Minimalistic multichip DIY LED build

27 fans? Thats nuts, but, being an electronic junkie myself, hey, whatever, lol.

Is there a thread with pictures only of everyones builds to get an idea of what they look like? No talk, just pics and a description of parts and layout. Would be a pain to try to track down everyones specs in 57 pages plus god knows where else. :)
 
Top of the fixture, taken a while back. Shows the heatsinnks with fans fairly well.
P1050408E.JPG


Bright end showing fan leads soldered to LED terminals along with power supply leads & covered in heatshrink. In retrospect I probably should not have cut off the miniature connectors on the fan leads & wired them separately to 12 volt ps. Note the stainless screws holding the white chip & nylon ones holding the blue to the heatsink. I used non adhesive heatsink compound, tapped the heatsinks for screws.
P1040691e.JPG


Most of the info on my build can be found on a Canadian board in the DIY section. Same handle, just search for can & reef. Fewer users on that board than here, so stuff doesn't get buried as fast. It's only two pages at the moment.
 
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I guess it depends on how you dim it. Analog dimming would lower the current, PWM dimming would drive it at full current but turn it on and off so fast that it would look like it was dimmer (to us). I believe either way, you would want the cooling system adequate to handle 100% all the time and you should be fine.

I agree cooling is part of your total equation. I'm talking analog dimming. Dose this reduce/lower the divers output current to the chip? Would the driver I suggested be correct in running the 100w chip rom AC-RC to the 200w + area?
 
Yes I agree with most of what you wrote here. Technically we can classify light in three groups for corals.

Group A is the light that produces the best photosynthesis. From my studies these are the light waves in the range from roughly 420 nm to 500 nm. But each coral species is slightly different. The 454 nm that you mentioned is probably the best for most corals however almost all corals will need some additional light at specific frequencies.

Group B is the florescent spectrum of the corals that so many of us are trying to enhance. This is where the coral (or actually a chemical within the coral absorbs a specific wave of light and then emits lights at a another wave length (usually at at a longer wave length than what it absorbed) For the florescent spectrum it is much wider that the photosynthesis spectrum but does again peak at around 454 nm. These frequencies are much more specific for the florescence and while a particular chemical my fluoresce at 460 nm light at 455 nm or 4654 nm are quite useless for this process. The range of light absorbed for various corals has been been found to range from as short as 404 nm to as long as 620 nm.

Group C is the full spectrum lighting that is mainly for aesthetic effects of the viewer. If you went diving to 600 feet in the ocean you would realize everything looks almost mono-chromatic blue. When underwater photography is taken they use full spectrum lighting that produces those pictures we all find unbelievably colorful. We want to duplicate this color in our aquariums and just the blue light and the florescence from A and B do not do justice to the various abilities of corals and fish to reflect light at various frequencies. Therefore we add full spectrum lighting. But the level if this fill spectrum lighting is very debatable based on personal taste. As we increase the full spectrum lighting it starts to show the fantastic reflective color in underwater life but it also starts washing out some of the effect of the florescence. If we start adding to much full spectrum lighting we also are lighting in ranges that have been proven to bleach out some corals as well as promote some of the unwanted algea especially cyan algae.

So really lighting is not extremely simple as some think. Johnny might have a tank with fantastic coral growth but Jack might look at it and not like the color combinations. Singularly Jack might have a tank showing fantastic Colors but he may be plagued with little or no coral growth. Similarly a lighting combination that may make one coral look and grow fantastic my actually be deadly for another coral that comes from a different level in the ocean.

Photosynthesis is biological quantum mechanics. It needs a photon with the right energy, ie, wavelength, in order to function optimally. The various proteins involved in photosynthesis have different absorption peaks, and if we know them and have access to monochromatic light sources in precisely those wavelengths, one can get a lot more growth per inserted watt than using white light. By definition includes the white light almost all the visible wavelengths if it is from a full spectrum source. If you have access to white light containing all wavelengths in different concentrations, it is only in principle to increase the amount until our organisms get the quantity of the wavelengths they need. However, if we know the important wavelengths, we can by using a monochromatic source at the wavelengths increase the production as much as possible. We still need white light of the full spectral type, but we can put most of our use of electrical energy at the wavelengths our organisms need. LED technology provides both of these things. The white light from an LED is pretty close to a full spectrum and technology to produce monochromatic sources of different wavelengths is improving all the time.


