My diy led build

DoctaQ

DoctaQ

all your wheel are belong to us
Dec 12, 2008
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Boston
welps, it took a month to get everything all set up even after i had all the parts in. the hardest part was finding a drill press, next time ill probably just go with thermal adhesive of some kind if there is a next time haha

the leds are driven by well, drivers, six to a driver. one with all whites one with all blues and one with half and half, each driven by 24vDc each driver puts out one amp so if my preschool knowledge of eletricity is correct, it runs about 75 watts after the fans and efficiency loss


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attached to the heatsink, before wiring, not very impressive but it took me a long time to get here. tapping took a long time, rows are for conformists, id rather make the pattern like a bat or whatever else you can see. its like looking at clouds or something


on my tank at full power next to my dwarf puffer tank , lit by 26 watts 6500k of spiral cfl



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blues only
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check out my other thread for what my tank looks like now!

thanks to Kevin and Hon and evil from nano reef for helping me with this foolish project and thanks to everyone else for looking!
i would be glad to help anyone out

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Very cool!!!

Not a foolish project at all...you should be proud of yourself.

I look forward to the development of LED for saltwater applications...good for you.
 
could u post a list of the parts and a simple dwrg

i am looking at doing something similar but a lot lower wattage
 
haha i actually just answerd this on another forum

gosh why didnt i think of this

hmm
heatsink about 40
3 drivers 20 each so 60
leds about 6 or 7 bucks each times 18... 108
power supply about 20
misc other supplies like wires and screws (generous allowance ) 20
​
250 is a pretty safe estimation
drivers can be made by someone with decent electrical knowledge saving 60 bucks would be huge.
my heatsink is pretty over kill, i probably could have gotten away with half the size
if you make your own drivers you could afford to just use a computer power supply or something so, due to my lack of electrical knowledge i had to spend 80 on the electrical side, if you built your own drivers and had a computer power supply around the house you could probably easily scrape 50 bucks off the cost.

if you were looking for less leds like you should keep it in multiples of 6 then you could ditch one driver, how big of a tank?
 
its going to be a 30 gal long but i only need minimal lighting as its a fw unplanted tank
 
if your just going for basic I may be of help on the power supply area. You can use an old computer ATX style power supply. THere's DIY work bence powersupply write ups all over the internet. Best thing is that if you wire it up they are really easy to replace and produce up to 24 volts dc at 30 amps (depending on your model) The biggest killer is the LED pricing. They are really expensive.


For this same reason I did it differently. I decided to use high wattage 10mm led's. Each one is rated at .5 watt

page 2 and three have some more details.

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187732&highlight=hexagon+build&page=2

right now I'm using 15 of them over a 3 gallon tank and my java moss is growing like a weed.

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=204189&highlight=weak


since your going for just lighting, they would work just fine, and you could even grow some low light plants. Best thing, I bought 80 of them for 40 bucks.



Mike
 
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