DIY LED Reef Lighting

[jpeggerling]

Has anyone put any thought into a DIY LED lighting?

I got to talking to one of our Product Engineers at work today about light emitting diodes. He told me that he used to work for a company in California that Mfg LEDs. He pulled out a bag from his desk of Decreate LEDs. He then hook up up to a 9v battery. These thing are SUPER bright. He had 4 differnt colors. Blue,Red,Amber and Clear.

Then I was telling him about the SOLARIS-LED Lighting. So I sent him a link to there website. About and hour later he came over to my desk and was all about trying to build a concept.

These LEDS are 360 lumens a peice and run off of just 3v.

I will take a picture of one here in a little bit.

I was just wondering if anyone has tried this or has read anything on any DIY projects?

[evilc66]

There are a few on here, but there are a TON on some other sites like NanoReef.

[dandydan]

Quite a few of us are running LED lighting, mine at present is in conjunction with t5, after a month the results are pretty good and i certainly do not miss the 2X250w halides.

But you have to use the Power LED e.g. Cree XRE cool white which require a constant current supply of anything from 350ma without heatsink to 1000ma with heatsink and active cooling. At present I am using BinQ4. Also Blue LED at 500ma and am now gonna order some royal blues to play around with the colours.
A little longer with good results and I shall try without the T5 and replace them with LED.
Go to Cree web site you can learn a bunch there, seeing your down as a pcb designer you should find it easy to solder and heat sink
Luck.