LED Patents - Action Needed!

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by sphelps

LEDS can't touch the intensity and penetration of halides, for clams and SPS halides win.

actualy they can and have less frop off through the water colume. people switching from MH to a good LED set up are finding they have to dim there lights to between 40 and 50% and slowly increase them over a couple weeks to prevent bleaching. quite a few get to about 75-85% and leave them there as they are getting better growth and color than they did with there old MH or T5s.

Originally Posted by sphelps

LEDs do burn for 10 years but halides will also burn for 5+ years but you still have to replace them every year. My guess is that LEDs will require replacing somewhere around 3-4 years and the cost will be ridiculous, likely cheaper and easier to buy a new fixture.

And who really cares about dimming?

MH have a drop off of 20-30% in intensity and they also have a color shift after 1 year aprox. thats why it is recomended to change them yearly.
LEDs are rated for 11.4 years at 12 hours a day and at that time they will have a 30% drop off in intensity and no color shift. so you can guess what you like but just shows you haven't read about them or bothered to look up the specs.

I don't know.. I always wished I could do a gradual ramp up in the morning over say 2 hours for my sun rise instead of the 2 stage sun (actinics then MH ) then the reverse for night time..

Steve

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

actualy they can and have less frop off through the water colume. people switching from MH to a good LED set up are finding they have to dim there lights to between 40 and 50% and slowly increase them over a couple weeks to prevent bleaching. quite a few get to about 75-85% and leave them there as they are getting better growth and color than they did with there old MH or T5s.

All talk my friend, I'd love to meet these people.

MH have a drop off of 20-30% in intensity and they also have a color shift after 1 year aprox. thats why it is recomended to change them yearly.
LEDs are rated for 11.4 years at 12 hours a day and at that time they will have a 30% drop off in intensity and no color shift. so you can guess what you like but just shows you haven't read about them or bothered to look up the specs.

Has anyone tested these claims, I've read them but I don't buy it. All LED lamps used in residential applications are rated for around 10 years, so how can they last as long in aquarium applications. If they did wouldn't they last longer in other applications? Part of the reason our aquarium lamps don't last as long is due to the conditions they are used in, was this considered?

[lastlight]

StirCrazy...weren't you pushing mh lighting HARD still only a few months ago? From what I gather you're now pushing LED even harder and haven't actually run a tank with them for any period of time? You have every right to your opinion I was just curious...

I'm certainly one to read till my eyes are sore...but so much about LEDs seems to be specualtion as I see it. If these bulbs last forever like the claims why did the Solaris have them burning out on people etc?

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by lastlight

StirCrazy...weren't you pushing mh lighting HARD still only a few months ago? From what I gather you're now pushing LED even harder and haven't actually run a tank with them for any period of time? You have every right to your opinion I was just curious...

I'm certainly one to read till my eyes are sore...but so much about LEDs seems to be specualtion as I see it. If these bulbs last forever like the claims why did the Solaris have them burning out on people etc?

I still puch MH over t5s, ect.. but I have been exparamenting with LEDs and reasearching it a lot over the last couple years. well started playing with them on tanks in 2002/2003. the reason I am going so hard and building some myself now is I retired and moved and downgraded.. so I will be running at 30 gal tank with a 30 gal sump. I was planing on setting up a 250 gal tank but the house we bought can't support a tank that big soooo... anyways. I still want the tank to be a very high light SPS tank with massave amount of water flow, but heat is going to be a killer as to get the light I want I have to put two 250 watt HQI over a tank that has a surface area that is 12" X 30" so I would be looking at a 1/4hp chiller just to handle the heat from the lights. now the tank is 17" deep with 40 degree optics I calculated I will be pushing about the same PAR or a little higher than I would with the MH, but I will get non of the heat radiation to the water, the top of the tank will be cleaner, and if I don't like the color of the light.. I don't have to wait a year till I buy new bulbs, I just adjust it.

