Seth's DIY Cree XM-L LED build

[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