widmer
Drug Enthusiast
The time has come for me to present my work here:
After several months of anticipation, I have created an LED fixture which is mounted on the ceiling of my room and projects light into my aquarium, for a very rimless effect. It all began several months ago, with LiveForPhysics’ Xenon projection project, which can be seen here:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1542980&highlight=xenon
I was so inspired by his work that I was a click away from creating a small xenon projection system of my own, the thought of which can be seen here:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1603868&highlight=xenon
However, just before I purchased my xenon parts, I came across Soundwave’s groundbreaking thread, which I’m sure many of you have visited several times over. It has given me and who knows how many others a fantastic introduction to creating an LED fixture:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1587273
I eventually applied my feelings toward projection in his thread:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15348790#post15348790
And I was really hoping/anticipating that someone else with more money than a poor professional student such as myself would have given it a shot long before now. Santoki ended up doing something very similar last month, which you can see here:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1761942
However, he employed 40-degree optics, and thus is keeping the LED panels much closer to the aquarium. BTW, if you are looking for the absolute definition of a clean, elegantly designed LED panel, his is and probably will always be the one to see. As far as I know, it’s just not possible to make them better than he has.
And in the meantime, I read and read, and then read some more, until I got to a place where I was very comfortable with the idea of building an LED fixture of my own. It is absolutely necessary to mention here, that I have received an enormous amount of help in gaining this knowledge from our very own der_wille_zur_macht, stugray, kcress, and many others who have dropped hints along the way, and the community is so lucky to have as long-term contributors.
So it began with the parts:
As can be seen in the picture, I have purchased:
9 Cree XR-E cool white LEDs
9 Cree XR-E royal blue LEDs
18 Cree 8-degree lenses with holder (not pictured)
A 6.5 amp 24v DC power supply
3 Buck Puck LED drivers with prewired potentiometer for dimming
2 (1.25” by 10.05” by 2.875” tall) aluminum heatsinks
Plexi glass sheeting
Arctic Silver Premium Thermal Adhesive
Various aluminum pieces and small hardware
Three small computer fans and some capacitors (not used after all, good thing they were cheap :lolspin: )
The original plan was to keep the power supply stationed on the floor, and have the 24v DC running up the cord to the fixture. So I picked up some capacitors to place across the poles of the buck pucks per what their data sheet specified in this case, but when I made the connections I discovered that the power supply could not handle this situation. So it was immediately incorporated into the fixture. This is for the better anyways; it had no effect on the final outer dimensions of the fixture, and it keeps the very dangerous exposed household current connections out of my cat’s reach. I don’t need any exploding cat paws. Here’s a shot from just before the LEDs were mounted:
You may notice the peculiar way I have the heatsinks connected to the aluminum frame. This is for the absolutely vital purpose of allowing them to be freely rotatable. We are dealing with very tight beams here, and it was crucial that I have the ability to finely adjust the direction they are pointing once the fixture was hanging.
On this note, you may notice that the heat sinks (to which the LEDs are affixed) are positioned very far apart from each other. 10 inches apart to be precise. This has nothing to do with breathing room, and everything to do with increasing the number of angles from which the light will be hitting the coral. There would be much more spotlighting effect if all of the LEDs were in a single cluster. So why didn’t I place them even further apart? Like putting one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom (just kidding)? Taking a cue from LiveForPhysics, it was my intention to keep light from directly hitting the glass. I will touch on the effects of this later.
So with the known distance that the fixture would be from the aquarium, the known degree width of the beam that the optics would create, and super basic trigonometry, it was determined that the LEDs could be mounted just inside the edge of the tank’s footprint, angled inward, and the vast majority of light produced would enter the aquarium without even touching the glass. Longest sentence in the world.
You may also notice the plexi glass does not overlap the LEDs, but stops just short of them. This is because it was never meant to play any sort of protective role. After all, if I have water splashing seven feet into the air, I probably have more to worry about than LEDs (such as the mirror hanging below them which is a family heirloom). The plexi glass was added purely to help channel air coming out of fans which I did not end up mounting anyways. So I might remove the plexi glass in the future, but for now it’s no harm no foul.
