DIY LED Using 10 Watt Arrays

[_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...

[DSlater]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[mike31154]

4 years now, going strong. No bulbs added to the landfill.

[mike31154]

5 years + now on this puppy! I think I can safely say I've recouped my investment compared to replacing T5HO tubes or MH bulbs over that period. Might be time to look at changing out the LEDs, they may have lost some of their effectiveness over the years, but I have no way to tell really. Fish don't care & my montiporas are growing gangbusters.