Seth's DIY Cree XM-L LED build

[Seth81]

Well good news and bad news...Good news is I got photos bad news is I think I fried half of my Royal Blue LEDs!! The output wire from the blue driver came lose, I plugged it back in while the driver was on...and now all the Royal blue LED's I had connected won't work, and using my meter on diode check fail, they show a short circuit on on the Blue LED's I had connected.

Well at least I have an excuse to change up my led arrangments.

So here is a white paper with 9 Royal Blue and 12 Cool white LED's.



White paper with just the cool white LED's



LED Array


Top side of one of the fixture


Under side

[eli@fijireefrock.com]

coming along nicely
Sorry to hear about your fried led (sure don't take much to fry)
one rule is good to use check 2twice before plugins (I did the same thing but only with 6 led)
If by any chance you are planing to buy more let me know as I could use to buy a few pcs.
You picked the right drivers (thomas research, that's what I am using for over a year now with no problems)

[Seth81]

Ok so after being upset all night about blowing half of my royal blues, I decided that I should make this an oppritunity rather then a set back. So after much research and reading through tons of opionions I decided that I would make up some new lighting options and get everyone to vote on what they thought was the best mix.

So this option is the brute force methode, I would have to run the CW's and the NW's at 50% as to not be waaay too bright. But would achieve an equal balance of NW to CW, they would both be on the same dimming control. Then also have an equal ratio of royal blue to regular blue, also on different dimmers, but on at the same time. Draw backs are cost, and pain of wiring. The big advantage here is different color lights are clustered together, plus this option allows for flexibility.





Next option just cuts back the number of regular blues.





Here I swap out half my CW's with NW's, and keep a 2:1 ratio of Royal blues to true blues.


Or lastly I swap out all my CW's with NW's and have a 1:1 ratio of royal blues to true blues



Let me know what you guys think

Edit: I'll probably run the regular blues at around 25%

[Cal_stir]

option 3

[Reefer Rob]

I like option 4, but you're going to be dialing the whites way back.

What is the effect of true blues? I think there was a warning about the windex look with too many.

I have 18 nw and 38 rb all at 100% 750mA. I think when I first set it up I thought it was a little bluer than the Phoenix bulb I was running, but I'm used to it now so I can't tell.

[Seth81]

Originally Posted by Reefer Rob

I like option 4, but you're going to be dialing the whites way back.

What is the effect of true blues? I think there was a warning about the windex look with too many.

I have 18 nw and 38 rb all at 100% 750mA. I think when I first set it up I thought it was a little bluer than the Phoenix bulb I was running, but I'm used to it now so I can't tell.

True blue are suppose to bring out the orange colors of your corals, but you have to make sure they are on really low. Option 4 is decent, but I was thinking that with option 4 I should have more royal blues, because i'm using XM-L for my whites, at 2800 mA and most people use much less powerful natural whites with a 2:1 ratio to royal blues. So maybe keeping half of my cool whites and only 20 royal blues is a better idea?

[StirCrazy]

would stay away from true blue, realy make tanks look bad.


I like #4 the best but change the true blues up for true violet.

Steve