Was just curious if these LED spotlights are worth anything?

http://www.divinelighting.com/par-38-led-t...x-1w-p-275.html

Heres a link to a thread on RC where a guy is using a few of them over a tank

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthre...hreadid=1596729

With 30 dgree optics, the area that it will light will be very small. The PAR won't be that great either. There are some that run at 2W and 3W each, but they are typically much more expensive. With a 12x3W lamp, you can get the 60 degree optics on it and have way more PAR than the 12x1W with 30 degree.

Also, unless you are planning on using all blue or all white, you are going to have to hack the unit to get the color temp you want.

Evil, what minimum width of an array could I get away with on a 22.4" wide tank that is 20" high? I may have a 9.5" wide fixture that I could use, but I'm not sure if that will be enough. I'd be looking for the equivalent of two 250W MH.

Thanks,
Mark

It's going to be tight. For tanks that wide I normally recommend using two of the small (5.375" wide) heatsinks spaced a few inches apart.

is there any way to dim multiple buckpucks with one pot? im having a hard time to finding ganged 5k pots.

Thanks!

Just wire them all in parallel to a single pot.

Hy evilc66,

You've done such a great job regarding that led thing. I have a cube(22x22x22), i have a Sunpod 150 (14k) on top that need a bulb replacement soon so the $100.00 question: what would you suggest me if i want to replace my Sunpod with LEDS?. It's for mix reef (few sps are montis). I control my lights with an Ac Jr. so will need the white leds on one channel and the blues on another (dusk and dawn).

PS: i know you've been asked many times same question but i'm no that good in estimations so to avoid mistakes i prefer to call the expert..

Thank's and keep on the good work.
Dan.

Wide tanks get expensive. A tank like yours could be set up with two heatsinks running 3 rows of 9 on each heatsink. Using 60 degree optics you will get performance similar to your Sunpod. You could go beyond that if you used 40 degree optics (250W levels), but you would need to increase the number of LEDs

Evil

Love the new Pico light in your other post, but I think I want to do my own LED set-up to have more control over the blue and wht lights independently.

that being said I am having my acrylic cut today for a pico and the dimensions will be

10" long x8" widex14" high.

My guesetimate is for 8WHT and 8 R BLU + 1 UV Cree's

I was going to do 4 rows of 4 leds horizontal alternating colors. then stagering the rows vertical to blend the light across an 8.5 X 8.5 Heatsink.

I was going to use 60 degree optics since it is 14"deep with the ability to upgrade to 40degree if I wanted higher par levels down the road

Is this overkill on such a small tank even though it is 14" deep?

Cheers!

Thank's.

Hey Evil.. I have a Red Sea Max and they are pretty deep.. Are LED's capable of producing enough light say 20-24" deep? I'm changing to hood off on it and not sure how many LED's to use or if it's even an option

Definitely possible. What size RSM?

It's the120 which is 34 gal total. 29 gal in the display. Not home right this second. On the iPhone but can have dementions in about 10 min for a better gauge

OK Evil.. 24" front to back, 19.7" wide, 19.7" high.. I'm at my girls house now but I'll assume since the display looks equally long in dimentions that it is also approximately 19.7".. Wow, big dinner and as lazy Friday for me

4 rows of 8 would be the absolute minimum, and that would be on one heatsink. Ideally, two heatsinks with 3 rows of 8 each would be better. optics will depend on what light levels you want.

Right on.. I'll have to go way back in the thread to figure out the equiptment list for it. Any chance you're not so busy and want to throw me a bone on it? Or even PM me if you're up for building something for the RSM 120 and toss me a estimate? As far as optics.. I want "some" SPS and my girl wants a clam so fairly high intensity toward the bottom.. My fear in that is... I love polyps and softies but it seems that going with LED's I may be able to do both without fear of burning up lower light needing corals.. I may be mistaken

How we take measurement using a PAR meter?
We calibrate to Sun or electric?
The white part of the sensor must face the light?

Agogee PAR meters are more accurate with a sunlight calibration. White spot facing the light.

ok.
We take reading how far from the LEDs.
Reading taken in air or under water?

Regards n Thanks
Sherman

Evil what are your thought on the aqua illumination units? I was thinking for my LED project useing the same format-8 units of 3 cluster LEDs, with a couple of UV's thrown in as well?

Sherman, take measurements in water, and at whatever depth you want. Sandbed is most common.

Giga, The AI units are pretty nice, and a lot better than the Solaris was. The triple lens has some advantages with color blending, but you create more of a spotlight with the grouped optics, unless the groups are close together. To me they don't seem as flexible as using single LEDs.

How close would the triple optics have to be to avoid spotting say with 40 and 60 degree optics?

Hopefully I can get some advice here.

I have a 12 G front curve glass tank, that is running with a couple of 11 W PCs. I thought of getting the aquaray lled ights by tmc, but since I´ve been reading this post quite carefully and others related with "diy led lighting" I am thinking on giving a DIY try

First of all I would like to know if this arrangement is fine. The tank is 11.8 ´´ (30 cm) deep.



