6 Foot LED Build
 

Hey guys. I've had this vision of an LED build in my head for quite a while now and its finally coming to life. It's a total of 216 3W Cree LED's. 144 royal blues and 72 cool whites. I'm putting it above a 180G tank which I realize is way too much light at 100% but the idea is flexibility to upgrade to a bigger tank if I want to one day, as well as being able to turn the LE.d's on one foot at a time starting on the left side of the tank to the right similar to a Vertex light but for half the cost. Since I already have a Profilux, it will integrate with that and the lighting and intensity will ramp up and ramp down from left to right as the sun rises and sets. It will also have full storm simulation like cloud cover and lighting.

Gareth from Progressive Reef was the biggest help in this build. He helped me design it, order the parts, and is heading up the build as well. I'm hoping he can jump in here with some insight and maybe some pictures to talk about the build. Thanks again Gareth.

Im watching :)
Ive seen the hydro UFO's going on a reef and they seemed to kick butt.... I know someone out there could build a bigger version....

going to be cool, but thats going to be a very blue tank.

Steve

That's the nice thing about that many LED's though. You can play with the intensity of each spectrum to try and get the right color temperature.

but if a 50/50 of cool white and rb gives you 14Kish what are you going for LOL.. have you bought the LEDs already? might want to give the true vilote and nutral whites a look.

Steve

This is going to be the largest build I have ever been a part of (LED wise). There were a number of challenges. First of all, WEIGHT. This many LED's needed some serious heatsink action to bleed off the heat produced by this many diodes.

We went with 6 x 23" x 7" Heatsinks to control the heat. This will quite adequately cool this many LED's (with some extra fans) but moutning them was a bit daunting. This much Aluminum is fairly heavy and to further complicate things, the wiring was going to span across multiple heatsinks. We had to attach them in pairs for the wiring to work for "left to right" style dimming.

I decided to use Angle Anluminum to anchor the two together. I drilled 4 holes per heatsink and used self tapping metal screws to attach the angle aluminum to the ends. This actually proved to be fairly difficult choosing the right sized pilot hole for the screws. After a few turns through the thick aluminum the screws would start to bind. Third times a charm apparently and I was able to sink them in nice and tight.

I have to mention this right off the bat. Whenever possible, when drilling aluminum this thick, use a drill press. It can be very difficult to keep the drill steady enough to drill through 3/8" of aluminum.

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...rill-press.jpg

Here is the bracket/angle aluminmum installed after several attempts. Sunk nice and tight to the heatsinks this prevents them from wiggling around and puttin tension on the wiring (to be installed later today).

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...ld/bracket.jpg

And the first pendant is ready for LED's. This is the first of three I am building today. My plan is to finish one completely, so I can iron out any bugs for the remaining two before commiting.

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...ld/pendant.jpg.

Wiring and LED placement.

This is where things get finicky and time consuming. It took several days of scratching my head and tinkering to really figure out how best to string this many led's together. Jason came up with a fantastic mouting pattern and had a good chunk of it mapped out ahead of time, but I needed to translate it a bit more for how it was going to connect to the drivers and GHL Profilux EVG-AP-2F Ballast control boards.

The whole idea for this build, was to have a very distributed array of leds that can really shine with left to right style dimming. Vertex LED fixtures already do this, but in a DIY build it's fairly complicated to achive without a 3rd party controller. Thankfully Jason has a GHL Profilux III (which can do this dimming behavior really easily with one of the more current firmware releases.).

The Array is broken down so there is a Blue channel, and a White Channel every 12 inches. This will alow for a whopping total of 12 individualy dimmable sections of the fixture. The Profilux can use this with time shifting to simulate clouds going left to right, sunrise/sunset etc. Its surprisingly easy to program, but more on that later.

Here is the basic wiring pattern for each of the three 2 foot pendants (sorry this is hand drawn, I had to sketch it out while drawing with my 3 year old niece):

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...ild/wiring.jpg

Then here is a rough idea of what I have to wire for the interface for the profilux.

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...ld/wiring2.jpg

Each pendant will require the use of two EVG-AP-2F Boards. Each board will be responsible for powering and dimming 3 Drivers (2 Blue bound to single channel and a Single White Driver). So basically there will be 1 EVG Boards every 12 inches.

Every 12 inches of light fixture is going to yield a wire harness with an 8 wire connector. This connector will will be waterproof (I usually use Marine boat trailor harnesses) and carry power for the 2 x Blue banks, 1 x White Bank, and 12V to power the cooling fans. This way I can build each pendant the same way, with the same wiring harness. They can be taken out, cleaned and maintained easily, and will be interchangeable with each other.

On a more simple LED build I used 4 wire connectors:

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...s/IMG_2056.jpg

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...s/IMG_2051.jpg

These are not photos of Jasons build, just examples of the connectors I plan on using.

I am still looking for a set that will be the most appropriate, but I think Lordco will have what I need. I'm hoping 6 of them dont set us back too much, but this is one of those touches that can make a DIY build much more durable (no corroding contact points).

looking good so far.

heres a handy chart for next time you use self tapping screws
http://aaronsself-tappingscrews.com/...rill_sizes.htm


Steve

Thanks for the link, that will make it easier for sure!

Let the tedium begin... Thermal Adhesive time. This stuff has a very quick curing time so you have to make really small batches and work very fast. Its a good idea to map out your LED positions well ahead of time to prevent wasted material.

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...Build/leds.jpg

First one done all the adhesive. Time for a quick break. Probably gonna start the next pendant while the adhesive cures.