When I finally mustered the nerve, I epoxied the LEDs onto the heat sinks with the arctic silver. This was accomplished very quickly by necessity; once mixed, the arctic silver gives you less than five minutes of work time before it hardens. And it better turn out perfect, because once the LED is epoxied on, it’s never coming off. Good thing the LEDs have an anticipated ten or so year life span. So I got pretty lucky with the alignment coming out straight, wouldn’t you say?:
Next it was time to wire them up. This is when I learned that not all Cree stars are created equal. I bought mine from three different popular vendors, and the stars I got from one of the vendors were absolutely impossible to solder. Good thing I only got five LEDs from this vendor. Please do your homework before you purchase LEDs. While it probably is not proper for me to steer my captive audience away from any vendors, I will highly recommend dealextreme and nanotuners. Great soldering contacts on those stars.
Then it was time to attach the optics. I had originally purchased lenses marketed as 6-degree optics. But when they arrived and I tried them out, I discovered that just about everything was wrong with them: They cast a terribly ugly, uneven spot, they absolutely did not follow the 6-degree FWHM intensity degradation curve that their data sheet specified, and most importantly, they produced a very bright sharp ring around the very edge of the spot, which I knew was sure to produce unsightly colored lines in the aquarium.
So after twisting the company’s arm which I bought them from because they really wanted to enforce their no-returns policy in spite of my detailed explanation of how the product’s performance was nothing like the way it was described to be, I was able to receive the Cree 8-degree lenses on store credit from them. This happens to be the same company from which I received the LEDs that absolutely refused to solder.
It should be noted here that I decided upon these particular optics with help from the very friendly folks over at candlepowerforums. Over there, they are working with many many more types of LEDs and optics than we are, all for the purpose of making cool flashlights?? They’re pretty nutty aren’t they? I can make this assessment because I am a sane person who spends enormous amounts of money to put salt water which is traveling at 1000+ gph in very close proximity to household electricity.
So here is a shot after the optics were attached:
This was relatively straightforward. They simply fit onto the LEDs. If you end up using them, you will want to be sure to use a dab of superglue to ensure that they all remain oriented perfectly, as they will toggle a tiny bit otherwise. The important part though is that they project an excellent beam, which is virtually free of artifacts, has no excessively hot spots, and transitions very smoothly from center to edge. Without these characteristics, it is very probable that the aquarium would end up looking like a blue and white tie-dyed shirt.
Then all that was left to do was conceal the wiring. This would require a trip to the hardware store for some heat-shrink tubing. But if I had waited to hang this thing until the trip to the hardware store occurred, who knows when you would be reading this thread. So up in the air it went. I had simply drilled two holes in the frame, and hung it from two separate threaded poles. This way the axis which is perpendicular to that of which the heat sinks rotate could also be adjusted on a whim. And more cell phone shots of the final result:
With the flash on:
Flash back off, LEDs on full blast:
A fun shot of standing next to the tank looking down (it comes up to ~waist height):
Closing thoughts:
*I initially fired it up with all LEDs running at their maximum 1 amp rating. However, this proved to be way too much light. So all together (with the blues turned up slightly more than whites) I would guess they are running at an average of half their full brightness, or ~500 mA. So let’s do the math:
(~24 volts x ~0.5 amps) x 3 strings = ~36 watts of electricity.
*This doesn’t matter all that much to me, due to the fact that I pay less than 7 cents per kilowatt hour here in Ann Arbor, but those of you in California might want to take note here. I went from 4x24w = 96w T5HO with individual reflectors to approximately 36 watts of LED light for the same result.
*But aside from the clean look of not having a fixture directly over the aquarium, and the low energy consumption is the amazing visual effect created when the glass is not being illuminated. LiveForPhysics was absolutely not kidding, it really does look like my aquarium inhabitants are simply sitting out in the air. It is absolutely stunning. Meanwhile, there are extremely cool shadow effects happening under my little overhangs and in my little cave areas, due to the very laminar direction of the light entering the tank. I believe this adds a great deal of realism to the scene.
*If I want to get theatrical in the future, I might consider adding those black flappy things to the sides of the lenses as can be seen in theater lighting. This is because of course the lenses are not perfectly efficient at directing 100% of the light into the water. There is a small degree of spill out into the room, and if I were to eliminate this, it would probably have a more striking effect.