Is it ok?

The layout seems fine, but I'm sure you could cut back on the number of LEDs required to light the tank. Not saying that you can't use that many, just that you could save a little money. You could easily remove the middle row.

This setup (any DIY setup for that matter) will give you far better performance than the Aquaray units. I haven't seen a tank yet that looks good with those.

Giga, you would probably have to have them almost touching to elliminate it.

Thanks for your response!

Once I have my "shopping cart" ready, before purchasing anything, I will ask you for more advice, if you don´t mind.

Evil not sure if you missed this since it was the last message on a page, any help would be great

Sorry man, completely missed it.

LED layout sounds ok, but I don't see a need for optics on a 14" tank. If you want a little bump in performance, you could use 80 degree optics, but 60 would be the limit. 80 degree optics will push you well over 200 PAR at the sandbed.

Thanks for the quick response evil! I can order them today As far as the optics go it just saves me more money not having them!

Cheers

How would one wire two (or more) buckpucks to a single potentiometer? Use the +5v of one of them and connect the other end of the pot to the signal line of all of them?

You can just wire each +5v and each CTRL line together to the single pot.

So basically bundling all the +5v together to one pin of the pot and all the ctrl lines together to another pin on the pot?

yup

Hey evil,

Would an 8.5" x 11" heatsink be good for a 12 LED array (6 white/6 blue)? Also, I don't understand what is meant by drilling and tapping the heatsink. Did I just miss that in this write-up or is there a good example somewhere else?

Thanks.

Sounds plenty big, as long as it's good for the size of your tank.

Drilling and tapping is where you create threads in a material for screws to be threaded into. It's typically for finer thread machine screws. Screwing the LED pcb down is prefered for the best thermal transfer.

My tank has a footprint of 11" x 12" w/ 12" of water until the sand bed. What would you recommend as far as LED configuration for the tank and dimension of heatsink? 6blue/6white? or would you go with less/more? I don't really plan to use optics at first, but I'd like to have the lights close enough together to add optics later and not get the spotlight effect.

No need for optics, but another 3 LEDs would help. With a somewhat wide tank (for it's dimensions), 3 rows of 5 might work out better for coverage front to rear. Around 2" spacing length wise will get great coverage down the length. Running at 1000mA and no optics, you should have no trouble hitting 200 PAR at the sand, which will be enough for sps if you like.

Going with 15 LEDs complicates things if you use Buckpucks to drive them, but you could go with the Meanwell drivers when I do my group buy and will cost you about the same as it would for 2 Buckpucks and an appropriate power supply. You can run 13 LEDs on a single ELN-60-48 if you wanted.

13 LEDs would have to be the same color though if I wanted to do dimming and color control, right? So I'd need two drivers - one each for blue and white. How much are the meanwell drivers?

You would need two drivers to control color, just like you would for the Buckpucks. You don't have to run 13 LED. Thats just the limit.

Price on the drivers is around $33 plus shipping. The price could go down depending on how many drivers we can end up ordering.

Ok, so lets say 8 white and 8 blue LED's with two drivers and the above heatsink. All-in-all, what am I looking at cost-wise after I get the rest of what I need?

Depends on where you get your parts from, but I'd say worst case is about $250.

I can do $250...ok, moving on with planning. I'll hit you up after I've researched a bit more. Thanks man.

Can anyone post where to get the best deals on the web to by the LED as this is getting popular.

Will these work?

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2394
K

hi guys, im l have being looking at building an LED light for about a week. but ever time i look more there seems to be an easier way, like avoiding buckpucks or grouping wires to one adjuster. so what is the easiest way for a 12gallon JBJ? i dont really care if it cost a little more as long as its neat and efficient.

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=188085

I am not an expert at all, but after reading data sheets at cree.com, I think that´s a suitable cold white led. In fact I am thinking on purchasing those.

I also have a question concerning cree leds at DX, which blue or royal blue leds are these?
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1775

thanks!

They are an XR or XC blue (not XR-E or royal). The XR-E royals are far better color and output.

The DX and KD Q5s are nice and cheap, but the PCBs are not that great. The ones from ETG, LED Supply and Cutter are far better quality. ETG has really good prices if you hit their minimum order. I will be offering LEDs in my group buy that will be starting in about a week. I'm trying to negotiate a better price than we normally get.

I´ve seen ETG web page, and looks great. But I don´t know if they ship to Spain. DX offers free shipping everywhere, and that´s an advantage. I will ask about shipping to ETG people.

Thanks evil!

ETG may be able to help. There are some places in Europe that will be able to ship to you, like LED-Tech.

thanks again evil!

and here´s a stupid question... what´s the difference between the round pcb and the star pcb?

I am checking LED-Tech. Also a local supplier (es.rs-online.com), and they have leds not mounted on a pcb, or at least that´s how it looks to me...