Thanks for the fast reply, another question on the what will I need to get to dim them? or does it come with that one.

No dimmer come with the driver.
You have to get one yourself and you need one to get the driver to work.
Without the dimmer the led will not light up

there is another thread just on the meanwell drivers. Evil is working on it and as soon as he is done he will post it on that thread. just go to the lighting forum and look up meanwells. it should come up. there already is a prototype of the dimmer on there.

Cool thanks for the info I will read that one there.

When I turn off the main power to the power supplies.

if your lines are longer than 18 inches from your power supply your drivers, flickering can occur. you can tightly wind the wires together and it might elimanate some or all of the flickering

That probably won't make much difference. There is some internal capacitance in the Buckpuck that will cause the LEDs to not shut off cleanly. It's fairly typical, and the LEDs will fade and flick for a second as the capacitance is drained.

evilc66,

Thanks for your contributions! I apologize if this was asked earlier, because I stopped reading at about page 14. I'm lighting a 30g about 20HX19DX20H. I want good coverage around the whole tank and I want to keep some lower light SPS on the bottom. Ideally maybe 200PAR on the bottom. I already ordered 36LEDs and 44-FWHM optics. Before I saw this thread, I was planning to do 6X6 with LEDs 2.5 inches apart, but for about 250W MH you recommended a tighter formation. What should I do?

Thanks!

You are going to need a few more LEDs. 51 LEDs will get you a 9-8-9-8-9-8 arrangement that should cover pretty well. Go 2" between each LED, and 3" between rows. The staggered arrangement will compensate for the increased spacing between each row. This should be spread out over two heatsinks.

The 44 degree FWHM might be a little tight, and will certainly put more than 200 PAR at the sand. Try it out, but you may want to start looking at where you can get different optics.

Evil,

Have you looked into/heard about the benefits of pulsed light on photosynthetic growth? I'll have to dig through my 1000's of PDF research papers to find the research, but the general idea is that if you pulse the LEDs at certain rates, you can actually stimulate more growth. Highest rate of growth is from 720Hz, while the most energy efficient is 480Hz (Rough numbers, off the top of my head). The benefit is, you're using a 50% duty cycle, so the lights are only on half the time. After calculating switching losses, you end up ahead by a large margin. The other benefit is that you can run the LEDs at a higher current while not generating as much heat. Just figured I'd throw that out there.

Just getting ready to set up a nano reef again but wanted to upgrade my lighting first. Came across this thread and figured this would be a fun project to do as I love electronics and building little projects like this.

I have read through the entire thread and have learned a lot of good stuff. However, there is one thing I either missed or hasn't been posted. The original post talked about the next sections that would include wiring plans and such. Did I miss that somewhere or are we still waiting for it?

still waiting for it!

I have heard about it, but haven't looked in depth to the true benefits and growth potential. It can be done, but certainly takes a lot more effort to get it set up correctly. Do you have any links to the research?

Where can I buy the 80 eg Cree lenses?

at etg tech but they have a minimum order . i'm also doing a group buy for LED and lenses only. i just started it. same pricing as evil's.

well i cant seem to figure out why my light wont work.

I wired the leds in parallel and all my connections are good. I bought 10k linear pots from radioshak and wired the ctrl to the wiper and the ref to one of the ends. At first the 6 whites worked great alone, dimmed and everything. but when i hooked up both the blue and white to the power supply the blues would light up but not to their full potential. they also wouldnt dim and caused the whites to shut off. The blues did the same thng when i hooked them up on their own.

I messed around with the wiring trying to get everything to work together and broke a connection on the white circuit. i re-soldered it and now the white and blue will run at the same time but are not as bright as they should be. they also will not dim.

the only thing i could think of is that they are grounding out somehow because when the whites still worked i touched the ground for the blues to the power supply and the whites went out. i tried removing them from the heatsink to run them but there was no difference

If i move them around a little bit they will flicker or sometimes completely go out.

i checked all my connections and they are good. the wire is also brand new. my cousin says its the pots but the one worked great before i messed around with it.

Im not an electrical engineer and i dont know what to do. all help is really appriciated

thanks

You can check a few things
1) Check to see if any of the leds are grounding out on the heatsink with the screws. Did you use an insulating nylon washer. Also make sure they are no stray strands coming from your soldering.
2) Try changing the pots. I had a wierd response from the buckpucks and the radioshack pots too. If only one puck was conected, it would not work. If two or three pucks were connected it would work great. Once I added the fourth, it was either on or off. Just curious, how many pucks does your array have.
3)Check to see if any of the wired are frayed and is touching the heatsink.
4) I noticed you said the leds are wired in parallel. Did you mean series? Positive to negative connections between the leds. If wired in parallel, if a led goes out you run the risk of burning out the other leds due to a higher current. you need a current mirror if you are going parallel.
5) Tap the leds to see if that works
6) Damn I'm tired and I can't think of anything else at the moment.

first of all nylon washer genius! although its not the screws. i removed the leds from the heatsink altogether and ran them for a brief moment just to see if it was grounding to anything. unfortunately no changes. Could it be grounding out on the aluminum stars?