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...uild/leds2.jpg

Hey this is looking great! I have just started building a light fixture for my 290 (although the tank is not set up yet). I decided to do fewer LED's than you (180 total) and rather than the heavy heatsinks I have gone with large u-channel. Glad you are a few steps ahead of me so I can watch your mistakes (haha).

This is my 6th LED build now, but by far the largest. The only things I have any legitimate concerns over are weight, and heat. Heat should be pretty manageable, but the weight is something I am now trying to wrap my brain around.

I think I've come up with a robust enough suspension/rail system to hold the weight of all three pendants now though. I'll take pics as I go.

2 Down... One to go. Going to start tinning LED's now....

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...uild/leds3.jpg

It Begins....

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...ild/solder.jpg

I was totally ready to go the solder route but after going to MACNA I saw how easy the BJB connectors were and have ordered them. I has cost me $200 more than I originally planned...but the one thing I don't have enough of is time...and this saves a lot of it.

I hear that.. I don't mind the soldering though, I'm 1/6th of the way through now.. lol.. taking a break now though.

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...ld/solder2.jpg

Hands getting sore. Probably call it a night for soldering.

These only save time if you purchase pre-drilled/tapped heatsinks. Trust me, soldering takes way less time then tap/die. Screw fittings are super convenient, but using thermal adhesive was a much better alternative for me when factoring in 200+ LED's. Its probably a quarter the time of drilling the heatsinks.

That being said, they are really slick looking fittings. I might go this route for my next smaller build.

where did you get the leds and heat sink from.

You can order them through Gareth. He's a reseller.

Personally I have 20 RB and 6 CW and it still is not nearly as blue as my 20k Radium. Those cool whites are super yellow and need tons of blue to wash it out. I would have gone more at least 3 RB to each CW.....but I like it 20k +actinic look.

To me a 50/50 is no where near 14k. The 2:1 ratio of RB to CW is more like 14k to me.

I agree. I run a 50/50 mix over my own rig and found it really yellow unless I lower the intensity of the CW LED's. I ended up supplementing with T5's to fill in some of the higher Kelvin Blue and it made a huge difference.

what kind of LEDs are you using and what batch number did you get for your cool whites? the good ones are 6500 to 8000K which has no yellow at all. at worst they are 6500K, which still shouldn't have any yellow. any bin number for "cool white" should give you a white with a slight tinge of blue.. kinda like a ice white for the lower batches and a real light blue for the good batch numbers.. now this is for the older ones and I notice that some of the newer ones are down to 5000K for the bottom end of the range but this should still not show any yellow. nutral white might have a tinge of yellow, but the warm white is where you should get your yellow.

ya that is an issue with using the royal blue.. to me also they look like there missing that bottom end purple that makes the tank look like it has the old URI super actinic VHO's like i used to use. with the avilability of the true violet becomming better this should be a thing of the past.

I am waiting for the LEDs I ordered and I am going to do some color comparasons with different combos to see what I like. I have a couple of each comming nutral white cool white RB and TV. right now the new trens seams to be 1NW to 2TV, the old starting point was 1CW to 1RB, so once I figure out how to get an accurate perception of the colors I will post something. but it won't be anytime soon. my newish job kinda kick the heck out of my time.

Steve

What is TV ? True Violet?

Is that Radium on an electronic ballast? On a M80 I find it to be blue certainly but much closer to white/blue than other 20k bulbs I have seen...

yup

Steve

I got my Cree XP-G Cool Whites from rapidled. I ordered two different times and both look about the same in colouration. Sorry I don't know the BIN numbers on them. To me they should be called warm white.

If you go back and look at the old 6500 MH people used...they are not pure white either, they definately had yellow. A pure white is more like 10k....and think of an XM 10k bulb, that IS white.

Anyway they list these LEDs at 5000-8300k. To me this range is not pure white and either are the LEDs.

My radium is not on an electronic. Its on a magnetic ballast but not the M80 because it's 400w. With just the MH running...I don't find it all that blue.

thats weird, the 6500K LEDs I played for when I was lighting my matis tank were white. I switched to a 10000K LED and it was a light blue. almost makes me wonder if some of these companies are buying seconds to keep the cost down while making a profit.

now my playing has been with the XR-E's so maybe the newer ones put out more yellow in comparason as they have a higher output. this would require more blue to offset the white element so that could be it also.

Steve

More progress being made.... This is a hefty build.. Here are all three pendants in various stages of completion.

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...reestages2.jpg

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...hreestages.jpg

Now that the metal work is done for the pendants I can focus on the tedious aspect of positioning the LED's, epoxy-ing the last set in place, and soldering. I've set up a nice work station right in front of my TV for this part...

I just read today a post were someone stated that the XP-G's are more yellow than the XR-E.....so maybe that is what we are experiencing. Also BIN # does change things as well.....the cool whites have a large range of spectrum really.

So, any updates on this??

How about now? :lol:

I would really like to see how this build turned out. Is it finished yet? Would love to see some updates if you have any. I am thinking of starting my own LED light build for my new tank I just picked up.

Regards

That's funny :) I'm not sure Jason (Jaws) still has the tank this was meant for :)

(Sorry Gareth, you know how I love to raz you on this :))

Jason, got pics of these lights running yet? It's been a long wait..

Sure has :(

Dude, that's ridiculous!! Go get the bits and hire someone else to build it. This shouldn't be a 2 year project!!

I learnt the hard way that a DIY led project is a lifetime commitment :lol: it never ends