The exact wavelengths of different corals can use as optimal I do not know but for me the wavelength 445 nm is quite interesting. 420 is also.

I do not think you need all the wavelengths mentioned in the passage quoted by me but I wanted to emphasize the difference between what we see and what actually happens.


Sincerely Lasse













Sincerely Lasse
 
There are some things you need to consider.

First off there is not a direct corelation between wattage and lumns. You can find 3 LED's that produce 330 Lumns and you also find 3 Watt LED's that produce 200 lumns. Now when you look at higher powered LED's that same LED family you might have a 3 watt led producing 300 lums, a 4 up multi chip version running at 10 watts and prodiucing 800 lumns, and a 9 up multichip version running at 20 watts and producing 1400 lumns.

Wow if the 3 watt chips are more effecient why go to 20 or 100 chips. Well there atre several rasons they include penetration ability this is extremly important for tanks of 24" or mor inches in height. Second is the ability to fit more light into a smaller area. With 3 watt chips Johny might need 120 of them each requiring 9 square inches of cooling so he needs 1080 squre inches of cooling while if he went with 4 watt chips he would need much less space in the hood. Then there is the austetics, Many people that switched from MH lighting to T-5's years ago complained they lost the shimmer effect that the T=5's gave them. Well with less lighting points like the 4 100 watts compared to the 120 3 watt points you can get fantasticly more shimmer.

cost wise....... well if tried going higher wattage 2 years ago I think it would have been almost twice the cost as going with lower wattage LED's. Today I think the difference is probaly more related to the quality of components your using. In the future if the trend continues the cost of the higher Wattage LED builds may become much more reasonable over 3 to 5 watt LED's.


Hopefully this isn't really off topic...trying to roll this all around in my head.

So I did a little looking around on ac-rc, they seem like they have a good selection of quality products, I know that Epistar is a leading manufacturer so I think I feel comfortable with their products. I seem to be gravitating toward the 20W chips, mainly because there is a decent variety and the price is good.

For the tank in question, which has a footprint of 66 x 21 and is 24? deep, with a few inches of sand and a LOT of LR, currently with 8x54W T5HO (416W) of light.

I had figured that I needed on the order of 100-120 3W stars, if I were going to go that route, and would likely get a 10" wide heat sink from heatsinkusa at a total cost for both of those at around $510-$570 <<corrected due to bad math LOL>> (not including drivers, fans, etc - just LEDs and heat sink. So the total wattage (based solely on rating) would be 300-360W.

Now from ac-rc, I like the 20W chips and the circular heat sinks. I figured that, just on an equivalent wattage basis calculation, that I would need 15-18 20W chips of various kinds. This would cost about $440-$524. Again, 300-360W LED, solely based on rating.

So at 120 3W stars vs 18 20W multichips, I <<corrected>> save about $45 w/r to only LEDs and heat sinks. I save $70 if I go with 15x 20W instead of 100 3W.

Now I haven't figured in a few things, obviously, like the necessary drivers, taking into account that I want to have everything PWM dimmable with as much control as possible, but just based on this rough calculation I have a few question, hopefully this is not too off topic and someone can chime in with their opinion:

The quantity calculation for the 20W chips was arrived at by simply taking the # of 3W chips I would need x3 and dividing that by 20. This would assume that in both instances, a 3W chip and a 20W chip are both driven at maximum current for an apples-to-apples comparison. Is my proposed 3W vs 20W quantity comparison valid, or will I need more or less 20W chips?

If the comparison is valid, then what is really the major advantage of using 20W chips over 3W chips? Aesthetics?

Are there other sellers of equally good product at lower prices that I should be considering?