I am running two pucks (one pot for each puck), one is to the blue leds and one is to the white. my power supply has two outputs so each puck is hooked up to a separate 24v output. ive tried hooking them up to just one output but am still having the same results. should i be hooking up the drivers a different way?

i dont think its the pots because it worked multiple times for the white led circuit until i broke a connection and had to re-solder. after that they were in the same boat as the blue. i should just return them and purchase a couple from frys or something but i already drilled holes in my eclipse's hood to fit those pots.

yes i ran them in parallel, i already blew out one led because of it. how do i create a current mirror? i probably should just run them in a series.

i wish i could just tap them and they would work

Thanks again for the input

You need to run them in series. Because the pucks are constant current they put out 1000mA but in parallel the 1000mA will be divided between all the LEDs. If you have 6 LEDs in parallel each LED would only put out about 165mA instead of the 1000mA they are supposed to. You dont want to know what would happen if it weren't a constant current lol. How many Amps does your power supply put out?


Now on to me lol.

I love DIY stuff so I will have a go at this myself. I have a 10G tank, 20"x10" and 12" deep. I am thinking 3 rows with 2" spacing and 60 degree optics on an 8.5"x20" heatsink:

w b w b w b w b w
.w b w b w b w b
w b w b w b w b w

Please feel free to correct me if I am off.

I found a Meanwell driver that has 1-10v external control capabiltiy, www.powergatellc.com sells them (ELN-60-48D) for $38.50. I need to find out from Digital Aquatics if that would work. If so then I found a 48v 3.2A PS for $25 and this project will get under way soon lol.

One more quick question. If these are 3W 1000mA LEDs wouldnt they only require 3 volts? I keep reading that they require 3.7 volts but the math doesnt add up unles the Watts are rounded down.

Last question, I promise lol. Evil, earlier you said nanotunners does custom heatsinks, did you mean nanotuners? About how much do they charge for doing that? Is it by the lb or square inch or what? If it is Nanotuners should I just email them and ask about it? I cant find info about that on their site.

Thanks in andvance and awesome thread!

I will post up the links when I get home from work, as I don't have the links here. None of the research is specific to water photosynthetic life, but more based on terrestrial plants. I figure it all works roughly the same though.

resolder the one led that you resoldered. maybe it didn't make a good connection or solder it to the other solder pad.
just run them in series. much easier but if you want to give a current mirror a try here's the thread
just try another pot same kind just to check everything out.
could you post pics of your eclipse hood. i already modified a 3 gal and probably convert my 6 gal to led also in the future. i have extra parts now. lol

Landshark: If you indeed have your leds all wired in parallel that is the majority of your problem. Also sounds like you could have overheated one of the pots during soldering and lifted/damaged the wiper/strip. Would be best to test with a multimeter or try some new pots. If they are the round kind with the metal backs they are fairly standard and you'll find the same/similar ones wherever you look so don't worry about the holes not lining up.

If none of that works, your descriptions are a little confusing but if you draw a diagram in mspaint of how you have everything wired there is a pretty good chance I or someone else can tell you exactly what is wrong.

Good luck.

Layout seems fine, but you may be able to get away with only two rows seeing as the tank is only 10" wide. Of course, there is nothing stopping you from running three rows.

The Meanwell drivers from Powergate will cost you $53 plus shipping for the dimmable version if you want less than 5, regardless of what is quoted on the website. If they give you any better pricing than that, heads will roll because I just purchased 141 of them. What do you need a 48v supply for? Meanwells are line voltage (110VAC)

A "3W" LED is more of a generalization. It's more to relate in simple terms the LEDs current capacity. An LEDs voltage can change as it is running, so you could be running anywhere from 3W to 4W when running at 1000mA.

Nanotuners/Nanocustoms are one and the same. Chris was offering his servies to machine custom heatsinks for a reasonable price. Obviously, the more complex the heatsink, the more it's going to cost. Their charge is for machine time, which is by the hour, and material cost.

Will I have any problems with too much light and burning my coral with 3 rows? If 2 rows are fine I will just do a 50/50 mix like this

w b w b w b w b w
b w b w b w b w b



LMAO I have been reading so many spec sheats and just about all of them require a DC power supply I didn't even see that this was A/C driven. You just saved me $25. I wish I wrote down the name because the lady I talked to on the phone said the ELN-60-48D were actually $38.50 and they would have them shipped by Thursday from the manufacturer if I ordered them now... which I didnt.



thats kind of what I thought but I am a literal person so sometimes "general figures" dont equate. Thanks for the clarification.



