working without any noise before. My ear is my monitoring system :). If you have an expensive system - one of these computer controlling system should be valuable in that case. I´m also try to have more cooling than necessary. Some of the system will still working for shorter times even if the fan break.

Sincerely Lasse
 
Agreed...That's why I went with the over-sized cooling system for this LED I chose. I liked the idea of built in redundancy having 3 fans in case one failed.
 
I've been looking at www.frostytech.com for heatsinks. For each one, they have a review, where they hook it up to an 80w, 125w, and 150w heat load, and then measure how much above ambient the chip gets. I found my heatsink on there, and at the 125w CPU load, it should be 16C above ambient, but I measure 7C on my epistar@150W.

Either way, I like the site, because it's less guessing as far as what heatsink does what, and I can look for ones with vertical fins rather than horizontal. The reviews are extremely thorough too, even talking about sound from the fans, etc.
 
Still waiting on pics garbled ;-) What MH bulbs are you using? How does the coloration of corals under the LED compare to those under the MH?
 
OK I got a chance to see the light over a nice 150 gallon cube reef tank today and i was pleasantly surprised to see a very nice pure white with almost no blue. I didn't have the 60 degree lens on it so I wasn't able to get an idea of intensity but with the lens on it but even without it, it lit up the deep dimension 150 very well. I think 8 of these over the 2600 will be a great starting point!
 
Hi every one i reading every post any advice on 48x24x18 inch high tank i was think tu gou vith 2-3 50 w hybrid and suplie vith 4 10w 10 or 20 k white per chip + some 3 w uv and red,green cyan 3 w led vhot you think
 
Back
Top