Fluval edge DIY Led question

[tomduud]

Hello all,

 

This is my first post to this great forum. I'm building pico reef with my Fluval Edge 6 gal tank and need some advice on DIY leds. My plan is to build DIY LED with Cree XPG2,XPE,XTE leds. I attached and image for current placement of the leds on heatsink. I have to rotate leds for correct position for wiring, but this is not yet done in the image.

 

Led strings are driven by 1amp dimable buckpuck drivers and leds are placed on 184mm x 84mm heatsink. Max voltage per string will be 24volts. Each string will be controlled by diy arduino based controller.

 

Strings are:

- Royal Blues (5x)

- Neutral Whites (3x)

- RGB (red, green and normal blue led) 1x each

 

So I have few questions:

 

- Is there enough or too much light for growing some "common" pico reef stone corals?

- Should I replace some of the leds with different model or add leds with different nm?

- Is the placement of the leds correct or should I move some of the leds to different location?

- Do I need to remove or add some of the leds.

- Anything else I forgot.

 

I'm total newbie so please advice and thanks in advance!

 

br,

 

Mikko

[evilc66]

• Should be plenty of light

Yes. Ditch the red entirely and replace one of the neutrals with a warm white. That will give you the extra red, without any of the issues that red LEDs produce. Replace the green with a lime, as it will do far more than the green alone.

Keep the array tightly clustered in the center of the heatsink. This will help immensely with color blending with the LEDs so close to the water

I would add another cool blue (470nm)

Ditch the Buckpucks for Meanwell LDD drivers. They are much cheaper, and seeing as you are doing an Arduino based controller, are natively PWM controlled. I don't think you will have any need for 1000mA drivers though, so go down to 700mA. You didn't mention how many driver channels you were planning on, but I would use one for the whites, one for the royals, one for the blues, and one for the lime. This will get you the most control. If you want to consolidate a little, move the lime to the white channel, and the cool blues to the royal channel. That will require a higher voltage power supply though.

[tomduud]

Thanks for the good input. I forgot to mention that I already have 3x 1amp buckpuck drivers, so I will play with them for this build:).

 

I will look for lime color and replace red with warm white and add another blue led. I will regroup leds more center focused as well.

 

edit:

 

Attached is updated layout. I have not give a though for wiring yet so I think I have re-arrange leds few more times to get best possible wiring as well. Is there any good place to shop Lime leds which ships to EU (did not find any from ebay on quick search). Usage of 1amp buckpucks also prevents me to use 700ma leds (need to swap one 1amps to 700ma)

 

br,

Mikko

 

 

[evilc66]

Looking good.

 

Honestly, I would still look into replacing the Buckpucks with the LDDs. Only reason I say this is that the 1000mA Buckpucks have a significant failure rate compared to the lower current versions. Doesn't seem to matter if you run them maxed out or with a conservative load, they end up failing anyway. Buckpucks were one of the few inexpensive options back when we first starting doing DIY LEDs in earnest back in the day, and quickly learned about how flakey the 1000mA Buckpucks were. 700mA units run fine.

[jedimasterben]

Another vote for skipping the Buckpucks. They're garbage compared to the LDD.

 

And 700mA for a Fluval Edge is overkill. I used two XT-E NW, four XT-E RB, and one LEDgroupbuy OCW over one, and I got a PAR reading of around 300 on the underside of the bottom panel of the tank with the LEDs at 700mA. 500mA is more than fine.

[tomduud]

Thanks for the answers. I will look to replace buckpucks with LDD drivers since I did not know Buckpucks QA problems in first place when I ordered them from ledsupply. What is LDD PWM dimming voltage ( 2,5-6v and totally off with <0.8v)?

 

And thanks for the lightning level info as well. I will use seneye to measure par levels and dim lights as necessary (I do not know if it is anygood for the job, but I can compare levels from seneye to my planted tanks level (T5 and cree leds). For me this build is way to learn new things so I do not mind if there is little bit or more overhead for this design . And with your help I'm already learning new things about these drivers.

[farkwar]

LDDs work different.

 

They give 100% voltage and 100% current, but flash it at a very fast rate you cant see in order to dim.

 

So, dimmest but on is like flashing 100 times per second, almost full brightness its like 1000+ times per second.

Full power is no flashing.

 

Your eyes see, and your corals, this as a steady climb in intensity. They dont go diwn to 20% then drop off to zero like current regulating drivers do.

[tomduud]

LDDs work different.

 

They give 100% voltage and 100% current, but flash it at a very fast rate you cant see in order to dim.

 

So, dimmest but on is like flashing 100 times per second, almost full brightness its like 1000+ times per second.

Full power is no flashing.

 

Your eyes see, and your corals, this as a steady climb in intensity. They dont go diwn to 20% then drop off to zero like current regulating drivers do.