I am thinking of just getting a 8.5"x20" from www.heatsinkusa.com for about $45 and make my own stand and splashguard for it.

Thanks for the input and do verify your price with powergate because I called today and I was quoted $38.50 each for 2 of them, but they are the 1-10v dimmable ones not the PWM.

when picking a power supply, does the wattage mater?

The Watts is the Volts times Amps. The amount of LEDs you have and how many drivers you use determines the power supply. If you use 6 LEDs on one driver then you will need at least a 24V 1A power supply which would be a 24W power supply. You will want a little over the Amps needed to run the LEDs to run the driver also. So to run 3 drivers with 6 LEDs on each you would want at least a 24V 3.3A 80W power supply. You can always go over on Amps and Watts, just never go under or your LEDs will not peform. Been quite a few years since that class but I remember most of it lol.

If it's too bright, turn it down . Thats the beauty of LEDs.



$38 was usually their base non-dimmable price. There was about a $20 fee for them to convert it to dimmable at Meanwell USA in California. Verify it, and if they are giving you the $38 price, I need to know.




HeatsinkUSA is hard to beat for heatsinks.

The price shouldn't matter between the 1-10v or the pwm as I was quoted for both. I'm a little concerned now about their pricing.

I am still waiting on confirmation from Digital Aquatics that their system will ramp up to 80% and run for the given time then ramp down. I also want to know if at the end of the day it will ramp down the blue LEDs to 5% (thats the lowest setting) and that can be my night cycle or should I just go with a moonglow from them and hook it up to their lunar port.

Also with those Meanwells can you hook several of the 1-10v outputs up in parallel to run off of one controller? I am just wondering so when I go larger and need several Meanwells I dont need several controllers.



I got an email asking me to sign the NCNR agreement from Powergate, you probly know what I am talking about, and in the email Carol said they are $38.50. She said Meanwell had them in stock and they would ship on Thursday so we will see. I am still waiting on an order confirmation. I will PM you when I get it or if anything changes.

Thanks for your reply. I didn't get an email saying someone replied to this thread, so I didn't get you answer 'til now. Once again, thanks!

Planning to do a little project If I use 4 royal blue in series, do you think 18V 1.1A is a little too much? I just happened to have a power supply from a printer.

You are fine. Close but okay. That's the max for leds on that power supply

hey evil question regarding optics. if i do 24 led's spaced at <2", will that be tight enough to allow for no spotlighting with 40 degree optics down the road? in the aquapod, the light source would be less than .5" away from the water. i will stick with 60's if spotlighting is an issue, if any optics fit at all. which would be best, fans blowing down on fins or across? ifi go blowing down, optics may be a challenge, even with a thin fan.

Somewhere in this thread (that I have read 3 times now lol) I believe he said 2" spacing for 60 degree and 1.5" spacing for 40 degree so depending on how much <2" I would think it would be ok depending on how deep your tank is. I dont remember it talking about distance from the water though.

2" spacing is borderline for 40 degree optics. I don't think you are going to want to use them in an AP24 though. Many people with similar setups are even saying that 60 degree optics are too much in certain areas of the tank, and perfect for the deeper areas. 40 degree optics at 2" spacing would work better if the array was a little higher off the water, but it is still going to be a lot of light.

For the fans, blowing down works the best, but it's not the only solution. Fans blowing across can work, but the smaller size of the fans tend to produce more noise. You can't fit a 80x15mm fan between the heatsink and the hood?

Ok I am now thinking about cooling my system. Using the Meanwells (which I still have not heard if they have shipped or not) I don't have a 12v or 24v output so I was going to get a 12v power supply that I have stashed in my pile of old DC adapters from all kinds of old broken crap. I want the fan to be controled by how hot the heatsink is and I found this circuit, R1 being the thermistor.



I obviously dont care about the LED on the right side of the circuit so everything to the right of C1 would go away and be replaced by a second fan in parallel. From what I understand it should just effect the current going through the circuit but adding the second fan will compensate for some of it.

Opinions?

Edit: I just found the original page that says R6, R7 and D1 are optional
Temperature-controlled fan
Correct me if I am wrong but if it calls for a 12v 700mA fan max I can just use 2 12v 160mA fans in parallel without modifying anything else right?

