Diy Moonlights Q's

[Pinchey]

I've been looking around at some of the big box stores and there seems to be quite a few led lighting products. Whether it be for a desk lamp or clamp on book light. Is it possible to just rip out the white led's and replace them with blue led's?

[elzool]

It's possible, but what about going to AutoZone, looking in the area where the colored interior lights are and you'll find white, blue, red, and green led lights in various configurations.

I bought a strip of small leds for each side of my 48" tank and wired them to a variable ac adapter. At 12v it was too bright, turned it down to 7.5 and it was perfect. Total cost was $30 as I already had the adapter.

[Colin]

Autozone also carries a set of two LED license plate bolts for $5 that are blue LED's. They work great and are cheap. They tend to be a little spotlighty (is that a word?) but wrapping a piece of scotch tape (the opaque kind) around them works wonders.

--Colin

[elzool]

I tried the scotch tape trick and still wasn't happy, so I went back and found these strips with tiny leds on them that don't have the spot effect at all. I'll take pictures of the strips later and the nightlight tonight.

[oldsaltman]

These are from Advanced Auto or Auto Zone one and were about $15. They also have selfsticking tape already on them.
http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/115850LED.jpg

[hernluis]

i got a question for you all, are these lights even the right wavelength of natural moon light? also where are the pics?

[Colin]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9073759#post9073759 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by hernluis
i got a question for you all, are these lights even the right wavelength of natural moon light? also where are the pics?

Right wavelength? I have no clue. I don't recall ever seeing any moonlight setup that featured natural moonlight wavelengths.

They're blue, they're pretty, and they allow you to see what's going on at night. That's really all most people ask for from a moonlight. :D

--Colin

[fishymann]

if your any good with a little solder and a soldering iron for a few dollars you can create one of these very easily. there are many online dealers that sell super cheap LEDs (not radioshack, they are probably the worst to buy from)

www.lsdiodes.com is one place. i wonder if cathodes would work at all?

[Scooter12ga]

It's the wrong time of year but see if you can find LED Xmas lights. I got a string that was white and blue LEDs alternating. I cut the string it in half and added 4k ohms of 1 watt resistors to the circuit. It looks quite nice and I even get night time shimmer lines. Very 'moonlighty' ;) and it doesn't require an extra AC/DC adapter.

I have a total of about 5k ohms of resistance total including the built in resistor that's on the string. That's for 15 LEDs and it's verging on being too bright. If I were to do it again I would probably add another 2-3k ohms to dim them down a bit. You could go with lower resistance for a brighter effect but be careful because if you go too low you will let the 'magic smoke' out of the LEDs.

[Keelay]

A rather simple way is to use these LED night lights from Lowes (I think HD caries them too). They are about $5. They come with blue, white and red LED's I have 3 above my tank. No soldering. No adapters. Just crack off the top reflector a plug in to a simple extension cord.

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g93/skyedugger/led_nightlight.jpg
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g93/skyedugger/led_nightlight3.jpg
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g93/skyedugger/led_nightlight2.jpg

[hernluis]

any pic of how it lights up the tank

[ubgone]

The thing I hate the most about this LED moon lighting is that its very centered and doesn't distributes the light evenly....
from all the DIY LED moonlighting methods, my personal fav is this one:
Cold Cathode (http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/diy_moonlight.php)
I like this method because you can add a dimmer and figure out what suits you best! I still don't understand how you do this(dim the light using some kind of dimmer) but I understand people have done it before:dimming (http://www.cichlid-forum.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=52775&view=previous&sid=e508156ef8835351fc714524913a70ed) So if someone here understands and explain how you do that, then it will be a ctrl+v on my part for sure ;)

Uri.

[Keelay]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9090890#post9090890 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by hernluis
any pic of how it lights up the tank

Maybe I could take some pics tonight. I believe the LED's are 1 Watt ,which you'll be hard pressed to find higher output. You can find them, They just become more specialized. Remember that the lights are meant to light up a room at night. I use this same unit in my bathroom and it does a splendid job of lighting up the space.

Since the output beam of LED's is very focused, I had to use 3 of these to get good light distribution. My tank is 43" long by 18" wide, so they are lined up in a row long ways. I used to have a coralife lunar aqualight which sported two LED moonlights on another tank. And I have to say this is very similar in color.

I'll try to post tank pics tonight. (late)

-Kyle

[Icehockey_whino]

Are you worried that the night light plastic encasing will melt or burn under MH lights during the main light period of the day? That is my only trepidation of putting the nightlights in my hood.