*For those of you that haven’t heard yet, the quality of light from these LEDs is amazing. With just the royal blues running, my zoanthids fluoresce with the most brilliant oranges/reds that I had never seen before. You may ask how is this possible if the LEDs are emitting only a very narrow spectrum of blue? This is actually because the certain components of the corals absorb the blue light and actually transform it through what’s called a bathochromic shift to spit out a different color. I just learned this in my medicinal chemistry course. Wildly impressive technical jargon aside, I wonder if this is how it feels to discover one day that you’ve needed glasses the whole time? THE TREES HAVE LEAVES
*Also, I am very thankful that I do not receive any glare coming off of the surface of the water when I walk by. I pictured that with such intense point-sources of light, there would be very bright little spots bouncing off the surface of the water and into my eyes. I was deathly afraid that I may hang the fixture only to find that this was a huge deal breaker. Why it isn’t occurring is beyond me, but I’m not complaining. Another minor fun thing about this fixture, is that the light is so intensely concentrated by the optics, that for the first couple feet after it leaves the lenses, you can actually see its path in the air due to minute particles floating around. It’s not going to create world peace but it’s still cool.
Anyone passing through the Ann Arbor area is free to come witness these claims for him or herself.
Future plans:
Since the beginning, the plan has been to conceal the cord behind the wall. But by now, I will be switching apartments in a few months, so I’m not going to do that at this time. My girlfriend wants her security deposit back when we move. In order to complete the rimless look and not have a cord hanging over the edge, I would absolutely love to replace my nanostream with an MP10. However, who knows when I will have the funds for that. But if I happen to find myself with one, I will be sure to update with pictures of how much more artistic the tank will look.
Also, at some point I will be making a smaller version of this fixture to light up a rimless display refugium which is in the works. Even though I am quite content with the particular optics I have used here, I will at that time be experimenting with creating my own fully-adjustable optics out of convex lenses, so that even in a fixture such as this, it may be a very simple thing to illuminate specific spots in the aquarium to help showcase certain corals etc. Although I wouldn’t mind if one of the companies beats me to it, which they seem to constantly be doing when it comes to “my” inventions.
And of course this brings me to the most important part, which is what’s inside the aquarium. It was easy for me to experiment with this lighting quite frankly because there’s not a whole lot going on inside the aquarium at this time. I have a few zoa and paly frags and a nice little pink SPS, but that’s just about it. Now that planning and building the light fixture, which has eaten up a lot of my aquarium-keeping energy is done, I can get back to the things that matter most: Water changes, parameter monitoring, frag procuring etc. I hope you folks enjoyed the read, and strongly encourage others to give it a shot. I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed. Thanks again to those of you who have given me so much assistance in learning what I needed to know to accomplish this, of course I couldn’t have done it without you.
Happy reefing.
After several months of anticipation, I have created an LED fixture which is mounted on the ceiling of my room and projects light into my aquarium, for a very rimless effect. It all began several months ago, with LiveForPhysics’ Xenon projection project, which can be seen here:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1542980&highlight=xenon
I was so inspired by his work that I was a click away from creating a small xenon projection system of my own, the thought of which can be seen here:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1603868&highlight=xenon
However, just before I purchased my xenon parts, I came across Soundwave’s groundbreaking thread, which I’m sure many of you have visited several times over. It has given me and who knows how many others a fantastic introduction to creating an LED fixture:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1587273
I eventually applied my feelings toward projection in his thread:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15348790#post15348790
And I was really hoping/anticipating that someone else with more money than a poor professional student such as myself would have given it a shot long before now. Santoki ended up doing something very similar last month, which you can see here:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1761942
However, he employed 40-degree optics, and thus is keeping the LED panels much closer to the aquarium. BTW, if you are looking for the absolute definition of a clean, elegantly designed LED panel, his is and probably will always be the one to see. As far as I know, it’s just not possible to make them better than he has.
And in the meantime, I read and read, and then read some more, until I got to a place where I was very comfortable with the idea of building an LED fixture of my own. It is absolutely necessary to mention here, that I have received an enormous amount of help in gaining this knowledge from our very own der_wille_zur_macht, stugray, kcress, and many others who have dropped hints along the way, and the community is so lucky to have as long-term contributors.
So it began with the parts:
As can be seen in the picture, I have purchased:
9 Cree XR-E cool white LEDs
9 Cree XR-E royal blue LEDs
18 Cree 8-degree lenses with holder (not pictured)
A 6.5 amp 24v DC power supply
3 Buck Puck LED drivers with prewired potentiometer for dimming
2 (1.25” by 10.05” by 2.875” tall) aluminum heatsinks
Plexi glass sheeting
Arctic Silver Premium Thermal Adhesive
Various aluminum pieces and small hardware
Three small computer fans and some capacitors (not used after all, good thing they were cheap :lolspin: )
The original plan was to keep the power supply stationed on the floor, and have the 24v DC running up the cord to the fixture. So I picked up some capacitors to place across the poles of the buck pucks per what their data sheet specified in this case, but when I made the connections I discovered that the power supply could not handle this situation. So it was immediately incorporated into the fixture. This is for the better anyways; it had no effect on the final outer dimensions of the fixture, and it keeps the very dangerous exposed household current connections out of my cat’s reach. I don’t need any exploding cat paws. Here’s a shot from just before the LEDs were mounted:
You may notice the peculiar way I have the heatsinks connected to the aluminum frame. This is for the absolutely vital purpose of allowing them to be freely rotatable. We are dealing with very tight beams here, and it was crucial that I have the ability to finely adjust the direction they are pointing once the fixture was hanging.