If anyone can share their opinions or experiences with the ac-rc chips and/or other sellers' products, I would really appreciate hearing them
 
Question so I understand, If I buy a 100w AC-RC chip which is rated at 32-36 fv and 7a max which can put out 252w and run it with a Meanwell HLG 240H-36B driver that is rated 36V and 6.7A, and I lower the 1-10v dimming signal to the driver which will dim the led to say 100w of output, Is the dimming actually lowering the current that the driver is providing to the led? I want the versatility to run the chip at higher wattage if needed, but also lower wattage for extended led life. So I want to make sure I get a driver that can run the chip to the higher end if needed.---Rick

According to the MeanWell´s drivers I have seen - it looks like that in spit of the fact that you can use PWM in to the driver - the driver dim the LED not with PWM but simply by lower the current. I am not sure but i looks like it is in this way.

Hopefully this isn't really off topic...trying to roll this all around in my head.

So I did a little looking around on ac-rc, they seem like they have a good selection of quality products, I know that Epistar is a leading manufacturer so I think I feel comfortable with their products. I seem to be gravitating toward the 20W chips, mainly because there is a decent variety and the price is good.

For the tank in question, which has a footprint of 66 x 21 and is 24? deep, with a few inches of sand and a LOT of LR, currently with 8x54W T5HO (416W) of light.

I had figured that I needed on the order of 100-120 3W stars, if I were going to go that route, and would likely get a 10" wide heat sink from heatsinkusa at a total cost for both of those at around $510-$570 <<corrected due to bad math LOL>> (not including drivers, fans, etc - just LEDs and heat sink. So the total wattage (based solely on rating) would be 300-360W.

Now from ac-rc, I like the 20W chips and the circular heat sinks. I figured that, just on an equivalent wattage basis calculation, that I would need 15-18 20W chips of various kinds. This would cost about $440-$524. Again, 300-360W LED, solely based on rating.

So at 120 3W stars vs 18 20W multichips, I <<corrected>> save about $45 w/r to only LEDs and heat sinks. I save $70 if I go with 15x 20W instead of 100 3W.

Now I haven't figured in a few things, obviously, like the necessary drivers, taking into account that I want to have everything PWM dimmable with as much control as possible, but just based on this rough calculation I have a few question, hopefully this is not too off topic and someone can chime in with their opinion:

The quantity calculation for the 20W chips was arrived at by simply taking the # of 3W chips I would need x3 and dividing that by 20. This would assume that in both instances, a 3W chip and a 20W chip are both driven at maximum current for an apples-to-apples comparison. Is my proposed 3W vs 20W quantity comparison valid, or will I need more or less 20W chips?

If the comparison is valid, then what is really the major advantage of using 20W chips over 3W chips? Aesthetics?

Are there other sellers of equally good product at lower prices that I should be considering?

If anyone can share their opinions or experiences with the ac-rc chips and/or other sellers' products, I would really appreciate hearing them

The reason why I first make my choise to use multichips instead of the normal Cree was that Cree did not have any chip with higher K than app 7000 K. I like more the white light but at the same time I want much of the blue wavelength. The chip from AC-RC was perfect for me att that time. Later on has the penetration issue played a major roll for me. I had try the XL-M from Cree but they are a little to yellow for me. If you need more or less (in watts) of the multichip compared with 3 watts depends on. If you do not use lenses, mayby - if you use lenses - probably not.

Sincerely Lasse

I have only bought from AC-RC so I can not compare. I´m satisfied with the quallity from that store.
 
Hopefully this isn't really off topic...trying to roll this all around in my head.

So I did a little looking around on ac-rc, they seem like they have a good selection of quality products, I know that Epistar is a leading manufacturer so I think I feel comfortable with their products. I seem to be gravitating toward the 20W chips, mainly because there is a decent variety and the price is good.

For the tank in question, which has a footprint of 66 x 21 and is 24? deep, with a few inches of sand and a LOT of LR, currently with 8x54W T5HO (416W) of light.

I had figured that I needed on the order of 100-120 3W stars, if I were going to go that route, and would likely get a 10" wide heat sink from heatsinkusa at a total cost for both of those at around $510-$570 <<corrected due to bad math LOL>> (not including drivers, fans, etc - just LEDs and heat sink. So the total wattage (based solely on rating) would be 300-360W.

Now from ac-rc, I like the 20W chips and the circular heat sinks. I figured that, just on an equivalent wattage basis calculation, that I would need 15-18 20W chips of various kinds. This would cost about $440-$524. Again, 300-360W LED, solely based on rating.