 

This seems good way to do dimming. Is the dimming controlled with 2.5v - 6v signal or does it need other PVM voltage? (I cant find excact information from the datasheet (I'm no way an electronical engineer or similar:) ).

[farkwar]

PWM signal. 5v.

 

So straight 5v will net you 100% on.

 

Personally,I would skip the stars and put in a multi channel puck. The LEDs are tighter spaced.

[farkwar]

I wonder if a USB cell phone charger can be used to turn on LDDs.

 

Ill have to test that.

 

 

Btw evilC and Ben are our native LED gurus. Im just a neophyte.

[tomduud]

PWM signal. 5v.

 

So straight 5v will net you 100% on.

 

Personally, I would skip the stars and put in a multi channel puck. The LEDs are tighter spaced.

 

That 5v pwm is great. No need modify arduino pwm signal to work with other voltage.

 

I will order some LDD's and replace buckpucks with them when they arrive. I have cree stars already and I'm on budget so I have to use what I already have, but buckpucks I'm gonna change.

 

br, Mikko

[evilc66]

LDDs work with the native Arduino PWM frequency right out of the box. They are about the easiest drivers to use for DIY controllers.

[tomduud]

My Led build is almost ready (splash guard ordered so I get it tomorrow) controller works now is time to tweak controller code.

 

New reef will start on monday if everything goes right and LR arrives safely. Here is some details of the project : http://mjp-picoreef.tumblr.com/ and the Tank build thread here on NR at: http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/351538-mjps-fluval-edge-pico-build/

[tomduud]

My fixture still uses the green led instead of lime (I just ordered the lime led, it was quite hard to find here so I ordered it from RapidLed). I'm wondering will the UV (410-420nm) or Cyan (490-520nm) make colors more pop. Now everything looks very nice when I run moonlight simulation (mainly RB and Blue only), but colors look little bit washed of when in normal mode. I have read lots of post about full spectrum lights but can't decide what is the best route to achieve good color rendition and coral growth? Would UV's help or are they just for coral growth

 

My lights set as @700mA:

 

Royal Blues: 75%

Whites are: 60%

Blues: 62%

Green: 62%

 

Any suggestions about % or should I replace or add more leds? Red led flashlight seems to add more "red" for the red Acan but not sure how it works for rest of the tank if I add one red led.

[jedimasterben]

Violet (not UV, ultraviolet is below 380-400nm) won't do a thing while any other color is on. There is speculation that there are some pigments that only express when violet light is present, but still no concrete data on it. It's not like cyan in that its addition is apparent almost immediately.

 

Color isn't 'washed out' when your white LEDs are on, you can just see more colors that are non-fluorescent.

 

Green literally does nothing for you, so you can remove that completely.

[tomduud]

Thanks for the quick reply.

 

I will ditch the idea of Violet leds and remove that green led and put lime instead of green led when it arrives.

 

To me it seems that "colors" are washed out, so I have to check my eyes . Thanks for the explanation.

[reeferx2]

Will you be tucking all of this under the hood of the edge or going another route? I found the biggest lighting issue was due to the hood, it allows for no spread no matter how over the top your lighting is and I wanted coral everywhere!

 

Here's my custom setup for the tank, spent roughly 120 bucks on the finished product - closer to 200 with all my trial and error lol! It works great for my mixed reef. If you're interested in seeing how I did it all, let me know!

 

On top of the stock 21 LED array, I run violet, royal blue, and pure white - each on independent dimmer switches, going to a single 24 watt transformer, no drivers or heat sinks were used. Heat is a non-issue being that I used an aluminum frame, and not that I know what my PAR is, but my acropora is doing great if that means anything. Will be incorporating timers soon.

[tomduud]

If you have more pictures about the build please post them. My leds are in the hood so the light spot is just under the hood.

[tomduud]

Made little bit upgrade today. Changed green led to rebel Lime and replaced one royal blue with rebel cyan. Changed lightning ratios a bit and added diffusor gel front of the plexiglass cover (gel used: Rosco Cinegel #3029: Silent Frost). Rainbow effect almost gone. Now the light seems quite good. Gel mixes colors very nicely, only in some shadow spots I can see little bit color separation from lime or cyan led.

[tomduud]

My image quota is full and I cant upload images, but if somebody could check my new controller design it would be great. It is based on electric imp (similar device to bluefish mini) and Meanwell LDD drivers. I have two designs (one is based my current breadboard setup and another is what I hope would work . These are my first ever eagle/custom pcb's so I'm not sure these are ok. Please point errors I have made.

 

Anyway here is the link for the designs (let me know if you need Eagle files as well) http://mjp-picoreef.tumblr.com/post/115475756787/here-are-the-first-versions-of-electric-imp-ldd

[tomduud]

Here is the image of finished design. Few design flaws was there but they are not critical and were easy to fix (board was my first ever eagle design). Now it have 5 channel and temperature logger for water / light temperature.

 

 

ios app lightning schedule curves