On this note, you may notice that the heat sinks (to which the LEDs are affixed) are positioned very far apart from each other. 10 inches apart to be precise. This has nothing to do with breathing room, and everything to do with increasing the number of angles from which the light will be hitting the coral. There would be much more spotlighting effect if all of the LEDs were in a single cluster. So why didn’t I place them even further apart? Like putting one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom (just kidding)? Taking a cue from LiveForPhysics, it was my intention to keep light from directly hitting the glass. I will touch on the effects of this later.
So with the known distance that the fixture would be from the aquarium, the known degree width of the beam that the optics would create, and super basic trigonometry, it was determined that the LEDs could be mounted just inside the edge of the tank’s footprint, angled inward, and the vast majority of light produced would enter the aquarium without even touching the glass. Longest sentence in the world.
You may also notice the plexi glass does not overlap the LEDs, but stops just short of them. This is because it was never meant to play any sort of protective role. After all, if I have water splashing seven feet into the air, I probably have more to worry about than LEDs (such as the mirror hanging below them which is a family heirloom). The plexi glass was added purely to help channel air coming out of fans which I did not end up mounting anyways. So I might remove the plexi glass in the future, but for now it’s no harm no foul.
When I finally mustered the nerve, I epoxied the LEDs onto the heat sinks with the arctic silver. This was accomplished very quickly by necessity; once mixed, the arctic silver gives you less than five minutes of work time before it hardens. And it better turn out perfect, because once the LED is epoxied on, it’s never coming off. Good thing the LEDs have an anticipated ten or so year life span. So I got pretty lucky with the alignment coming out straight, wouldn’t you say?:
Next it was time to wire them up. This is when I learned that not all Cree stars are created equal. I bought mine from three different popular vendors, and the stars I got from one of the vendors were absolutely impossible to solder. Good thing I only got five LEDs from this vendor. Please do your homework before you purchase LEDs. While it probably is not proper for me to steer my captive audience away from any vendors, I will highly recommend dealextreme and nanotuners. Great soldering contacts on those stars.
Then it was time to attach the optics. I had originally purchased lenses marketed as 6-degree optics. But when they arrived and I tried them out, I discovered that just about everything was wrong with them: They cast a terribly ugly, uneven spot, they absolutely did not follow the 6-degree FWHM intensity degradation curve that their data sheet specified, and most importantly, they produced a very bright sharp ring around the very edge of the spot, which I knew was sure to produce unsightly colored lines in the aquarium.
So after twisting the company’s arm which I bought them from because they really wanted to enforce their no-returns policy in spite of my detailed explanation of how the product’s performance was nothing like the way it was described to be, I was able to receive the Cree 8-degree lenses on store credit from them. This happens to be the same company from which I received the LEDs that absolutely refused to solder.
It should be noted here that I decided upon these particular optics with help from the very friendly folks over at candlepowerforums. Over there, they are working with many many more types of LEDs and optics than we are, all for the purpose of making cool flashlights?? They’re pretty nutty aren’t they? I can make this assessment because I am a sane person who spends enormous amounts of money to put salt water which is traveling at 1000+ gph in very close proximity to household electricity.
So here is a shot after the optics were attached:
This was relatively straightforward. They simply fit onto the LEDs. If you end up using them, you will want to be sure to use a dab of superglue to ensure that they all remain oriented perfectly, as they will toggle a tiny bit otherwise. The important part though is that they project an excellent beam, which is virtually free of artifacts, has no excessively hot spots, and transitions very smoothly from center to edge. Without these characteristics, it is very probable that the aquarium would end up looking like a blue and white tie-dyed shirt.
Then all that was left to do was conceal the wiring. This would require a trip to the hardware store for some heat-shrink tubing. But if I had waited to hang this thing until the trip to the hardware store occurred, who knows when you would be reading this thread. So up in the air it went. I had simply drilled two holes in the frame, and hung it from two separate threaded poles. This way the axis which is perpendicular to that of which the heat sinks rotate could also be adjusted on a whim. And more cell phone shots of the final result:
With the flash on:
Flash back off, LEDs on full blast:
A fun shot of standing next to the tank looking down (it comes up to ~waist height):
Closing thoughts:
*I initially fired it up with all LEDs running at their maximum 1 amp rating. However, this proved to be way too much light. So all together (with the blues turned up slightly more than whites) I would guess they are running at an average of half their full brightness, or ~500 mA. So let’s do the math:
(~24 volts x ~0.5 amps) x 3 strings = ~36 watts of electricity.
*This doesn’t matter all that much to me, due to the fact that I pay less than 7 cents per kilowatt hour here in Ann Arbor, but those of you in California might want to take note here. I went from 4x24w = 96w T5HO with individual reflectors to approximately 36 watts of LED light for the same result.
*But aside from the clean look of not having a fixture directly over the aquarium, and the low energy consumption is the amazing visual effect created when the glass is not being illuminated. LiveForPhysics was absolutely not kidding, it really does look like my aquarium inhabitants are simply sitting out in the air. It is absolutely stunning. Meanwhile, there are extremely cool shadow effects happening under my little overhangs and in my little cave areas, due to the very laminar direction of the light entering the tank. I believe this adds a great deal of realism to the scene.
*If I want to get theatrical in the future, I might consider adding those black flappy things to the sides of the lenses as can be seen in theater lighting. This is because of course the lenses are not perfectly efficient at directing 100% of the light into the water. There is a small degree of spill out into the room, and if I were to eliminate this, it would probably have a more striking effect.
*For those of you that haven’t heard yet, the quality of light from these LEDs is amazing. With just the royal blues running, my zoanthids fluoresce with the most brilliant oranges/reds that I had never seen before. You may ask how is this possible if the LEDs are emitting only a very narrow spectrum of blue? This is actually because the certain components of the corals absorb the blue light and actually transform it through what’s called a bathochromic shift to spit out a different color. I just learned this in my medicinal chemistry course. Wildly impressive technical jargon aside, I wonder if this is how it feels to discover one day that you’ve needed glasses the whole time? THE TREES HAVE LEAVES
*Also, I am very thankful that I do not receive any glare coming off of the surface of the water when I walk by. I pictured that with such intense point-sources of light, there would be very bright little spots bouncing off the surface of the water and into my eyes. I was deathly afraid that I may hang the fixture only to find that this was a huge deal breaker. Why it isn’t occurring is beyond me, but I’m not complaining. Another minor fun thing about this fixture, is that the light is so intensely concentrated by the optics, that for the first couple feet after it leaves the lenses, you can actually see its path in the air due to minute particles floating around. It’s not going to create world peace but it’s still cool.
Anyone passing through the Ann Arbor area is free to come witness these claims for him or herself.
Future plans:
Since the beginning, the plan has been to conceal the cord behind the wall. But by now, I will be switching apartments in a few months, so I’m not going to do that at this time. My girlfriend wants her security deposit back when we move. In order to complete the rimless look and not have a cord hanging over the edge, I would absolutely love to replace my nanostream with an MP10. However, who knows when I will have the funds for that. But if I happen to find myself with one, I will be sure to update with pictures of how much more artistic the tank will look.
Also, at some point I will be making a smaller version of this fixture to light up a rimless display refugium which is in the works. Even though I am quite content with the particular optics I have used here, I will at that time be experimenting with creating my own fully-adjustable optics out of convex lenses, so that even in a fixture such as this, it may be a very simple thing to illuminate specific spots in the aquarium to help showcase certain corals etc. Although I wouldn’t mind if one of the companies beats me to it, which they seem to constantly be doing when it comes to “my” inventions.
And of course this brings me to the most important part, which is what’s inside the aquarium. It was easy for me to experiment with this lighting quite frankly because there’s not a whole lot going on inside the aquarium at this time. I have a few zoa and paly frags and a nice little pink SPS, but that’s just about it. Now that planning and building the light fixture, which has eaten up a lot of my aquarium-keeping energy is done, I can get back to the things that matter most: Water changes, parameter monitoring, frag procuring etc. I hope you folks enjoyed the read, and strongly encourage others to give it a shot. I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed. Thanks again to those of you who have given me so much assistance in learning what I needed to know to accomplish this, of course I couldn’t have done it without you.
Happy reefing.
Last edited:
i really like the look of your fixture. i bet something like that would look very good on a long tank. one day i will undertake a similar project. keep up the good work 