So at 120 3W stars vs 18 20W multichips, I <<corrected>> save about $45 w/r to only LEDs and heat sinks. I save $70 if I go with 15x 20W instead of 100 3W.

Now I haven't figured in a few things, obviously, like the necessary drivers, taking into account that I want to have everything PWM dimmable with as much control as possible, but just based on this rough calculation I have a few question, hopefully this is not too off topic and someone can chime in with their opinion:

The quantity calculation for the 20W chips was arrived at by simply taking the # of 3W chips I would need x3 and dividing that by 20. This would assume that in both instances, a 3W chip and a 20W chip are both driven at maximum current for an apples-to-apples comparison. Is my proposed 3W vs 20W quantity comparison valid, or will I need more or less 20W chips?

If the comparison is valid, then what is really the major advantage of using 20W chips over 3W chips? Aesthetics?

Are there other sellers of equally good product at lower prices that I should be considering?

If anyone can share their opinions or experiences with the ac-rc chips and/or other sellers' products, I would really appreciate hearing them

You could light up not only your entire house, but your neighbors too with 18 of those. If you put 18 20W multichips on your tank, you will burn everything in it alive, including your fish. I am going to order a second 50W for our 65, and those two will probably be the only light we run. Right now, we are running 4 t5ho's and 1 50W multichip (epistar from ac-rc), and the multichip is sitting directly over the center brace so a lot of it is being blocked.
 
Prepping, assembling, mounting 18x20W LEDs vs 120x3W LEDs is a major advantage to me. Sounds painful.

Yes GINORMOUS advantage... and being one who's basically mounted maybe a couple dozen "3 watt" Crees, I can't imagine the neck strain, back pain, eye fatigue, etc of doing 120 LEDs! (yeah at that time might want to just fork out the money and save yourself the chiropractor bill :D).


However I do still question the efficiency of output of these "multichip" LEDs vs the Cree LEDs.
 
Has anyone used the multichips on larger tanks? I have a 96x30x30 and was thinking I could get 4 100 watt leds 20000k . Will this be enough or do I need to think about adding other multichips with these or should I use multiple lower wattage multichip.
 
Floyd, is there some reason you don't want to go with fewer higher powered LEDs? I'd suggest two of the 100w (252w) hybrids and maybe some 420's around 'em. If this is still that dentists office tank, I seem to remember lots of headroom, so putting some good big quiet coolers in there should be no problem. Something like the cooler master hyper 212 heatsink is likely enough to cool them. At 150w heat input they get about 17C over ambient, and worst case scenario the LED will produce 175w of heat, although 125-150 is much more likely. It's also pretty quiet.

noplay180: I think you're on the right track, maybe get drivers to put 'em at 150w-185w each and you'll have enough juice for any situation. The price difference between the 120's and 185s isn't that much anyways. I'm assuming you're talking about the 100w 45mil units from ac-rc.
 
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There are some things you need to consider.

First off there is not a direct corelation between wattage and lumns. You can find 3 LED's that produce 330 Lumns and you also find 3 Watt LED's that produce 200 lumns. Now when you look at higher powered LED's that same LED family you might have a 3 watt led producing 300 lums, a 4 up multi chip version running at 10 watts and prodiucing 800 lumns, and a 9 up multichip version running at 20 watts and producing 1400 lumns.

Wow if the 3 watt chips are more effecient why go to 20 or 100 chips. Well there atre several rasons they include penetration ability this is extremly important for tanks of 24" or mor inches in height. Second is the ability to fit more light into a smaller area. With 3 watt chips Johny might need 120 of them each requiring 9 square inches of cooling so he needs 1080 squre inches of cooling while if he went with 4 watt chips he would need much less space in the hood. Then there is the austetics, Many people that switched from MH lighting to T-5's years ago complained they lost the shimmer effect that the T=5's gave them. Well with less lighting points like the 4 100 watts compared to the 120 3 watt points you can get fantasticly more shimmer.

cost wise....... well if tried going higher wattage 2 years ago I think it would have been almost twice the cost as going with lower wattage LED's. Today I think the difference is probaly more related to the quality of components your using. In the future if the trend continues the cost of the higher Wattage LED builds may become much more reasonable over 3 to 5 watt LED's.

