Canreef Aquatics Bulletin Board - Anyone with DIY LED experience?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lampshade (Post 652716)

The cart doesn't work. Not sure if you have dirvers in there, but going with the meanwell's is the best option, they end up being cheaper. You don't need a pwoer supply to feed the meanwell drivers. power supply's for a full LED setup will be more than $30, that's a big power supply.

The big thing with modular LED is that you don't have to screw around with soldering them. Unless you already own a GOOD soldering iron, it is not worth doing dull DIY unless you are going to save enough to make buying one worth it. The crappy heat iron ones will fry LED's, lots of people have been able to do them with that, but you're tempting fate. With the modules you can change stuff around at later days too, which seems like a cool idea. And also... who wants to solder 80+ connections :P.

And with the heatsink.. there's many opinions on them, and they're all pretty much just that. Look around for info on them, there's lots, people generally go WAY overkill with them, which isn't always a bad thing.

Thanks and yeah, I get what your saying about modulars. I would love to have all leds... but I just bought my t5s like a month ago haha, just seems like I would be wasting money. Maybe I should just supplement them? I mean I can do a 24 led supplemental kit with 4- 10"x1" Heatsinks, this would allow leds on both sides of my t5s, both day and lunar.. but thats $270... I guess you gotta spend money to make money.. oh wait, I wont be making any money haha. I wonder if I should do LED bulbs the type that you can just screw into outlets, obviously thats work as well, or break the bank and go for the $399 AI sol lol.. this is a tough choice! I don't want to spend money the wrong way haha I could even do one modular 12 led kit, as I have a 12,000k 4 led strip with 2 blue 2 white, and I could just place everything accordingly, that would save me $135.. minus the cost of materials to build a hood, plus cooling fans as well.. so it would probably save me $30-$60 in the end. yikes.. this is too much to think about at bed time!!!