290G Peninsula Tank

[mseepman]

Well, it comes down to this. Normally when a builder does a home for you...they have a good profit margin as well as an administrative fee built into the cost of the home. We had been waiting on my long time friend as a builder for years...but in the interim, we had 2 other builders quote on the job...When they give you per sq. foot costs...they are really really padding. When I wanted a breakdown from them...they had 25-40k in admin costs alone plus profit.
My builder and I worked out a cost plus program. I get every invoice for every single nail he uses...and I pay cost plus on that invoice. Labour hours are tracked at each guy's rate...and I pay cost plus on that as well. I have left him no room for any deviation and in this situation the city could be blamed for much of the problem. I just don't feel right in completely saying it's his cost to bear. I'm sure he will take much of it on, but I want to do the right thing. I've found that when someone is making nothing on a project...things don't go well...so part of my desire to assist is selfishly trying to make sure nothing else goes wrong or is poorly done.

[sphelps]

IC, best of luck!

[sphelps]

What controller and drivers are you using for your LEDs?

[mseepman]

For drivers...I have a mix of ELN 60-48D and HLG150H-48B. I also have a moonlight driver for 4 little moonlights still to arrive. I have one inventronics driver as well that I'm not sure I will use yet.

As for controller..I was always planning on doing the APEX...but after seeing the Cerebra...I've been saving to get that bad boy. My conversations with Vertex indicate that it should be released soon and pricing should align with Profilux (expensive I know)

[sphelps]

interesting combo, I like the phrase it will be released soon, don't hold your breath. What about the PWM module, how long for that? Shortly after soon I presume.

Actually I just wanted to make sure you're avoiding profilux and that whole PWM module POS. You might also want to consider a Arduino controller just for the LEDs, it's cheap enough to use as a stand alone controller for just the lights then you can add your dream control when it gets released (Although I'm guessing you're not in a rush these days). I found a guy that builds them to order to the specs you need for a reasonable price if you're interested. With the Arduino you can also add lots of features and controls to say control heat sink temp with the fans, after all you won't actually need full fan power all the time.

[mseepman]

Thanks for the info...given my delays...I may have time to wait for the release...haha, is that the bright side of this mess?

[mseepman]

I got a little more done last night so i thought I would make sure this gets updated.

My fan controller arrived. Nothing too special...this was made for pc fans. This one can be run without the PC motherboard with just direct power feeding it from a DC power source.


Completed a diode test on all of the LED's with my multimeter and all were good.

I started wiring the lights. Now that I've done wiring on both a soldered fixture (my test fixture) and this bad boy with the BJB connectors....you have to be insane to solder. I keep waiting for the shoe to drop on what is bad about these but nothing so far has come to light.
Here's my progression:




And finally where I quit at midnight lastnight: