Checking intrest in LED lighting.

[alteredego]

A partner and I are in the process of designing and buildind a professional functioning and looking set up. The first one will be used on a 600g tank set up along side a 400w MH 20k and a 400w MH 12k bulbs. We should be complete with the first one by the end of this month at best and end of next month at worst.

The plan at the moment is to have a foot print of 30"x30" with anywhere from 300-400 leds with a mixture of 470nm blue, white, soft white, UV and some red for the nocturnal stuff going on to watch. We are building a controller to set the morning / evening, and full daylight with/without attinic. After the one for my tank is complete we will post pics for comparison. We are so looking at building and selling them for around the same price as a compariable elect. mh system. If interested let me know, like I said we need to check intrest first mostly because the LEDs that are truly needed like the 10000mcd and higher are very pricey so we cant start off with any overhead.

[seamonkey2]

I am in Scott, check out RC on LED DIY systems there is a bunch of good info there, but yeah I am in for both of my tanks


Jose

[Headless_donkey]

I would love to see these in action. Is the price is right I would be very interested. Those seahorses need light without the heat. Right Jose?

[alteredego]

It looks like we have a decent design going which will incorperate three diffrent timers with a manual switch for the red and a master for all. I'll take a look at led DIY section on RC. We look at it this way, It's about time we get to use all those years of electronics education the army provided but never used.

[seamonkey2]

I am all in Scott, yeah put that knowledge to good use, my wife wont let me use my Army knowledge :(

Headless donkey, horses dont care for light, as long as they can see, is good enough

Jose

[stephencraig]

I'm defintely in. One of the things that holds me back from a much larger system is the maintenance cost (especially since we love SPS and clams, in particular).

If someone can post the thread from RC I would definitely appreciate that as well, since I can't ever seem to get Search to work.

Stephen

[5.0Stang]

Very intrested! Will it be a hood or pendent or solaris lookin thing? Gotts to have details!

[alteredego]

The one we've come up with is the stand alone light much like the solaris. If special mounting is needed we can modify the case as needed. The only thing is the power supply and the resisters need ventilation to stay functional. Dont get confused, the LEDs don't emit much heat but the resisters job is to drop the over voltage, so the by product is heat, so some hood clearence is needed. More than likely they will all be custom to each tank /hood config.

[erikharrison]

Awesome. Take video and post it. We all want to see it in action.

[Bill S]

Scott,

The major reason I'm looking at these is because of HEAT. Heat is also a killer of the long life of LEDs. The Solaris product goes thru great pains to make sure it doesn't heat up - including temperature sensors in critical areas that kick on fans, and if that's not enough, shut down the fixture. Is there a way to avoid the use of the resistors by putting the LEDs in series?

[seamonkey2]

Scott, read this whole thing

this guy did a DIY LED light system, but encounter some problems and solutions, this may help

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=727139

Jose

[seamonkey2]

heat is exactly the main killer in this fixtures and cheap chineese LEDs , since this is going to be home made, why not simply have the fans coming on at the same time as the lights, avoid the installation of expensive sensors, little fans dont use alot of juice and prevents any heat build up from the start.

Jose

[alteredego]

We were going to put the fans on a thermo switch, we could have the fans on all time. For the question of having the resistors left off the circuit. It is possible to run every LED in parallel, but, The LEDs have a voltage drop of 3.2-3.8v you must have a resistor to control over voltage. We will run a series of 10-15 LEDs then those strands in parallel.

[seamonkey2]

Scott here is some info I found, may help unless you already know it

http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/components/led.htm

Jose

[erikharrison]

my question is about the blue LEDs.... I have read about the new monitors that use LEDs/OLEDs. They have been discussing the blue ones in particular. Apparently the blue ones fry out wayyyy faster than the others, and the white ones turn yellow. I know that there's probably no inexpensive way to combat this, but maybe have the lights cycle? Meaning, sometimes you run two strips of white leds with two strips of blue, and then after a short while/the next day, you switch to 4 other strips. Example: rows 1234 on monday 5678 on tuesday 1234 on weds etc etc.