Starting my DIY LED System

[Boxfish]

Ok Last night I tinned the lights and when I was about 2/3 finished I thought I better check these lights for some reason. So I pulled out the battery led tester and checked the lights all was well then I started checking where I had tinned them with solder and no lights. Im like what is going on here nothing on any of them. I cant figure out whats up. Ive had dry solder joints before but everyone. So I finally think maybe its just bad solder so I grab another roll of the same stuff I have and go at it again. Sure enough this works perfect. Dont know whats up with that but thats never happened to me before. So much for my fast soldering skills and being done with the lights in 10 minutes so I suction all that of and start over all is perfect now. So I thought Id share that one in a billion odds experience.
Anyway the lights got glued on and are dried and ready for me to start wiring them up. So hopefully this weekend. But I doubt it. Trees to prune and my wifes BDay so day will be full. Here are a few pics sorry they are not the best my phone was dead when i had it in the house working on it so you get the messy garage pics.:worried:

 

[gbru316]

Ok Last night I tinned the lights and when I was about 2/3 finished I thought I better check these lights for some reason. So I pulled out the battery led tester and checked the lights all was well then I started checking where I had tinned them with solder and no lights. Im like what is going on here nothing on any of them. I cant figure out whats up. Ive had dry solder joints before but everyone. So I finally think maybe its just bad solder so I grab another roll of the same stuff I have and go at it again. Sure enough this works perfect. Dont know whats up with that but thats never happened to me before. So much for my fast soldering skills and being done with the lights in 10 minutes so I suction all that of and start over all is perfect now. So I thought Id share that one in a billion odds experience.
Anyway the lights got glued on and are dried and ready for me to start wiring them up. So hopefully this weekend. But I doubt it. Trees to prune and my wifes BDay so day will be full. Here are a few pics sorry they are not the best my phone was dead when i had it in the house working on it so you get the messy garage pics.:worried:

Soldering is a skill that is easy to learn, but takes a lot of practice to perfect.

As a mil-spec certified electronics tech (certified to j-std-003), one of the first things I learned was always, ALWAYS use flux. Do not rely on the rosin-core of your solder to provide flux.

Standard practice is to cover both leads (or pads, or traces) with flux, then tin. then, use your iron to heat the mating surfaces and feed more solder onto the joint. Transfer soldering (adding solder to your iron before touching the joint) is generally frowned upon, as the added time at high temps changes the solder being applied.

Flux and proper heat management are vital to proper soldering.

Glad you got things figured out.

 

[Boxfish]

Yes I agree on the soldering. Im no certified tech but as an audio engineer in college and through out my life Ive done alot of soldering and had never seen that before. Especially on 60 solder points.

 

[TropTrea]

Actualy when I did my first LED's I went nuts on this issue as well. I checked them before I mounted them with the 3 Volt set up they shipped with my LED's Then rechecked them again after glueing them down. Wow half did not work now. So I rechecked again with a meter and the meter claimed they were all good but the LED's did not light unless I scratched the soldering pad with the tip of the meter probe. For some reason it only takes a little amount of resistance to prevent the lights from actualy lighting up with the 3 volt test system or the power from a multimeter.

Did a little more research at that point and found that these high powered LED's will register as an open unless you have enough voltage applied between the poles to start the current flowing. Some meters running at only milivolts for resistance and diode checks are not enugh to start the current flowing.

someone also in another thread mentioned with his dimmable drivers he could not run his LED's in moonlight mode as he wanted to unless he turned then up to about 200 ma before turning them down to 75 ma where he wanted them for moonlight mode. He was usuing a resistor network instead of a pot to switch the currents on his drivers. His resistor network was connected to a digital controler so he could switch the intensity between 0.6V, 4.5V, and 7.5 Volts on the current control ciricuit to the driver. Unfortunatly when it switched there a was period of 0 Volts which prevented the LED's to turn on when it went to the 0.6V setting. I believe he fixed the problem by adding a small capacitor to pull the sense line high.

 

[Boxfish]

Well that makes me feel better. Wish I had read about that yesterday before I sucked all the solder off those lights.

 

[TropTrea]

Many years ago I went to a special school for NSA to learn soldering for two weeks. They covered the acid cleaning and different flux's to use etc. Unfortunatly those that mount the LED's on Star do not give a lot of details on the material composition of the stars or any coating they put over the connection points. They do list them as RoH complient which means you can use a lead free solder. However I personaly hate the lead free solder as it requires more heat and in my R & D work I never came across so many bad solder joints as I was founding when they went to the Lead free solder.