[quote]"You can't fit a 80x15mm fan between the heatsink and the hood?"[quote]

im not sure. with optics (15.9mm tall) and a fan(15mm tall) and the heatsink plue led, in sketchup it comes out to 2.7" thick. i have measured from the outside that there is about 2.5 under the splashguard. so given a little human error, it may work. minadin hadfans on the side, and just barely clears the splashguard, which is why i am unsure. i am however choose to go with running the led's closer to 100% without optics. will this be enough for sps midway up or higher in the tank and acans colored up on the bottom? i will sacrifice intensity for cooling if that will suffice. another option is to md the hood a little bit (two covered vents that i could uncover for more room) which may turn out better. i will stic with 60's if the optics end up fitting

Don't see why it wouldn't work, provided you keep the fan current under 700mA. Q2 might get a little warm as the current rises.




Hmm. Sounds like the hood on the AP24 is shorter than the BC29. If you drop to 60mm fans, you can find them as thin as 10mm, but you would need two for it to be adequate. Keeping the fans inside the hood forces them to be smaller and can make more noise. It's not impossible to make it quiet, but a lot harder.

You shouldn't have any issues keeping sps in the upper to mid levels in the tank, and acans, blastos, and chalices should be jsut fine on the sandbed. It might be a little on the low side, but they should be comfortable.

Cool thanks. If that thing can handle a 700mA fan then it shouldnt get that hot running 2 110-160mA fans. Now I get to find some blue LED ones that match my awesome LED setup (that is yet to exist).

ok, sounds good. in further inspection of the aquapod hood i can get the fan very close to the top of the plastic, because the two vents (in addition to the stock fan areas) are almost completely covered under 1/4 inch of plastic, which will make a big difference. my plan is to order the two 80x15mm fans, adn the optics, and see what i can do. worst case, i buy a fan guard and chop a square part of the hood out like C jerome.

Ok I just got confirmation that my two Meanwell drivers with 0-10v dimmer shipped yesterday. They were in fact $38.50 each with $13.97 freight.

I also ordered the heatsink and all the parts for my temperature varied cooling fan system for the light. Now if only I can get LEDs lol.

Evil or any others, any opinion on using buckpucks vs the meanwell drivers for 30+ leds? I have a 39G Cadlight, just trying to see what will be most cost effective. I do want to be able to have the option to dim the lights if needed. It just sucks to have to buy a 3rd driver for those extra 4 leds

I just ordered my heatsink from heatsinkusa, went with their large 2 footer, 24"x8.5".

Also, I read the whole thread and didn't see any mention of moonlights being added to these builds. I would love something I can kick on at night, any thoughts?

i'm going to use 4 meanwells for my 37gal marineland build there is a way to dim the meanwells which is covered in the meanwell thread.

Yeah I saw that thread, thanks. If I was reading the thread correctly, evil was trying to modify the drivers that didn't come with the dimming option? If you order the driver with 0-10V dimmer, it's just turning a nob to adjust it?

What setup are you planning on running with your 37G?

hey anyone following this thread, what are the dimensions of the R2 moonlight here: http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_ViewItem~cat...y~FILTFIML.html

i am concerned abouth the width of the bar (not length, which is 4-3/8") because the spacing front to back of my led's from edge to edge of the pcb is only .5". will this fit in that area??

No, there are internal pots to adjust the initial amps and volts but you actually need a 0-10v input to dim it. In their spec sheet it says when 1v is applied then it is at 5% and increases until it reaches 10v for 100%. That is one of the main reasons I bought them, I have a Reef Keeper that has a 0-10v output for dimming. The buckpuck use an external pot to adjust the brightness. The Meanwells also don't require a power supply. On top of that I believe the buckpucks can only handle 6 LEDs each while the Meanwells can handle 13 each.

Would the reef keeper lite be able to control our led arrays or does it depend on the driver? They are on sale for $99 bucks and are supposed to be able to dim lights and create dawn dusk effects. I know jack about reef controlers
Thanks

I was going to use buckpucks on the 37 build I ran into trouble with them. I decided to give thr meanwells a shot. it doesn't seem to hard to make them dimmable. Just like opy01 said, you need a 0 to 10v to make them dim. (Now hopefully the rkl can control them)

The ALC module will do it but the RKL is not yet compatable. They did anounce by the end of this quarter (this month) the new firmware will allow the RKL to interface with all modules but the NET module. This would allow it to dim the lights. I am still waiting on a reply from DA about if this is true or not but I ordered my stuff anyways. I can come up with a 10v power source to at least make them turn on for now.

If you jump over to the Digital Aquatics section they talk about it some but I would ask Scott and see when this feature will be here.

The Buckpucks technically will support 0-10v dimming also. 10v is it's maximum input voltage, although 0% output is only at 5v. This is according to the datasheet.

Thanks evil and opy01 for your help.
I did read some on their site. I guess I will have to invest in a rkl then!
Opy, which did you order?
Thanks

Do you know of something cheaper then the RK that I can use to dim the ELN-60-48D drivers?