(Another) DIY LED Build - Linear Design

[katchupoy]

im not worried about coverage, what im worried about is penetration. I rather go with narrower optics.. in my case, i spread all my light too much that i cannot even put low light corals anywhere.... I should have made them closer so that i have areas left right and center of low lights, and concentrate the lights in two areas where i can put light loving corals... tough....

[InADream]

So your saying that if I want to keep lower light corals, I need to use 60 degree optics. I just want to have the tank fully lit, with no dark spots. Will I be able to keep the tank lit and have lower light corals with 60 degree optics...

Thanks.

[katchupoy]

no its the opposite. Why narrower? Because you have deeper tank. You want to penetrated that depth. The drawback is with the same number of leds, you are sacrificing the area covered by these lights because hour optics are narrower. You may have low intensity areas in the middle of your tank and sides.

but sometimes this is good, so that in these same areas, you can put your less light demanding corals.

hope this makes sense.

[katchupoy]

Originally Posted by SWF

Hi Dennis, Ceasar,

Thank you so much for your inputs.

I actually managed to get hands on some heatsinks... 1.5 inch x .5 Inch with 5 fins.
That gives me 1.5 x 2.5 inches of surface. These are 4 feet in length.

My plan is to have 6 channels with 12 led's on each channel. Each channel is 48 inches in lenght.

The tank is 48 inches long with 2 inches euro braces on the ends and a 2 inch brace in the center. The 2 braces at the end will reduce the lighting area by 4 inches length wise. That will give me 44 inches of open space on the surface of the tank lenght wise.

With the above details following are my questiosn :
1) Is it advisable to cut the heatsinks to 44 inches since the reduction lenght will reduce the total weight.
2) What would be the ideal spacing between two LEDS.
3) Is it possible to mix blue and white leds.. have six blue and six white on a single channel driven by a single driver... the LED's I am going to use are XP-G R5 LEDs CW and XP-E RB.

i will be back with more questions....

Thanks again for all your help !

1) don't cut the heatsink, weight you will loose is negligible. You need as much surface as you can to diffuse heat.
2) you have a better heatsink than mine so you can go closer. Guessing 2.5 inches? Just compute the remaining open area of your tank minus the eurobrace? Like dennis said.
3) check the spec sheet, check how high amp you can run them, and choose the lower one to be safe. Ie. Blue run on 800 while white can run 1000 then run your set at 800.

cesar

[TropTrea]

Originally Posted by katchupoy

1) don't cut the heatsink, weight you will loose is negligible. You need as much surface as you can to diffuse heat.
2) you have a better heatsink than mine so you can go closer. Guessing 2.5 inches? Just compute the remaining open area of your tank minus the eurobrace? Like dennis said.
3) check the spec sheet, check how high amp you can run them, and choose the lower one to be safe. Ie. Blue run on 800 while white can run 1000 then run your set at 800.

cesar

Actualy with the new ratings on CREE XP-E you can run both the blues and whites at 1,000ma. Cree's new max rating are.

Whites, Royal Blues, Blues, and Greens max 1,000ma
Red Orange and Red max 700 ma
Amber max 500 ma.

For the XP-G's they are rated at max of 1,500 Watts @ 3.25 volts for actualy
4.875 Watts.

By mixing Royal Blues and XP-G Whites you have a fairly close match. at 1,000ma.

The blues running at 3.5 Volts = 3.5 Watts.
and the whites running at 3.15 Volts = 3.15 Watts

So you are safe running these two colors together at 1 Amp. It is the Reds that need to have the lower current now as the ambers that are close to 1 Watt max. But we usualy do not use Red and Amber LED's.

[Snausy]

So much to absorb, so confused as to what I'm going to do. Actually doing it seems to be the easy part.

Figuring out what you are going to do is the hard part. How many led, cree or bridgelux, what to use for heatsinks, rows or clusters, where to put the different colors.

Literally making my head spin. I've asked in a couple other threads...some advice would help.

300g 31" deep 8ft long...what would you do? I'm literally at the point of just trusting one of you guys that has done it a few times and seems knowlegable to tell me what to do. I really don't want to spend 700 bucks or whatever and find out that I could've done it much better for less.

