Finally going LED

[redfishblewfish]

I too have been kicking around the idea of going LED….for cost savings for electrical usage and bulb replacement. I believe the technology has advanced to a point where it will work, and costs are reasonable and recoverable, especially for the DIY’er.


At this point, I’m just following along. It appears that you know what you are talking about. So I’m sort of curious as to why you are purchasing a kit, and not the individual components? I haven’t gotten as far as costing it out, but is the kit less expensive than the individual component costs?

 

[Prophecy]

I'm surprised you haven't mentioned RGB LED's, as you want to be able to tune for any specific spectrum. Any reason you don't want to use these?

HERE is a neat little video of a similar system, although I am talking about a setup where you can control each LED individually.

 

[Ace25]

To answer some of the questions...

First about the color of LEDs. Everything I have read about Cree LEDs, especially when it comes to Royal Blue and Regular blue, is the nm wavelength of the LEDs change quite a bit just between production runs. The first Royal Blues were actually 440nm, the ones I can buy today are 460nm according to Rapidled. So that was were my wavelengths were quoted from.

As far as "why buy a kit".. your nailed it exactly, cost savings. A kit is just drivers + LEDs + misc parts like wire, heatsink compound and glue. Nothing special about kits other than if you buy a kit you save a little $ vs buying all the parts separate. With the kits you can still choose which LEDs you want. You don't have to get the standard Cool White/Royal Blue that is listed in the kits.

As far as the RGB lights, the problem with those is you can not control independent colors on the star. On the strip type low light LED like the video you posted it has a controller with it to do what the video shows, but on a star setup that can't be done the same way. You can only dim all the colors at once. I want to be able to turn whites up and down by themselves, as well as blues. The reds and greens will be together but I think both of those colors will be powered very low, just enough to put the colors that are missing back into the tank. I think I will probably run the greens/reds at 30% power at most.

Always open and appreciative for any suggestions though. I am a n00b myself in this arena so any and all input/question no matter how silly it may seem is very welcome here. I personally don't know how the different "Royal Blue vs regular blue" would look so that suggestion of 4:1 helps me out. I may end up going with 8 Royals and 4 regular blues then (I think I need at least 4 of any type of bulb to be able to spread and blend the colors throughout the entire tank).

 

[Prophecy]

You can actually set it up to control each RGB individually...I have some great links on my home computer I will post here in a while.

 

[Ace25]

Ya, if you find that info I would love to read it. From what I have seen, and the way that stars are powered (1 positive power in, one negative out) there is no way to adjust a PWM signal nor control a DC voltage circuit without affecting all the LEDs on the star at the same time. I would love to be proved wrong though.

 

[DoctaQ]

rgb is actually a very poor technology as it is today. you actually can control all the different channels depending on the maker, there will sometimes be a common positive then 3 different negatives, but at any rate, color rendering is poor and the light would be made up of 3 different spikes instead of a smooth curve. one place it could possibly be of use is to use the red in addition to blue so that you dont see the red shimmer(extremely annoying from what ive read) which is another reason we dont use reds in reef lighting. rgb also tend to be very low powered, each die usually not being able to take more than 1/3 of the full power of the led, which means a 1w rgb is only going to be able to take like 100ma each channel. it could be an interesting thought though . could be innovative, i wouldnt be one to shoot down and idea no one has tried..especially if someone else tries it on thier budget =)

http://www.vendio.com/stores/echozhang/item?lid=4712172&source=Vendio:Google Product Search

there is a great deal of information as to wavelength in the datasheets and binning guide for a particular led. if anything confuses you hit me up.


**sorry if i did not make it clear but do not use rgb to replace whites or any color except for red

 

[DoctaQ]

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=246394&st=480

dave fason's work as far as playing with colors is pretty helpful, it seems like he recommends about 1 cool blue per 12 leds.

also cree keeps pretty tight specs on that comes out of its factory, what the sellers sell as what is a different story. sometimes it is pretty hard to know what kind of color you are going to get from where, thats why its good to get all the same color of led from the same place at the same time. ive used rapid a few times and thier royal blue is excelent but the whites are too cool imo (for the xr-e) ive never tried thier xp-g

 

[Ace25]

Thanks for that link as it just proves what I was saying. Even an RGB star light needs 3 independent controllers in order to dim each color separately. On top of that issue, the other as you pointed out is those are not high powered LEDs. I would rather stick with single color/led stars that are high powered so I can control them the way I want. Since red and green LEDs can look overpowering color wise in a tank I think tying those 2 colors to a single driver would still work out for me since I think both of those colors would be lower powered (but I want the ability to run them higher than 1w if I need to).

Bottom line is I have no idea how my idea is going to look real world until I try it but I want to have single color LEDs so I have the ability to specify placement of colors to try and get the colors to best blend with each other before it hits the water. The only way I think I can get a good blend is by going with no optics/lenses besides what it comes with and use 2x as many LEDs as recommended. I was told for my size tank a 24 LED setup with optics of cool white/royal blue would be more than enough as a 250w radium replacement. That may be technically true but I want more control of colors than just 2 types of LEDs and more color options. I also do not want any spotlight effects at all from the LEDs, I want a smooth blend of light.

 

[DoctaQ]

haha, sorry ace but i dont even know the most important thing, what size tank are we lighting here? imagine something like a 40 breeder based on your 48 leds

 

[Ace25]

30" x 24" is the footprint I am covering, actually more like 24"x18" area of rocks the rest is sand bed that has no corals on it. With 4 22" T5HOs around the heatsink the biggest heatsink I can use is 10"x18" and I am going with 8"x17" for the heatsink.