So to put it plainly I don't nessasarly push MH, I push what is best for the situation. now for some one who doesn't want to build there own light or spend the initial setup costs, I will still recomend MH with T5 for suplmental color. in the last 10 years I think I have spent clost to 13K on different lights.. and I don't think thee is somthing out there I haven't tried but this was because 10-12 years ago there was no info on lighting.. VHO was the standard, PCs and MH new. and a lot of people still using HO, T8s and no T12s.
my first setup was two 96 watt PC (10K) and two phillips 03 photocopyer tubes overdriven at 3X the normal current. it only got crazy from there on

Steve

[lastlight]

Well regardless of how effective these are in practice I am very interested to see what you guys can do with them. I'm always one to go with what is tried, tested and true only because I can't afford to experiment. To be honest the LED craze doesn't really interest me all that much for my own tanks but that doesn't mean I won't be watching closely just in case.

[Ron99]

Good discussion even though it diverts a bit from the main topic. So let's keep discussing but also post any prior art you can find along the way

Originally Posted by sphelps

All talk my friend, I'd love to meet these people.

Has anyone tested these claims, I've read them but I don't buy it. All LED lamps used in residential applications are rated for around 10 years, so how can they last as long in aquarium applications. If they did wouldn't they last longer in other applications? Part of the reason our aquarium lamps don't last as long is due to the conditions they are used in, was this considered?

Yes, user evilc66 at nano-reef.com is a bit of an LED lighting guru and has built and tested countless systems including testing PAR. He is the one that found that the drop off in intensity was greater with MH than LED. I don't have the exact link at the moment but you can see a lot of LED info at nano-reef if you try.

As for whether they produce enough intensity or not, just look at the numbers. A really efficient MH can put out up to 115 lumens/watt. Good LEDs are now well over 130 lumens/watt and Cree just announced that their prototype emitters have hit 200 lumens/watt. So which one has more intensity? For longevity, LEDs are affected more by heat than anything else. Run them to warm and they will degrade faster. Cool them properly with a good heatsink and a couple of fans and they will last the rated time which is approximately 50,000 hours. We would have to see how the 10 year household rating is calculated. Also, most household LED replacement bulbs or fixtures that I have seen have minimal thermal management. So they probably run at higher temps and degrade faster.

Originally Posted by lastlight

I'm certainly one to read till my eyes are sore...but so much about LEDs seems to be specualtion as I see it. If these bulbs last forever like the claims why did the Solaris have them burning out on people etc?

Goes back to thermal management. The one Solaris unit I saw dismantled had only aluminum I beams for heatsinks and I don't remember them having good airflow over those. This was probably woefully inadequate and led to overheating of the emitters and burn outs. They also had problems with the power supplies they were using (modified PC power supplies) so I suspect a good portion of the problems were actually burned out power supplies rather thean burned out emitters.

[banditpowdercoat]

Ya, IIRC, PFO had more power supply issues then burnt out LEDS. But, these high power LEDS NEED cooling. Just cause they don;t heat your tank up, doesn't mean they don;t make alot of heat.

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by banditpowdercoat

Ya, IIRC, PFO had more power supply issues then burnt out LEDS. But, these high power LEDS NEED cooling. Just cause they don;t heat your tank up, doesn't mean they don;t make alot of heat.

they make a fraction of the heat a MH or T5 do because of the efficiency of the LED chip its self, so a very small amount of the power supplied is turned into heat. the cooling they need is for the actual die of the LED chip, if it gets to hot it decreases the life of the chip. if you keep it cool the chip is happy. so they are mounted to a heat sink, with a couple fans blowing air into the fins of the heatsink. so yes there is a small amount of heat produced, but it is put into the room the tank is in instead of the tank.

Steve

[banditpowdercoat]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

they make a fraction of the heat a MH or T5 do because of the efficiency of the LED chip its self, so a very small amount of the power supplied is turned into heat. the cooling they need is for the actual die of the LED chip, if it gets to hot it decreases the life of the chip. if you keep it cool the chip is happy. so they are mounted to a heat sink, with a couple fans blowing air into the fins of the heatsink. so yes there is a small amount of heat produced, but it is put into the room the tank is in instead of the tank.

Steve

Guess I should have specified, Alot of heat for their size. yes, it's not as much as MH or T5, but heat still kills LED's

[banditpowdercoat]

Another maker coming to the US market. Just read on Glassbox

http://glassbox-design.com/2010/tmc-...quarium-light/