Yes very good point on the lumen output, I am starting to compare these as well. I feel a spreadsheet coming...

On the shimmer, I have seen a few tanks with 3W RB/CW Crees and honestly the shimmer made me feel like I was going to have a seizure. Maybe it was the particular setup, but I think too many multiple point sources creates an over-shimmer, vs less more intense point sources. This is why I have not dove head-first into LEDs quite yet honestly.

The reason why I first make my choise to use multichips instead of the normal Cree was that Cree did not have any chip with higher K than app 7000 K. I like more the white light but at the same time I want much of the blue wavelength. The chip from AC-RC was perfect for me att that time. Later on has the penetration issue played a major roll for me. I had try the XL-M from Cree but they are a little to yellow for me. If you need more or less (in watts) of the multichip compared with 3 watts depends on. If you do not use lenses, mayby - if you use lenses - probably not.

Sincerely Lasse

I have only bought from AC-RC so I can not compare. I´m satisfied with the quallity from that store.

Thanks. I think the selection they have is good, but that's a double-edge sword because I have no frame of reference for the differences between all the chips, and I feel you really need to see these in person to understand. Which is why I wish to have full dimming control.

You could light up not only your entire house, but your neighbors too with 18 of those. If you put 18 20W multichips on your tank, you will burn everything in it alive, including your fish. I am going to order a second 50W for our 65, and those two will probably be the only light we run. Right now, we are running 4 t5ho's and 1 50W multichip (epistar from ac-rc), and the multichip is sitting directly over the center brace so a lot of it is being blocked.

I think I would only be risking this if I ran them full blast all the time. I plan on a ramp up, ramp down, and all kinds of code bleeding out of the controller all the time to make them do wicked cool stuff that will make little kids eyeing the fish tank wonder exactly how they did that. Clouds and lightning storms and cool shiznit like dat

Prepping, assembling, mounting 18x20W LEDs vs 120x3W LEDs is a major advantage to me. Sounds painful.

Yeah, totally.

However I do still question the efficiency of output of these "multichip" LEDs vs the Cree LEDs.

Yep +1 to that

Floyd, is there some reason you don't want to go with fewer higher powered LEDs? I'd suggest two of the 100w (252w) hybrids and maybe some 420's around 'em. If this is still that dentists office tank, I seem to remember lots of headroom, so putting some good big quiet coolers in there should be no problem. Something like the cooler master hyper 212 heatsink is likely enough to cool them. At 150w heat input they get about 17C over ambient, and worst case scenario the LED will produce 175w of heat, although 125-150 is much more likely. It's also pretty quiet.

Hey tom that you, same as over on the scrubber site?

I am just not sure that the tank would look OK, relying on one single chip with maybe 2 temps, I'm thinking I wanted more variety and control - see other responses above.

Also I have a 200 FOWLR that may be a reef eventually, but would be a good candidate for those...
 
Has anyone used the multichips on larger tanks? I have a 96x30x30 and was thinking I could get 4 100 watt leds 20000k . Will this be enough or do I need to think about adding other multichips with these or should I use multiple lower wattage multichip.

Consider using 2x 50W (60W) multichips in place of the 100W multichip. For example 1x60W hybrid and 1x50W 16000K is a good balance for each section. If you need more power you can overdrive the 60W to 70 or 80 watts.
 
However I do still question the efficiency of output of these "multichip" LEDs vs the Cree LEDs.

In general has the different types of Cree and other for us wellknown brands a better output calculated as Lumen/watt but the difference for the most used models is not so huge that we often belive. But - there is something we forgett if we only looks att L/watt. This "normal" 3 watts often has a Kelvin temperature upp to 8 000 K. The multichip´s can have up to 20 000 K. Why is this of importance for us when we working with corals?

Normally, means a higher Kelvin temperature that it is more blue wavelengths in the spectrum compared to a lower Kelvin temperature. This has not so much importance for the Lumen output but it is important for photosynthesis in corals.

With a fool's insistence, I continue to say - do not compare apples and oranges.