Last I "decided" I was leaning towards two 120 led kits from aquastyle but they are bridgelux. http://www.aquastyleonline.com/produ...mable-Kit.html

If I can have fewer crees to provide the same amount of light maybe that would be better. BAH! so undecided and ignorant really that I'm frozen from making a call one way or the other. SO my little 4ft T-5 fixture continues to sit there doing a crappy job.

I asked the same question in a different thread so if you answer me there I will see it, no need to post again. I'm just trying to get this figured out so I can get started! THanks

[katchupoy]

Originally Posted by Snausy

So much to absorb, so confused as to what I'm going to do. Actually doing it seems to be the easy part.

Figuring out what you are going to do is the hard part. How many led, cree or bridgelux, what to use for heatsinks, rows or clusters, where to put the different colors.

Literally making my head spin. I've asked in a couple other threads...some advice would help.

300g 31" deep 8ft long...what would you do? I'm literally at the point of just trusting one of you guys that has done it a few times and seems knowlegable to tell me what to do. I really don't want to spend 700 bucks or whatever and find out that I could've done it much better for less.

Last I "decided" I was leaning towards two 120 led kits from aquastyle but they are bridgelux. http://www.aquastyleonline.com/produ...mable-Kit.html

If I can have fewer crees to provide the same amount of light maybe that would be better. BAH! so undecided and ignorant really that I'm frozen from making a call one way or the other. SO my little 4ft T-5 fixture continues to sit there doing a crappy job.

I asked the same question in a different thread so if you answer me there I will see it, no need to post again. I'm just trying to get this figured out so I can get started! THanks

Fewer LEDs? Have you looked at this???
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2128756

With that depth of a tank... Make sure that you will use optics for those CREEs. But like you said, figuring out some stuff is pure up to you. Let us know what you decided and we will start from there.

[Snausy]

Ok wow I just totally changed direction with that link. I want a few of those chips rather than 300+ 3w stars for sure! In fact why would anyone use all single 3 watters when you can use a couple/few multi-led chips instead?

Those chips look WAY brighter and really just the ticket I need for my big tank.

Thanks for the link katchupoy. Not that I know what I'm doing now but at least I have hope!

[TropTrea]

Originally Posted by Snausy

Ok wow I just totally changed direction with that link. I want a few of those chips rather than 300+ 3w stars for sure! In fact why would anyone use all single 3 watters when you can use a couple/few multi-led chips instead?

Those chips look WAY brighter and really just the ticket I need for my big tank.

Thanks for the link katchupoy. Not that I know what I'm doing now but at least I have hope!

That thread to me is going to the extrem with some people using 50 Watt LED's. Keep in mind that what they are using are basicly multichip packages that actualy are using 3 to 5 watt LED's. I looked into it price wise and found you are paying a premium for the Cree M series (multi chips). Then look at a package of 9 3 Watt LED's jamed into a 27 Watt package or 12 5 Watt LED's into a 60 watt package. You do have to realy worry about the correct cooling. Next you do get more more Lumns out of a 50 watt package but it is not by any means proportionate to the Lumns per watt you get with the smaller packages.

With your tank 8' Long and 31" tall I would look around the area of 450 watts of LED's. They do make some nice M series with 4 LED's rated at 10 watts and 20 watts. I would rather go with the 10 Watt units where you have less of a heating issue. with the ten watters going with 12 neutral whites and 36 Blues, or 16 Cool Whites and 32 Blues.

But it would not surprise my if your total build cost would be higher than running 144 3 watt led's and you would get more light with the 3 watt led's spread out.

[S2minute]

04/29/2012, 09:58 PM #1051
katchupoy
Registered Member

" im not worried about coverage, what im worried about is penetration. "

.............

[katchupoy]

Originally Posted by Snausy

Ok wow I just totally changed direction with that link. I want a few of those chips rather than 300+ 3w stars for sure! In fact why would anyone use all single 3 watters when you can use a couple/few multi-led chips instead?

