DIY LED Using 10 Watt Arrays

_Adrian_ · #1 11-24-2014, 12:33 AM

Nice Job...

I would change a few things though...
1.- Dimmers are a catch 22 - Loss of voltage as well as current limiting. You need to find a better solution as this is already getting complex and will impact the life of LED's and could be a potential fire hazard.

2.- Running LED's in series still means the same amperage draw just need more voltage. Ex.: 4 5v drawing 500mA each in series will require 20V @ 500mA but in parallel it would be 5v @ 2A. High draw situations the heat is generated.
The LED's im planning to use are rated for 9-12V at 900mA but will run 4 per string ( for a combined maximum voltage of 48V. This means one 48V 10A power supply can drive about 40x 10W LED arrays at 95% load.

3.- Move to a larger heat sink, loose the fans and gain back your hearing LOL

4.- Start looking at an light controller, whetever its off the shelf or Arduino based. This would allow you to recreate solar and lunar cycles and being able to fade in and out and recreate more other weather related events ( Ex: storms ). There's Tons of PWM controlled LED drivers that are fair priced, and readily available.

All this ends up reducing heat output, you'll end up extending the life of the LED, makes the system more stable and easier to use/maintain most of all

mike31154 · #2 11-24-2014, 01:36 AM

Thanks for the input. Not sure how much of the thread you've read, some of the posts are quite long. The fixture's been running fine since April 2012 except for the one mishap which I kind of had coming by overloading one of the dimmers. I have added larger heat sinks & ditched the original smaller ones with fans. I don't want a light controller beyond the dimming controls that I'm using already. Don't see how adding a controller or rewiring to series will make my life simpler. It would mean buying new power supplies/drivers & rewiring the works! If I do another build, I will probably use a few of the larger watt LEDs with optics. Don't foresee any major modifications in the current fixture, it's working fine for me as is. Maybe good info for some one else who's embarking on a new build!

_Adrian_ · #3 11-24-2014, 01:46 AM

No worries.
I will be soon posting a build log for my setup.
This will have a whole bunch of custom PCB's and multichannel controller / drivers...

DSlater · #4 11-24-2014, 03:57 AM

Mike

Do you get any noise from those power supplies?

Mine made a bit of noise ramping up and down at first, now after a year they are much worse. Feel like modifying them with my hammer. Just curious if yours were the same at half or less power.

mike31154 · #5 11-24-2014, 05:23 AM

One of my power supplies has a built in fan, so that is audible, but normal. Other than that, they don't produce any noise. Solid state, so there really should be no noise, other than a transformer hum, but the transformers in these are fairly small, so shouldn't be audible.

mike31154 · #6 11-24-2014, 05:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by _Adrian_

No worries.
I will be soon posting a build log for my setup.
This will have a whole bunch of custom PCB's and multichannel controller / drivers...

Cool, looking forward to a new build thread. Hasn't been much on the radar here of late. With the price of commercial fixtures continuing to drop, the DIY LED spirit is waning!

mike31154 · #7 04-02-2015, 02:20 AM

In a couple of days this DIY fixture will have 3 years under its belt! Despite it being a parallel set up & all the 10 watt LEDs purchased off shore, there have been no failures to date. I've made several of modifications since April 2012, but essentially it's been doing its thing trouble free (after I added several additional dimmers to handle the load). I think it's safe to say this rig now owes me nothing. No bulb changes for 3 years, I haven't done the math, but if I was still running my MH/T5HO combo, there definitely would have been a few $$$s spent renewing them.

I will likely remove the supplementary 5050 RGB lighting strips & replace them with more powerful warm spectrum 5630 strips. It's cool to play around with the RGB colours, but they tend to drift in spectrum & the 'white' light created when all 3 colours are on, is not really all that white. One strip appears greenish, the other more blue. They certainly haven't been as robust as the 10 watt multi chips & seem to keep changing spectrum on me. I have a couple of UV 10 watt LEDs that I considered adding, but the livestock I have at the moment seems fine with the lighting as is, so probably best to not mess with it & keep it simple.

daplatapus · #8 04-02-2015, 01:39 PM

Hey Mike,
Nice to hear yours is still up and running. I still haven't got my main build lit yet, lol. When I got my Evergrow light over my cube, I took down my DIY 18" fixture I built. It was my trial run for the 3 - 18" I'm putting up over my 210. I had a half dozen UV LED's (True Violets actually) but the lenses on them look like they're burnt. They aren't, but they've discoloured so bad, they look brown. Not sure how much light they even put out now never mind the spectrum.
Have you noticed anything on yours? Do yours have lenses on them?

mike31154 · #9 04-03-2015, 12:49 AM

No optics on any of my 10 watt multi chips. The 5050 RGB strips are the water proof flavour, with a flexible silicone type coating. Actually a good reminder for me to inspect the 10 watters & see if they need a wipe to get any salt accumulation off. The fixture is up high enough so that it's not a major issue, but a periodic cleaning is never a bad idea. The UV or Violet (don't recall the wavelength ATM) 10 watt chips have never been installed, I've only run them for a few minutes to test them. Only have a couple, so probably wouldn't have much effect over my tank.