LED... Build or Buy?

[mike31154]

My DIY fixture consists of 3 rows of 10 watt multichip LEDs of various colours. I chose to keep it fairly simple using several 12 volt power supplies & manual dimmers. Auto control would be nice, but things get complex fast. There are some Arduino solutions out there if you wish to go that route. Changing from a Halide/T5HO combo with little in the way of control, I figured my livestock wouldn't notice a whole lot of difference if the new LED lighting just came on & off like the old fixture. After running the LEDs for at least a couple of years now, I suspect I was correct. Auto dimming, lightning storms etc. are cool, but does the livestock really care that much?

A link to my build is at the below my name down there.... not too many pages, so not a whole ton of reading, but there's a good bit of info in there, including some of the changes I've made during the build. I wanted to keep the fixture fairly light, so no massive heatsinks. Originally I started with small heatsinks with built in fans, but the fans were beginning to fail after a while & although I had spares, it became tedious. So I switched to larger heatsinks & built a cover that has 4 fans built into it to move some air. The larger heatsinks are supposedly enough to cool the 10 watt LED without a fan, but I think I made the right call with the fans in the cover. More info in my build thread. Have fun.