Those chips look WAY brighter and really just the ticket I need for my big tank.

Thanks for the link katchupoy. Not that I know what I'm doing now but at least I have hope!

thats good that you have another alternative. But you will still need some RB crees to be the dusk / dawn effect??

this one also recreates the MH look, since its a one big single source light.

[Biggar]

Please check out how my cree LEDs have effected my color. Im stumped

Light Specs
All Cree 3 watts. both white sets are on stronger Ma driver(1000ma)s. all blues on 700ma's

Cool white- 24
Neutral white-12
Royal Blue- 56
Blue- 14
most on 80 degree optics, some on 60 degree.

70 blue, to 36 white. I only run 12 whites as a high noon effect (4 hours per day)



May be more than 20k in blue

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2168032

[katchupoy]

Originally Posted by Biggar

Please check out how my cree LEDs have effected my color. Im stumped

Light Specs
All Cree 3 watts. both white sets are on stronger Ma driver(1000ma)s. all blues on 700ma's

Cool white- 24
Neutral white-12
Royal Blue- 56
Blue- 14
most on 80 degree optics, some on 60 degree.

70 blue, to 36 white. I only run 12 whites as a high noon effect (4 hours per day)



May be more than 20k in blue

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2168032

Did you acclimate your corals to your lighting? Im almost in my 17th month and still at 80%. Havent gone 100% without bleaching my corals.. Other than that, really cool.

[Biggar]

Originally Posted by katchupoy

Did you acclimate your corals to your lighting? Im almost in my 17th month and still at 80%. Havent gone 100% without bleaching my corals.. Other than that, really cool.

I dont have a dimmer on mine, but the frags came out of other hobbiest tanks running very high MH wattage.

I think im going to shut down some strips and see what happens. Even coral on the sand are fading. They are growing fine, but losing color

[katchupoy]

lessen the blue side. they look dim to you but we are talking about very concentrated specific spectrum here. a lot of people under estimate the intensities of these leds. put a screen or raise your rig up, or turn some sets off.

[Biggar]

Originally Posted by katchupoy

lessen the blue side. they look dim to you but we are talking about very concentrated specific spectrum here. a lot of people under estimate the intensities of these leds. put a screen or raise your rig up, or turn some sets off.

Is it the blue that might be fading the corals if its a spectrum issue?

I always read the blue gives the color. Example: the 20k halides are known to produce deep color?

Hmmmmm

[madkat]

Almighty LED gurus,

I am about to embark on a LED build. Take a look at this and tell me if I am off base.
I have a 180G 72x24x24 Mixed reef

HLG-185-48B capable of running 3 strings of 14 XP-G white leds up to 1.3A,
HLG-240-48B capable of running 6 strings of 11 Royal Blue LEDs & 2 UV Violet LEDs up to 833mA.
So this would be 66RB,42W & 12 UV - Violet for a total of 120 LEDs.

Design can be found here http://mycomas.com/tmp/LED HOOD.pdf

[TropTrea]

Originally Posted by Snausy

So much to absorb, so confused as to what I'm going to do. Actually doing it seems to be the easy part.

Figuring out what you are going to do is the hard part. How many led, cree or bridgelux, what to use for heatsinks, rows or clusters, where to put the different colors.

Literally making my head spin. I've asked in a couple other threads...some advice would help.

300g 31" deep 8ft long...what would you do? I'm literally at the point of just trusting one of you guys that has done it a few times and seems knowlegable to tell me what to do. I really don't want to spend 700 bucks or whatever and find out that I could've done it much better for less.

Last I "decided" I was leaning towards two 120 led kits from aquastyle but they are bridgelux. http://www.aquastyleonline.com/produ...mable-Kit.html

If I can have fewer crees to provide the same amount of light maybe that would be better. BAH! so undecided and ignorant really that I'm frozen from making a call one way or the other. SO my little 4ft T-5 fixture continues to sit there doing a crappy job.

