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Unread 05/10/2011, 05:41 PM   #1
redfishsc
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LED Spectral Analysis. Graphs of most common LEDs and combinations we use.

Here is the result of the LED testing we did about a week ago, along with a very good friend of mine who is a Marine Biology student at UNC Wilmington. Joe was fortunate enough to just get word that he's been hired by SeCore (yeah!) so these will be the only LEDs I'm able to study unless I happen upon another spectrometer.

The Spectrometer was an OceanOptics S2000.
http://www.oceanoptics.com/Products/s2000.asp

Current was held at 700mA with a benchtop powersupply for all LEDs except the XML graph below.

All LEDs were mounted to 1/2" thick acrylic (Corian) pieces as temporary "heatsinks", and held in place using jigs I constructed to keep things consistent.

For ALL test, the LEDs were 12" from the sensor. The sensor was never moved.

There are too many graphs to post them all here (28 graphs total) and about half of them are more for planted tank owners.

So I will link you to them in the following ways. Several people have offered to host them for us. Two of them are retailers so once they get them uploaded, I'll edit this post and include the link.

Here is my photobucket album with them all.
http://s919.photobucket.com/albums/ad39/re...TING/?start=all


Here are a few of the most important ones, but please by all means look at the rest of them. Some interesting stuff was found. Most of it predictable but nice to know for sure.

Y-Axis is not PAR but a unit of intensity that the meter assigns. We are looking for a way to convert this number into something useful, but it serves as a great comparison.

Rebel Neutral White and 2 Royal Blues


Rebel Neutral White, Royal Blue, Cyan


Cree XPG Neutral White, 2 XPE Royal Blue


XPG Neutral White, XPE Royal, XPE Blue ("cool blue")


XPG Neutral White, XPE Royal, Rebel Cyan


XPG Cool White and XPE Royal Blue


XML Cool White at various drive currents





A few others.









There are others on the album as well, including individual shots for the XPG cool, neutral, and warm white.... royal blue and blue, cyan rebel, XPE red and satistronics red, and various white-only combinations for planted tanks and refugia.


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Unread 05/10/2011, 05:42 PM   #2
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Comparison of XPG, XPE, and Satistronics 3w LEDs all at 700mA.



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Current Tank Info: ghetto grad school reef.....11g rimless tank, 36X9X9, lit by Cree and Rebels scobbled together. Stocked mostly with free stuff I got from panhandling my fellow reefers.
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Unread 05/10/2011, 05:47 PM   #3
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Looks good!


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Unread 05/10/2011, 07:20 PM   #4
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Nice work. Drawing conclusions from this data will be another great project. Did you happen to get the AI Super Blue combination? That would be Cree cool white, Cree Blue, and Cree Royal Blue. I see a similar data set but with the neutral white rather than cool white.


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Unread 05/10/2011, 08:36 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NatureNerd View Post
Nice work. Drawing conclusions from this data will be another great project. Did you happen to get the AI Super Blue combination? That would be Cree cool white, Cree Blue, and Cree Royal Blue. I see a similar data set but with the neutral white rather than cool white.
+1 I'd like to see that combo as well.


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Unread 05/11/2011, 04:37 AM   #6
redfishsc
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NatureNerd View Post
Nice work. Drawing conclusions from this data will be another great project. Did you happen to get the AI Super Blue combination? That would be Cree cool white, Cree Blue, and Cree Royal Blue. I see a similar data set but with the neutral white rather than cool white.
Not using the cool white, but #4 shows the neutral white in this combo. Would be very easy to imagine though.

Look at this graph (4th one from above). The blue "bust" on the left would be only marginally lower but the yellow/orange/red on the right will be higher with the neutral white.

Look on my photobucket page and compare the cool white to the neutral white and there is your yellow/orange/red curve.

Personally I do NOT like the AI Sol combo at all. They are very well made, powerful, and awesome units but I think the cool white isn't warm enough to balance out all that blue. I have seen this unit over a 220g (48X48X24) and, although powerful, the color just looks anemic to me.




