A total beginner's LED build is successful

[ReggieF]

My LEDs came in today and having absolutely, no experience whatsoever with LEDs or any kind of soldering or anything, I've gotten my LED build up and running great. Here are some pics, a hardware list and some notes from a complete n00b's perspective! Woo, I'm stoked

 

$20 - 1 x Cree Royal Blue XP-E 3-up

$22 - 1 x Cree White XP-G 3-up

- (I could also opt to get 1 Cool White and 1 "Warm White" individual LEDs, but I wanted to keep it simple by getting two identical 3-up circles)

$35 - 18w Power Supply with Driver (Also called a "constant current" driver)

- This can be had much cheaper from other vendors like www.dealextreme.com

$7 - 1x Arctic Alumina thermal adhesive

$4 - 1 x CoolViva Z1 VGA heatsink

$3 - 2 x Elliptical 3-up Optic cute covers

 

Tools used:

 

$15 - 60w ECG soldering iron (I should've gotten a smaller one, the bigger ones are harder to hold stable)

$5 - Power cable with one slightly bigger prong (this is called polarized I think)

$2 - Small amount of solder wire

$2 - Electrical tape

- Scissors (wire cutters would be better)

 

Total time taken: 2-3 hours

Total cost: $120

Specs: 18 Watts - 6 LEDs @ 700 mA

 

This is the light almost 3 feet above my 5.5 gallon tank, it's ridiculously bright. Visually I think this is way more light than a 75w MH.

Another shot of the light above the tank, I had to take an HDR to turn down the glare, it's very bright.

These are the 3-up LEDs I used with their eliptical optics.

This is how I wrapped the wires together before soldering, but I taped them not knowing that i was supposed to solder them!

These are the poorly soldered wires. The black spots on the wires are residue left over from my pre-emptive taping spree haha.

This is the LED driver I used. These can be had for much much cheaper, I just got the most expensive one cause it looked cool!

 

Any questions, feel free to ask, I honestly knew nothing at all about this one week ago, so I can answer a lot of n00b questions!

[ReggieF]

Some notes and after thoughts:

 

1) Heat: This VGA heatsink is more than capable of cooling my 6 LEDs without a fan. I think the limit without a fan would be about 9 LEDs. I've been running my lights for 3 hours and the maximum heat was reached after about 30-45 minutes. The heatsink feels like a warm plate with a hot dinner on it, nothing is too hot to hold, it's just warm. The copper plate that the LEDs are attached to is the same temperature, somewhere around 90-100 degrees F. At this temperature, these LEDs may even last forever.. !!!

 

2) Cost $: Firstly, if you want to save money (and your time is important), just buy Evil's par38 bulb. If you're looking to DIY to save money, there are some sweet spots in terms of price, try to aim for that. For example, 12 LEDs is a perfect price point because Dealextreme has a very similar driver to mine but it's for 9-12 LEDs and it runs at 670 mA (mine is at 700) and it is $22 cheaper than the driver I bought. A 12 LED setup could easily cost $150 with a soldering iron.

 

I ultimately paid more to have less light, it would've cost me less to have 9 LEDs, but I decided to go with 6 because I thought 6 would be more than enough light (and it is) and I thought the heat for my heatsink might be too much (but 9 would probably work).

 

3) Color and Shimmer: The shimmer on this is ridiculous, it looks like a swimming pool in the sun. The color however is not going to win any prizes, it is simply white and blue.... But I happened to have a clip-on light with a standard warm-white 13w CFL bulb and putting that in makes the color ****ing AWESOME! I couldn't capture it on my camera, as everything is still too bright (I'm gonna try tomorrow to make a video of it) but honestly, this is some of the best (if not the best) lighting I've ever seen.

 

Essentially, the Cree LEDs produce blue and green light but they mostly lack red. The standard CFL warm-white is mostly red so it works out perfectly. The combination is really incredible, I can hardly take my eyes off it. I encourage anyone that's disappointed with their LED color to try adding a standard warm-white light and see the results, I'm really interested to hear what others find.

 

4) Soldering: This is not as hard as it may seem, it's just intimidating. Once you try it, you get the hang of it quickly. I learned all how to solder through a friend's advice over the phone and through these youtube videos

and

. It just requires a steady hand and a little effort. A smaller soldering iron would be preferable because it's difficult to hold the larger soldering irons steady. I only had to solder 7-times on this build, but it only took about 30 minutes start to finish and I'm glad I learned a new skill.

[DGAF]

DAMN! that light is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay up there! lol

[Deadly-Teddly]

yeeeah it is lol. looks like its gunna melt everything under it because of the intensity. nice job!

[ReggieF]

Here are some more pics and this video I took trying to show the difference between the lighting with and without the standard light bulb. You can see very clearly when I turn the standard light bulb off that the lighting gets very pasty white and bland. Then the camera adjusts and it's not so visible in the video, but the difference in person is really noticeable. These photos were taken in sunlight:

[thewire]

nice closet reef keeping. ..it's time to come out from the closet!

[h20boy]

That VGA heat sink looks good for the price. I noticed you had to bend the heat pipes. Was that difficult? I am curious if that will restrict the heat flow.

[ReggieF]

That VGA heat sink looks good for the price. I noticed you had to bend the heat pipes. Was that difficult? I am curious if that will restrict the heat flow.

Yea, it's a really good heatsink, especially for the price. I live right down the street to this store though, so it's especially cheap for me . You might try going to a local computer shop (if you have any small ones in your area) and asking if they have any old, useless heatsinks that they can sell for cheap, or even get rid of for free. You can ask for VGA heatsinks (like mine) or slot processor coolers, which are also somewhat out-dated and they might have some useful stuff for very cheap.

 

I bent the aluminum fins vertically, but I didn't need to, that was just a personal preference. It was not difficult at all, I just did it slowly to avoid breaking the pipes. It doesn't seem to affect the thermal properties much because the aluminum fins get almost as hot as the rest of the heatsink. It might actually help in my case because if I didn't bend the fins they would be _lower_ than the copper plate and main aluminum heatsink, making a pathway for heat more difficult (because it would have travel down). Keep in mind that this is a video card heatsink and it is intended to be used "upside down" compared to the way I'm using it.

 

I definitely recommend it though, especially if you're looking to do a setup with clusters of LEDs.

[ThatCollegeReefer]

Lol. Closet reefer. Very nice. Thanks for the info in the thread! I will be blindly embarking in my own endeavor hopefully sooner then later

[Reef Casa]

good job. Thank you for the pics and info