DIY LED & Florescent lighting setup

[0live]

I've been wanting to put together my own lighting setup for a while now. I wanted to do LED, but wasn't ready go LED only.

There's 108 6700K LEDs and one 18w t8 grow light.
The top is just the florescent, the bottom is florescent + LED.




I have guesstimated the setup to be med light, but really have no idea. If its too much, I can easily pull out some LEDs. If its not enough, I can add some.

There's an arduino controller that has a temp display (and may eventually have pH) and cycles the lights. I'm going to get some rgb LEDs for some night lighting.



And the startup screen:




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[FreshyFresh]

Wow! Good work.

Love the plywood hood and electronics. You've got mad skills.

 

[0live]

Wow, thanks fresh.


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[authmal]

Do you know the PAR rating for those LEDs? It's what's going to determine whether you have medium light, low light, or effectively no light. If you don't know the PAR rating, what's the wattage on those LEDs? Basically, the allure of LEDs is the great visual light output combined with a low wattage input, making them very efficient lighting. Unfortunately, plants don't care about efficiency. They care about PAR. Those stock Aqueon and Marineland lighting kits tend to be great for lighting up the tank, but less than great for making things grow. There are some threads in this forum about CREE (I think) LED emitters being DIYed into great lighting set ups, and those are high output LEDs and may suit your needs better.

 

[0live]

.192 watt, 19 lumen each
For the 108 LEDs in there that's 20watt and 2k lumen

Also, a correction: these are 10500k LEDs not 6700k as I inadvertently stated in the OP.

And of course I don't remember where the spec sheet is, but iirc the color spectrum spiked at 450-475 and again at 550-600.. I might be pulling those numbers out my butt... But that's what I seem to recall...


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[0live]

I wish I had a par rating! I'm going to check with the LFS and see if they have an idea as to who might have a par meter locally. I'd love to know what the output is here but have pretty much resigned myself to the "see how the plants grow" test.


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[authmal]

.192 watt, 19 lumen each
For the 108 LEDs in there that's 20watt and 2k lumen

Also, a correction: these are 10500k LEDs not 6700k as I inadvertently stated in the OP.

And of course I don't remember where the spec sheet is, but iirc the color spectrum spiked at 450-475 and again at 550-600.. I might be pulling those numbers out my butt... But that's what I seem to recall...


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Those numbers, IIRC, translate into virtually no light. I think Freshy tried using LED lights that had similar output, and they didn't do much good for the plants. That said, the tank lit up well!

Par meters, if I was told accurately, are in the neighborhood of $300.

 

[0live]

Yeah, I was hoping a local aquarium club would be able to test it.

 

[0live]

I remember seeing freshy's experiment, but I don't remember seeing any numbers as far as the LEDs were concerned.

 

[FreshyFresh]

I know LED fixtures exist with PAR ratings specific to plant growth, but they're expensive. I'm not sure they're perfected yet either from a normal consumer perspective. Unrelated, but I just had some rather expensive LED twist-lock lamps (replacements for halogen recessed fixtures) fail after about 4-6 months of installing them. Lost two out of 6 already.

We've always got good old mercury filled fluorescent tubes to kick out the PAR we need as a fall-back plan! You could easily add another T8 strip light to that hood, boosting you up to 36watts.