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Current Tank Info: ghetto grad school reef.....11g rimless tank, 36X9X9, lit by Cree and Rebels scobbled together. Stocked mostly with free stuff I got from panhandling my fellow reefers.
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Unread 08/07/2012, 08:21 AM   #7
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Great info, thanks


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Unread 08/08/2012, 03:55 PM   #8
redfishsc
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Glad to help. I was very encouraged by the results we got.


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"The measure of a life is not its duration but its donation." Corrie Ten Boom

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins” -- Søren Kierkegaard

Current Tank Info: ghetto grad school reef.....11g rimless tank, 36X9X9, lit by Cree and Rebels scobbled together. Stocked mostly with free stuff I got from panhandling my fellow reefers.
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Unread 08/08/2012, 04:04 PM   #9
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What options are there to remove the yellow from the low CRI Cree CW-WW-NW ? Compared to everything I've seen on good MH and T5, this is the main reason the corals won't (or very slowly) will adapt to the white LEDs driven at high intensities. (400mA+ at 100%.)

There is even arguments, that some corals won't adapt to that light at all, and most of the beneficial parts of the white LEDs actually comes from the Violet-RB-B-Cyan-Green-Red spectrum, both in regards to color and growth. (Especially the 660nm reds are lacking in everything except for that 1 LED.)


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Unread 08/09/2012, 06:31 AM   #10
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Nice study! Great work! Curious what the graph would look like adding a 420nm 700ma led to the cool white, blue, royal blue combo.


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Unread 08/09/2012, 04:45 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vannpytt View Post
What options are there to remove the yellow from the low CRI Cree CW-WW-NW ? Compared to everything I've seen on good MH and T5, this is the main reason the corals won't (or very slowly) will adapt to the white LEDs driven at high intensities. (400mA+ at 100%.)


I am not a lighting authority but I can take a stab at this, but I'm not sure why you're trying to remove the yellow. My own neutral whites are the common low-CRI versions and my tank isn't too yellow, and I don't personally suspect yellow wavelengths to be harmful to corals in the proportions that LEDs emit.

If a tank looks too yellow, it simply needs to be balanced with more narrow band blue (440-460nm royal blues). Either turn the whites down, turn the blues up, or add more blues.



Quote:
There is even arguments, that some corals won't adapt to that light at all, and most of the beneficial parts of the white LEDs actually comes from the Violet-RB-B-Cyan-Green-Red spectrum, both in regards to color and growth. (Especially the 660nm reds are lacking in everything except for that 1 LED.)
Who's making these arguments? I have not personally seen a tank that had a properly built LED array (using Cree or even cheap chinese 3-watt LEDs) where the corals struggled adapting. Every instance of LED hassle I've seen (and I've seen a bunch) had more to do with people frying the corals from light shock.


Whoever is making the argument that corals don't adapt well to the white LEDs should take a peek in our recent history at how many folks grew corals under those Iwasaki 250w 6500K halides, which are far more yellow than any reef-spec LED setup.


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“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins” -- Søren Kierkegaard

Current Tank Info: ghetto grad school reef.....11g rimless tank, 36X9X9, lit by Cree and Rebels scobbled together. Stocked mostly with free stuff I got from panhandling my fellow reefers.
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Unread 08/09/2012, 04:48 PM   #12
redfishsc
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Lakies View Post
Nice study! Great work! Curious what the graph would look like adding a 420nm 700ma led to the cool white, blue, royal blue combo.
Simply add in a spike in the 400-430 range, peaking around 420. Really they do work that simple. I can take a white, and then add in a blue, and you can watch the computer graph instantly change to add in the blue spike.

The intensity of the 420 (the proportional size of the spike compared to the other LEDs) will be a guess. And we can't guess it with our eye. Just too narrow of a wavelength.


BTW I'm not a fan of the "blue" (I love ROYAL blue). It's OK to use a few but I think the LED arrays that use too many of them turn the whole tank into a big bucket of smurf ****. I HATE the AI SOL-Blue (cool white, royal blue, blue) combo. Looks way too much like windex.