I asked the same question in a different thread so if you answer me there I will see it, no need to post again. I'm just trying to get this figured out so I can get started! THanks

Color balance is realy a personal thing. My advice is to start with a system that has a 1 Neutral White to 3 Blue combination. With your tank I would recommend about 120 3 watt LED's with lenses. But to start off put in 24 Neutral White LED's, 30 Royal Blue LED's and 30 Blue LED's. Then evaulate the color per your personal taste and add the additional LED's is phases to slowly balance the tank to your personal color taste.

[TropTrea]

Originally Posted by Biggar

Is it the blue that might be fading the corals if its a spectrum issue?

I always read the blue gives the color. Example: the 20k halides are known to produce deep color?

Hmmmmm

It has been proven the excess light in the 685 nm range will cause clor bleachiung in many corals. This is at the high end of the RED part of the spectrum. So the question is what is your White to Blue ratio? And also what type of White LED's are you using? I perfer Neutral Whites as they give a strong spectrum of red at about 630nm but fall of to near nothing by 685 nm.

Then there is the possibility of the light being overall too intense as some have said before. But this is very less likely.

[TheFishMan65]

madkat,

Can the UV take .8833 amps? I thought they maxed out at .5 amps. I have no experience with UV so let us know how it goes.
I would also use XMLs to save electricity rather than the XPGs.

[TropTrea]

Originally Posted by SWF

Hi Dennis, Ceasar,

Thank you so much for your inputs.

I actually managed to get hands on some heatsinks... 1.5 inch x .5 Inch with 5 fins.
That gives me 1.5 x 2.5 inches of surface. These are 4 feet in length.

My plan is to have 6 channels with 12 led's on each channel. Each channel is 48 inches in lenght.

The tank is 48 inches long with 2 inches euro braces on the ends and a 2 inch brace in the center. The 2 braces at the end will reduce the lighting area by 4 inches length wise. That will give me 44 inches of open space on the surface of the tank lenght wise.

With the above details following are my questiosn :
1) Is it advisable to cut the heatsinks to 44 inches since the reduction lenght will reduce the total weight.!

If your cutting 4" off of them that is negligable for weight and your just making more work for yourself than you need.

Originally Posted by SWF

2) What would be the ideal spacing between two LEDS..!

Ideal is simple even distribution over the entire tank. With your heat sink you need 16 inches square of surface are per LED minimum without fans. So measure the crosse section of your heat sinks and duvide that into 16 to get the minimum spacing.

Originally Posted by SWF

3) Is it possible to mix blue and white leds.. have six blue and six white on a single channel driven by a single driver... the LED's I am going to use are XP-G R5 LEDs CW and XP-E RB..!

Both the XP-e and XP-g's are rated to run at 1,000 ma now. So this mixing should not be an issue. But there will be a slight difference in actual voltage across each LED type since they are not 100% identical electricaly. but they are close enough not to be an issue as long as yur friver is set for 1050 ma or less.

Originally Posted by SWF

i will be back with more questions....

Thanks again for all your help !

[TropTrea]

Originally Posted by TheFishMan65

madkat,

Can the UV take .8833 amps? I thought they maxed out at .5 amps. I have no experience with UV so let us know how it goes.
I would also use XMLs to save electricity rather than the XPGs.

You cannot mix XP and XM on the same driver, the electrical characteristics are to far apart unless you running them at 1050 ma or less. The advantage of the XM's is you can run them at 1,500 ma for roughly 5 watts compared to the 1050 max on XP for 3.3 watts.

[Dave & Monica]

So I ordered from Rapid LED the other day, used this thread so much for design and other information. Still very good info within. Recent note, CREE XT-E RB are now 5w (1200-1300ma opperating current), same as the XP-G. XP-G2's will be out shortly, but they aren't anything to wait for. I ordered 50/50 RB to NW. I have 2 -250W MH (14k pheonix HQI bulbs) and the 48 LEDs are just to replace my T-5 and supplement. I'm going to control the whites and blues with the APEX variable ports. Can't wait to get started.

[katchupoy]

Dave, thanks for the update.

[wrx1908]

I love your setup this is my setup hope you like it too
http://youtu.be/159ToI7Lpf0
http://youtu.be/h5UeSnhOv_8