$20 LED Build

[pinhead]

I have read the various threads on LED builds with 10W arrays, Crees, Bridgelux, DIY drivers and I think I have it down to about cheap and easy as you can get it.

I have retrofitted my Biocube 14 with 18 3W LEDs and it cost a total of $21.60. I also redid a 12 gallon Fluval Edge for a planted tank for $8.70 and will next work on my 90 gallon for an expected cost of $96.

The Biocube has 8 Cool Whites, 6 Royal Blues and 2 10000K plus 2 drivers.

The Fluval edge 3 Cool Whites and 3 10000K (around 8000K combined) plus 1 driver.

And the 90 gallon will have 40 Cool Whites, 40 Royal Blues and 9 drivers. I just want to get this up and going and will eventually replace these drivers with DIY Cat 4101 driver and hook it into an Arduino controller

I thought about doing 10W LEDs, but the 3W have dropped to extremely low prices -$35 for 50 which is 70 cents a piece (about $1 a piece for smaller quantities).
I have all the parts to make my own drivers based on the CAT4101 chip but I don’t have a lot of time and picked up some ebay drivers which will run 9 LED’s. They cost $4.50 a piece.
For the Biocube cost was 18 LEDs @ 70 cents = 12.60 and 2 Drivers $ 9.00. Everything was free shipping and arrived really quickly. Total $21.60

Here is the reason I could do this cheaply – I salvaged some Aluminum U channels from some old fluorescent light fixtures, so I got my heat sinks for free. Even if you have to pay for heatsinks or Aluminum you can still do this cheap.

Lights run extremely cool and don’t require a fan – even in the enclosed Biocube hood. The tank is cycling, so I don’t have anything in there and I don’t know how they will respond, but I like the colour and have hooked in a potentiometer to dial down the intensity. Shimmers just like my metal halides.

I will try to get some pics up later and have a number of extra 6 foot lengths of Aluminum channel if anyone has something to trade.