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"The measure of a life is not its duration but its donation." Corrie Ten Boom

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins” -- Søren Kierkegaard

Current Tank Info: ghetto grad school reef.....11g rimless tank, 36X9X9, lit by Cree and Rebels scobbled together. Stocked mostly with free stuff I got from panhandling my fellow reefers.
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Unread 08/09/2012, 06:31 PM   #13
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would be nice to see a graph of some uv & v


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Unread 08/10/2012, 01:49 AM   #14
Vannpytt
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Quote:
Originally Posted by redfishsc View Post
I am not a lighting authority but I can take a stab at this, but I'm not sure why you're trying to remove the yellow. My own neutral whites are the common low-CRI versions and my tank isn't too yellow, and I don't personally suspect yellow wavelengths to be harmful to corals in the proportions that LEDs emit.

If a tank looks too yellow, it simply needs to be balanced with more narrow band blue (440-460nm royal blues). Either turn the whites down, turn the blues up, or add more blues.
CRI of the LEDs are 65-70 if I don't remember wrong. A good MH is 90+. This is the reason some MH/T5 has differences even with same color label to my understanding.

Quote:
Originally Posted by redfishsc View Post
Who's making these arguments? I have not personally seen a tank that had a properly built LED array (using Cree or even cheap chinese 3-watt LEDs) where the corals struggled adapting. Every instance of LED hassle I've seen (and I've seen a bunch) had more to do with people frying the corals from light shock.


Whoever is making the argument that corals don't adapt well to the white LEDs should take a peek in our recent history at how many folks grew corals under those Iwasaki 250w 6500K halides, which are far more yellow than any reef-spec LED setup.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3vdfkqOLtU

He seems like a good source, but he just might be full of BS. I would not know.


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Unread 08/10/2012, 05:42 AM   #15
redfishsc
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Quote:
Originally Posted by outssider View Post
would be nice to see a graph of some uv & v
I don't have access to the spectrometer, but chances are, the advertised wavelength peak would be plenty accurate enough, it's just the intensity that we could get from a spectrometer that would be nice (esp. comparing against something known like a royal blue XPE).


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Current Tank Info: ghetto grad school reef.....11g rimless tank, 36X9X9, lit by Cree and Rebels scobbled together. Stocked mostly with free stuff I got from panhandling my fellow reefers.
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Unread 08/10/2012, 08:01 AM   #16
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Thanks for posting....
only thing is I've seen lots of spectral graphs, and even more comparing the asst light to the VERY successful 400W MH Radiums, et....

What I haven't seen is proof solid anywhere that says corals need x, y & z peaks in these spectums.... (some of what I've have read in that regards seems speculative)

not saying the work is less valuable, just thinking out loud the layman like me doesn't have any consistent "metrics" to overlay these spectral analysis against actual livestock reqs'

(and of course bear with me a lil, I'm not saying we can't use these graphs, I'm just wondering if for comparison sake most of us can definitively arrive at a good vs. bad take away)


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Unread 08/11/2012, 05:33 AM   #17
redfishsc
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KCombs View Post
not saying the work is less valuable, just thinking out loud the layman like me doesn't have any consistent "metrics" to overlay these spectral analysis against actual livestock reqs'

(and of course bear with me a lil, I'm not saying we can't use these graphs, I'm just wondering if for comparison sake most of us can definitively arrive at a good vs. bad take away)

Well, it's pretty well known what spectra the corals actually find most useful, particularly the peaks at 420nm, 460nm, and a peak in the 660 range as well.
I am confident that if you lit your tank with only 460 and 660, you could grow coral just fine.


Keep in mind several points

1) Corals generally are quite capable at photoadaptation and seem to be capable of adjusting to quite varied light sources/wavelengths.

2) Corals probably vary, one specie to the next, in what wavelengths they find MOST useful, and even then, there are likely variations in each specie based on locality/habitat they originated from.

3) We do know, at this point, that most corals can grow quite happily under LEDs as long as you don't shock them with intensity. I personally have not seen nor heard of a single photosynthetic coral that could not be grown under LEDs.