 

[gbru316]

Many years ago I went to a special school for NSA to learn soldering for two weeks. They covered the acid cleaning and different flux's to use etc. Unfortunatly those that mount the LED's on Star do not give a lot of details on the material composition of the stars or any coating they put over the connection points. They do list them as RoH complient which means you can use a lead free solder. However I personaly hate the lead free solder as it requires more heat and in my R & D work I never came across so many bad solder joints as I was founding when they went to the Lead free solder.

I've never had the (dis)pleasure of using lead free, we primarily use SN63, although we do use an indalloy alloy around gold bonds to prevent gold leaching. It isn't too bad as long as you use a decent amount of liquid flux. By a good amount, I mean a drop. I do most of my soldering under a microscope, SMT components, smallest being 0603 footprint resistors and inductors.

 

[Silkyslim]

Did you finish the rig yet? I'm curious of your progress.

 

[Boxfish]

not yet got it drilled out for wiring yesterday that was it. Had a family birthday yesterday so that too up the day. Hopefully get some wiring done today. But probably next week get it all finished. I need to find some boxes for my drivers to fit in and wire up as well as my dimmer pots. Any ideas? I used a power box for my T5 ballast and that might work so I need to look a round abit.

 

[titmouse]

Tagging along. Nice looking build!

 

[TropTrea]

Fow boxes check Menards, Home Depot, and simular places. As a last resort try Newark Electronics they have a selection of saveral 1,000. But the prices range from reasonable to unrealistic for projects like this.

 

[Boxfish]

FOW box what does that stand for?

 

[fatoldsun]

guessing it's a typo - standing for "for"

 

[Boxfish]

Well got the first set of lights for driver 1 soldered.
Funny thing happened today my son goes dad I dont think your going to be able to fit those lights through your cabinets doors on your tank and you know what he may be right!!!! I may have to pull the face frame off I havent checked yet but well see.:debi:

 

[TropTrea]

guessing it's a typo - standing for "for"

yes I 'm real good at making typo errors especialy when I'm wearing my glasses.

 

[Boxfish]

OK everyone sorry for being away so long. Life is crazy right now and I cant seem to find the time to finish. Alittle progress made.

I finished soldering all the lights. Used different color wore on each driver run so if I added lights down the road it wouldnt be a big deal to differentiate them.
Also wired a custom power cable for the lights with a disconnect. Ran seperate lines for pos and neg lines. Thats the gray cable coming out of the back through the rubber gromits. I will be putting the driver box in a separate room. Will be wiring a remote box for the pots to dim the lights that I will mount above the tank in the wall Cabinet.
Here are a few pics. I will also post some in a few days of testing the lights(sorry going out of town)

Still have to wire the light wires to power cord

 

[Boxfish]

OK OK finally!!!! well Ive been busy and the lights didnt get finished when I wanted but they are finished and hung!!!! Well I got them all wired and fired up and tested and only had a few glitches like a bad sv2 pot I had to replace. Once I got the lights firing I was pretty excited to see what they would look like above the tank.They are run with 5 drivers 4 of them dimmable. 16 leds per driver. so I got them above the tank and I can say I really like the look. Definitely bluer than the t5's I had up but still a nice look. I have room to expand on the system if I want to add more white or other colors like some UV etc. Anyway here are some pics of my system. Dont have much as of corals in the tank right now few leathers, clams, polyps and so far they all seem to like what they are getting. All opening up nice etc. Im running them at 50% right now which I believe is about 500mv per the dimmable drivers. Will up to full over the next week or so. So the pics below are 50%.
Thanks so much to Dennis "TropTrea" for all his help could not have done it with out him!!! gave advice and plans all the way even when Id throw him curve balls like can we do this(not having a clue what I was talking about just wanting to make it cool) he was very good at trying to implement my ideas etc. He was GREAT!!
Also as far as the lights I love howas each driver fires up over the day the colors change and just seem to get sweeter!! Also really a shocker to reach in my canopy(wall) to feed the fish and have so much blinding light and have no heat. I reach in and its cool...wow Ive never had that experience!!! Anyway very happy so far.
Here are some pics at 50%

 

[wrx1908]

:thumbsup:nice skills man

 

[TropTrea]

Remember that your first driver is the fixed driver that is running your predawn post dusk lighting primarly BLUE and Royal Blue LED's. The rest are at 50% power so when you turn these up higher you will be less blue.

Most soft corals are not super high in florescense. When you add some of highly florescense corals they will start standing out. Looks like you did a great job. but remember there are onlky two important points in the end.
1. do your corals like it?
2. do you like it?

Dennis