I'm not saying one is better than the other, which variant is best depends on the application. For me, when I built my first LED fixture, the color temperature and growth of my corals was important - I was one of the first ones here in Sweden who began to experiment with so-called "multi-chip". What was then was mostly 10 and 30 watts. Since I wanted to be able to control my lighting as much as possible, I chose the 10 watt. I also started without lenses.

Since then I have experimented with Cree XL-M as well and they give a good output. But for a reef aquarium is the light to yellow in my opinion.

Sincerely Lasse
 
Yes GINORMOUS advantage... and being one who's basically mounted maybe a couple dozen "3 watt" Crees, I can't imagine the neck strain, back pain, eye fatigue, etc of doing 120 LEDs! (yeah at that time might want to just fork out the money and save yourself the chiropractor bill :D).


However I do still question the efficiency of output of these "multichip" LEDs vs the Cree LEDs.

Using two 180w multichips is even less work and looks more realistic.

One of the benefits of multichips over 2 or 3w chips is the lens quality. Large glass dome lenses provide even coverage, while cheap acrylic lenses used for "pegboard" arrays have hot spots in the centre with a fast drop off a few inches off centre. large dome lenses provide natural shimmer without disco effect and weird purple and yellow shadows. You can mount multichips higher up from the water surface to keep them free of salt creep and splashed.

LED arrays create a series of light beams that don't properly mix colours. You end up with a surplus of one spectrum in one area, and a deficit in another. You don't get the "beam me up Scotty" effect with multichips. Combining multiple colours in one chip is the best option. Using one blue, then one white fixture etc. always looks spotty and doesn't provide a homogenous mix of spectra even at high suspension levels.

Part of the aesthetic is personal preference. I've never liked the look of T5 lighting and find it to look clinical and artificial. Multichips replicate the look of metal halide and if done right, the sun. In addition to the quality light, it looks cleaner with one or two small pendents rather than a massive array looming over the tank.

The lower the wattage of each chip, the more efficient. A series of 1w lights is better than 3w so multichips are more efficient than arrays. Changing the multichip or lens is a quick and painless process, and the cost isn't even as much as a metal halide bulb.

I agree with Lassef, higher colour temperature is the way to go. The 7500 Cree chips cause cyanobacteria and slime algae and look too yellow. Corals tend to bleach or brown out due to excessive growth of zooxanthellae masking brighter pigments. You end up using a lot more blue chips to drown out the green light so efficiency is diminished. With high kelvin white chips, you can run a 50:50 white:blue ratio, while 7500K whites require 25:75, thus lowering lumen/watt and PAR/watt.
 
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I'll throw this out there....

The manufactures don't claim 50,000hrs of life on a multi-chip either. It's nearly half, or just above. Saying that after 5,000hrs the chip loses about 6% of it's strength (that's a year, at 12hrs/day). And worse in the larger wattages.

I'm purposely running two 80W RGB multi-chips in my pendant. This way, it's more efficient and a bit more controllable (two drivers). However, the RGB chip will be custom using three colors; 12,000K/460nm/440nm (did I say that already?!);) AND, I'll be able to separately control each color, giving me some outlandish array of 'final' colors to work with. I'm excited... I think that's obvious! :spin1:
 
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In general has the different types of Cree and other for us wellknown brands a better output calculated as Lumen/watt but the difference for the most used models is not so huge that we often belive. But - there is something we forgett if we only looks att L/watt. This "normal" 3 watts often has a Kelvin temperature upp to 8 000 K. The multichip´s can have up to 20 000 K. Why is this of importance for us when we working with corals?

Normally, means a higher Kelvin temperature that it is more blue wavelengths in the spectrum compared to a lower Kelvin temperature. This has not so much importance for the Lumen output but it is important for photosynthesis in corals.

With a fool's insistence, I continue to say - do not compare apples and oranges.
See I'm not trying to compare apples to oranges. I'm saying you have a 100 watt 20kK chip that's fine, now slap together 100 watts worth of crees of various chips (RB, B, CW, WW, etc) whatever the equivalent of all those little LEDs thrown together on one chip is, and compare apples to apples.

I'm not saying one is vastly better than the other by any means, however not knowing if that's the case does bug me.
 
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