Lumia 5.2 Build

[sharkerty]

Hello,

 

I am a newb so please excuse my ignorance. I am going to start up a 120/125 Gallon reef tank and want to build DIY lighting. I expect to have all kinds of corals and maybe a few clams as well. The Lumia's look great but I have a few questions that I haven't found the answers to.

 

I want enough lighting to cover a standard 120 Gallon tank (60x18x24). I've read that the Lumia's cover 24x24. My plan was to put 4 Lumias on two 24" heatsinks. Will that be enough light to not have shadows?

 

It also sounds like I would be able to control all four Lumias with a storm x controller. Is that the case or am I missing something?

 

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

 

[jedimasterben]

Well, a standard 120g is 48x24x24, but 60x18x24 is actually a little easier when it comes to lighting it. Four Lumia 5.2 would do fine. IMHO you'll still have shadowing (this is true of any LED array), but not to any extreme.

 

The Storm X can dim up to 188x LDD per pin for a total of 3008x LDD total, so I'd yes, you could control many, many LEDs from a single Storm X. lol

[sharkerty]

Thanks for the response. How would the wiring work with the Lumia's then? I know I can string two of them together and I imagine that those two would go on 5 channels. Can I string 4 Lumias in a row and have the 5 channels control all 4 of them?

[jedimasterben]

The controller won't have anything to do with the LEDs, only the LDD drivers. You can control each of the 10 LDD you need on its own channel or run a jumper wire between the terminals of the LDD driving both CH1, CH2, etc.

[sharkerty]

Is there a preferred method to either setup? I guess if I wanted to add more LED's then it would be better to have as many open channels on the controller as possible. However, it would be hard to imagine needing that much more light. With the first method, I'd still have 6 channels available.

[jedimasterben]

If you were to add more LEDs, I'd recommend they be single LEDs spaced away from the Lumia so that the light isn't so point-source, helps prevent shadowing of SPS. Requires a little more elaborate wiring and different heatsinking, etc, but gives a better result. You also don't really need to run the extra LEDs with a lot of power since they're mostly for fill light.