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o yea, those... my GOD they're EXPENSIVE.... it's worth it to spend hours building your own instead of those...
Building My LED Light
- Thread starter traelman
- Start date
I don't know, my time is worth a lot. Let's see, LEDs, 6 X $7.00 = $42.00, Puck = $15.00, power supply = $15.00, misc. parts (switches, wires, heatsink) $15.00, Total in parts = $88.00 plus S & H and taxes, you're close to $100.00. One 48" LED tube = $130.00. Warranty on the home made light = 0. Warranty on my light tubes = 2 years. No ballast, puck, or added power supply required, plug-n-play.
Yah Greg, agreed...When I was in college and had a lot of free time to play with all kinds of projects sure. But with a full time job, a self-employed wife running a fledgling business and a 14-month old, I have precious little time available to spend with my family, and its hard to justify blowing that off to work on projects that don't really benefit anything.
Some more photos.
1st one is of just the blue light on. 2nd is of just the white and the 3rd is with everything on.
1st one is of just the blue light on. 2nd is of just the white and the 3rd is with everything on.
Greg, FYI, pucks are not required. Yeah its something nice in theory, but useless once you actually look at. Resistors do the same job for a fraction of the cost. And if your worried about blowing out the LEDs, 1A glass fuses are dirt cheap. For the price of one puck (actually less) I was able to get a total of 8 fuse holders and 10 1A fuses (found at my local auto parts store).
BTW, those look to be 5mm LEDs, last I knew they only had a 5-10K hour useful life. Yeah, they will last to 100,000 hours, but by the time they reach that they will be so dim its not funny. the high power LEDs have a useful life of about 50-60K, and total of about 100,000. Then again, things might have changed but I doubt it. Look nice for a reef though.
BTW, those look to be 5mm LEDs, last I knew they only had a 5-10K hour useful life. Yeah, they will last to 100,000 hours, but by the time they reach that they will be so dim its not funny. the high power LEDs have a useful life of about 50-60K, and total of about 100,000. Then again, things might have changed but I doubt it. Look nice for a reef though.
Well CK, you might want to check out the new versions of LEDs. They are much better than they use to be. For 2 years I don't have to worry about anything and I didn't have to figure the resistance for the LEDs and this plugs into 115 VAC. You've got a better eye than I do if you can figure the size from a photo that has been reduced by 5 times. 
Any way, on the watt meter, with all lights on I'm only using 97 watts. This is a 90 gallon bow front tank. It's 24" deep. If they last 50,000 hours that's roughly 13 years, by then I don't think I'll really care and that's better than 8 months on an $80.00 MH bulb.
Any way, on the watt meter, with all lights on I'm only using 97 watts. This is a 90 gallon bow front tank. It's 24" deep. If they last 50,000 hours that's roughly 13 years, by then I don't think I'll really care and that's better than 8 months on an $80.00 MH bulb.