[psilo]

http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/other/led_lazer_light-other.jpg

thinkgeek has these, very cheap.. $4 each. I got two sets, so that's 10 led's total. I wired them both to one adapter. I have a 55 gal 4ft tank, and ONE of these sets would be more than enough to cover the whole tank, but due to how my hood is setup and how my MH hangs, I went with two and have them aiming from the outside corners of the tank, in.

The led sets are aimed to spread light (find them on TGeek), the center led's in the array aim straight down, and as you move outward they bow out. This eliminates spotlight effect.

Rocks.

[Keelay]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9132067#post9132067 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Icehockey_whino
Are you worried that the night light plastic encasing will melt or burn under MH lights during the main light period of the day? That is my only trepidation of putting the nightlights in my hood.

Mine have been in place about 6 inches from the MH box (you can see the corner of the box in one of the pics). They've been here for about 6 months. There is absolutely no sign of the plastic melting. I'm running 2x175W 10000K Moguls for reference.

You've got a good point to think about this though. There might be an issue if they were closer or the MH's were higher wattage. That would apply to any plastic casing though. I don't think that the night light casing would be much different from any other plastic casing.

[ARIANNA]

Scooter12ga, I'm about to do the x-mas led thing but when I cut the string in half I will have three cut wires do they need to be reconnected and if they do to what? Thanks, Fred:strooper:

[Keelay]

I promised to upload a pic of my LED nightlight moonlights:

Sorry the pic is a little big:
http://members.cox.net/skyedugger/led_moonlights_sm.jpg

there is a bigger one here:
http://members.cox.net/skyedugger/led_moonlights.jpg

[Keelay]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9158614#post9158614 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ARIANNA
Scooter12ga, I'm about to do the x-mas led thing but when I cut the string in half I will have three cut wires do they need to be reconnected and if they do to what? Thanks, Fred:strooper:

The Christmas light thing is a decent idea. I makes for the cheapest up front cost. It will however cost more than LED in the long run. The Lights are incandescent which means they cost about twice as much to run than LED's for the same light output. And they don't last as long. Usually LED's last about 8 times longer than incandescent. It's not really that much money we are talking about here (low wattage either way) so it's not really that big of deal, but I am a total cheapskate (that's why I hang out in the DIY section) so I had to bring it up... :)

[ARIANNA]

The x-mas lights that I bought are led lights. Target had them for the last 2 Christmas's. They are made by Phillips and there are 60 lights per string. They cost around $14.00. Fred:strooper:

[Phyxius]

Great ideas guys. I made all mine and if your handy with a soldering iron they can be made pretty cheap. I made all mine with some cheap 12V power supplies, a bunch of LEDS and resistors and installed them in oak strips. The longest one I made(48") was under 20.00 and they got cheaper the smaller I went. Just get some wood to mount them in and it puts the light equal across the tank. I have 2 sitting on the tank tops and 1 is mounted up in the canopy higher. Add a potentiometer inline and they are dimming capable. Granted you can push more light with the 120v models but the 12v or less was cheaper in the long run.
Pic shows the 3 sizes I made for our tanks. All the LEDs are 470nm which are fairly close to moonlight in spectrum



http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/78452000_0016a__Small_.jpg

[Pbrown3701]

I used the ones from ThinkGeek and used an adjustible voltage AC/DC transformer to power them. That way, simply switch the voltage on them to dim. 12V was way too bright. I'm using 9.5V and they're perfect (and cheap)

[Keelay]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9163180#post9163180 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ARIANNA
The x-mas lights that I bought are led lights. Target had them for the last 2 Christmas's. They are made by Phillips and there are 60 lights per string. They cost around $14.00. Fred:strooper:

Nice! Didn't know they had those. Sounds like a great idea! 60 lights would go a long way! I see why you might want to cut some of them off.

There is a strong likelyhood that you won't be able to safely cut the string and "tie up the loose ends"

In a quick search about the lights, it appears the LED's christmas light strings are wired in series. That means the string depends on the full set of LED's as a current limiting device. If you cut the string the LEDS would source more current than designed and would at best just burn out quickly and at worst cause a fire.
http://led.linear1.org/led-christmas-lights-from-philips/

Is it really too bright with 60? or is it the mounting considerations?

