Seth's DIY Cree XM-L LED build

[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

[mseepman]

I am planning to use some true blues in my build...if you check out my build thread you can see that I've done clustering like you are suggesting in option 1. I haven't fired them up yet..still wiring things up.

[Seth81]

Originally Posted by 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

Do you have experience with the True Violets? if so can you chare your thoughts? Would you run the Violet at a high current? Also any suggestions on where I would buy them? Found some 350 mA 420nm Violet LED's on Ebay for cheap, no idea quaility though. I found some at aquastyleonline, price is right too.

[Seth81]

I've got a thought, slightly against what everyone else is doing. But listen to my reasoning before jumping to a conclusion.

Since I am using XM-L's at 2800mA for my whites which are close to 4x more lumens then most peoples XP-E's at 1000 mA, I will need a lot more of lumens in the red part of the spectrum to balance out the color. So why not add Warm whites XP-E's (much cheaper then XM-L's) on dimmers of course to my existing cool whites and dim as necessary, use the warm whites as more of an accent lights then as my main led's ( I guess I could achieve the same thing with a few red LED's but just worried about red being too red, and disco effects. So this is kinda what I'm thinking about doing now.



I addeded another cluster to my design (5 clusters now, 4 previously) just becuase it helped balance out the load on the drivers better, and better spread too incase I want to run optics in the future. Also i saw some pics with true violet, and I really liked the effect so I decided to through a few in there. I was considering Cyan too, but I would want it to be on a seperate channel from everything else, and from a technical point of view I think 4 color channels is already a bit much.

I've been obsessing about this for the past few days so please let me know what everyone thinks of this config.

I will have to buy three more drivers, tons more LED's and also I had 4 0-10Vdc channels on my controller, two of which I wanted to use for speed control for some Hydor's... I guess I'll just have to buy another output module......I just hope my wife doesn't take my credit card away!!

[Reefer Rob]

Not enough blue
You should run your XP-Es at 700-800 mA
Get XP-G Neutral whites.
Too many True Violets? No experience with these.
Take a break

Try clusters of 3: 1 white with 2 blue/TV (less TV)

...JMO

[Seth81]

So it ain't blue enough eh? Ha ha ok, well let me know what you think of this option:




In this latest version I went with a warmer bin of the neutral whites to mix with my cool white XM-L's. I already have my XM-L's and the drivers @ 2.8Amps which can't be used with XP-E's or XP-G's unless I get very creative, so yeah I am keeping the cool whites, and will just mix in the neutrals. Thoughts?

Also yes you can run XP-E's at 1000 mA according to the data sheet, but probably best to avoid the maximums of any device.

Also true violet is know for popping out the colors in corals as well as it is thought that true violet significantly aids in coral growth as corals use a significant amount of light in the 390 - 450 nm spectrum for photosynthesis. The only spectrum not really covered very well with NW/RB/TV is the cyan 480 - 500 nm range, which supposedly makes oranges and pinks pop. Only thing is that from what I have read, this should be used very sparingly. But it does looks like it may be worth it. I found this comparison on Nano builders, it really helps put blues into perspective.