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“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins” -- Søren Kierkegaard

Current Tank Info: ghetto grad school reef.....11g rimless tank, 36X9X9, lit by Cree and Rebels scobbled together. Stocked mostly with free stuff I got from panhandling my fellow reefers.
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Unread 08/11/2012, 07:57 AM   #18
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I concur, it's about supplying the deep red (660nm) and the 400nm-530nm spectrum and your good to go with LEDs.

Add as many "White" LEDs as you feel for your own viewing, not for perceived brightness. They are full specrtum 3-8000 kelvin, but the makeup is less than any T5-MH setup.

You would need wast amount of "wattage" from a T5 setup to get as much blue intensity as you get from a 3w RB LED setup, (hence the green/blue popping out of the tank under LED) and this is the factor that makes it very hard. They don't look as bright, but they are indeed very powerful within their respective spectrum.


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Unread 08/11/2012, 11:42 AM   #19
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Quote:
Whoever is making the argument that corals don't adapt well to the white LEDs should take a peek in our recent history at how many folks grew corals under those Iwasaki 250w 6500K halides, which are far more yellow than any reef-spec LED setup.
The 6500 Iwasaki worked the best for growing corals because it's spectral plot closely mimics the actual spectral plot of the sun. The sun looks yellow to us because of the cones & rods in the eye can't detect the other colors as well, so we see it as yellow. It's also why we see the Iwasaki bulb as yellowish.

http://frank.mtsu.edu/~phys2020/Lect..._spectrum.html


The 450 was bumped up in bulbs so we could see the corals flourecse better. It would also give a more white/blue look.

The yellow line is the plot of the sun..............you can see it peaks at that 450 area & gradually declines & drops more steeply as it moves across. If you were to plot just that on a scale you would be able to see how much the percentage drop is from the peak.

[IMG][/IMG]

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-03/sj/index.php

The cool white LED bulb with that hump is too much & at higher pars the coral can't protect itself & basically implodes, bleaches, won't grow as well ect., or can make certain colors look bland or flat. They also make the overall view too icy & cold to the eye, which we've learned with the inital bue & white LED setups & some of the commercial models that have flooded the market over the last few years.

Obviously during that learning curve DIY & commercial units are now using the nuetral whites to help with this look & also adding something that will cover the 400-420 range.

I don't think the guy in that video is saying anything different than what you are trying to accomplish or avoid now in a DIY set up.

Some manufacturers like Orpek & Kessil are using muti- chip designs to create the right spectrm without using the blues. I don't know if that can be done with with the same effect using single color LED lamps..............it's not stopping aynone from trying that's for sure.

The hard part is that there are three needs........

1. What the coral needs
2. What we want to see in the coral colors
3. What we want to see in ambient light of the tank.

Of course it's all a matter of taste for us but you can't deny what the coral wants has to be satisfied. I'm not sure the technology has advanced enough yet to fit all three needs/wants.

I know I threw a lot out there kinda jumbled up, but I hope that makes sense. If I'm off somewhere, please correct what I posted or lacked to communicate effectively.


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Unread 08/11/2012, 12:38 PM   #20
Vannpytt
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I actually have to object on the basis that "throwing in some NW over CW/WW" will make it less yellow. The Kelvin goes down and the CRI goes up accordingly. This is due to the lower kelvin light beeing naturally closer to the yellow bump on the graph, hence the CRI goes up, not the other way around. If you could produce a single 3-5W 10-15000 kelvin LED with 90+ CRI I'd be all in. I'd even trow my daytime job out the window and start building these lights professionally for money because that's what we need to create high PAR fullspectrum LED for Aquarium use.

The way we compensate now is to turn the white intensity down so much that it only supplements the look we want (12-15000 kelvin) against what the corals(390-530nm + 630-665nm) need to grow and color.

What I asked previously is, by adding a filter in front of the white LEDs you could remove or wash the light for yellow bump (Green/Violet film), and reduce par, but at least the spectrum would be closer and we could drive them at higher PAR so the tradeoff might be worth it.


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