[ARIANNA]

I'm sure I can figure something out with the whole string even if I leave half the lights outside the canapy they would become moon lights for the rest of the fish room. I can see it now when my wife enters the room and starts with "Oh those blue lights are so romantic" LOL
Fred:strooper:

[Keelay]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9171566#post9171566 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ARIANNA
I'm sure I can figure something out with the whole string even if I leave half the lights outside the canapy they would become moon lights for the rest of the fish room. I can see it now when my wife enters the room and starts with "Oh those blue lights are so romantic" LOL
Fred:strooper:
Romantic fish room eh? We definitely are in the DIY forum! :lol:

[bbehring]

Check out these guys.

http://www.thelebos.com/

[Big_D]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9170356#post9170356 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Keelay
There is a strong likelyhood that you won't be able to safely cut the string and "tie up the loose ends"

In a quick search about the lights, it appears the LED's christmas light strings are wired in series. That means the string depends on the full set of LED's as a current limiting device. If you cut the string the LEDS would source more current than designed and would at best just burn out quickly and at worst cause a fire.
http://led.linear1.org/led-christmas-lights-from-philips/



An easy fix to that would be using a multimeter to measure the resistance of the strand of lights you cut off... Then solder in a resistor on the end of the other string to match the removed strands resistance... Once again the string will have the same resistance and run at the orignal brightness...


CATIII

[Keelay]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9213652#post9213652 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by CATIII
An easy fix to that would be using a multimeter to measure the resistance of the strand of lights you cut off... Then solder in a resistor on the end of the other string to match the removed strands resistance... Once again the string will have the same resistance and run at the orignal brightness...

CATIII

It's a good point. You could fix this with a simple resister. The problem is determining what value resistor. You can't use a multimeter to measure the resistance of a diode (or a set of them). Diodes in the circuit show up as simple voltage drops (around 0.7volts each).

First if we assume that there is only the voltage source (120V AC) and the diodes (60 of them) then we can figure how big(resistance & wattage) a resistor to get.

What you could do is measure the AC current used by the string while it's running using a multimeter. Let's say it's 40mA.

Let's assume that you only want half the string. Figure that 120V drops across all diodes evenly. 120 / 2 = 60 volts. That means that the resistor we pick needs to drop 60 volts while allowing 40mA.

Ohms law kicks in here. E= IR or in this case R = E/I. R = 60V/40mA = 1500 ohms (or 1.5 kOhms). The resistor is disipating P = IE = 60V*0.04Amps = 2.4 Watts.

So I would get a 5 watt resistor valued at 1.5 Kohms. Just to be safe.

Convert accordingly for the number of LED's you 'd like to keep in the string. Keep in mind that you are going to need to seal this resistor up well since it is still connected to a significant voltage source and represents a safety issue. Especially around saltwater!

[ARIANNA]

I think I could do that. I'm not quite up to par on electricity although I have been gaining experience slowly. I still have a couple Questions though. 1) Where can I purchase the resistor locally as I will only be buying one. 2) there are three wires in the string two coming from a "small transformer looking thing" one coming directly from the plug there is also another "small transformer looking thing" on the other side. I have not completely traced the wires yet to the other side but one connects the bulbs together the other two go from one end to the other. Which wire would have the resistor soldered in and do I solder the other little transformer back into the string once cut. Thanks for your help you guys are great.
Fred:strooper:

[Keelay]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9220428#post9220428 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ARIANNA
I think I could do that. I'm not quite up to par on electricity although I have been gaining experience slowly. I still have a couple Questions though. 1) Where can I purchase the resistor locally as I will only be buying one. 2) there are three wires in the string two coming from a "small transformer looking thing" one coming directly from the plug there is also another "small transformer looking thing" on the other side. I have not completely traced the wires yet to the other side but one connects the bulbs together the other two go from one end to the other. Which wire would have the resistor soldered in and do I solder the other little transformer back into the string once cut. Thanks for your help you guys are great.
Fred:strooper:

The transformer "thing" makes my think that my previous assumptions about the circuit are totally wrong. I based the circuit off of some content from the posted link in one of my previous posts.

Given the new info, I would just use them as is. You don't know what is in there and it sounds like you don't have the experience yet (no offense intended :)) to know what to do, should you be able to open one of the "transformers" up. The other issue is even if you remove LED's and replace with a resistor you'll be using the same amount of power. You'll just get less light out of it. You're paying for something you're not getting.

[tgfrench]

Here is where I got instructions for my setup.

http://www.kaotica.com/frag/diy/moonlight/

I love them and I'm currently working on a DIY moon cycle timer.

You can get the whole package from this place.

http://stores.ebay.com/Fishbowl-Innovations_W0QQssPageNameZstrkQ3amefsQ3amesstQQtZkm