Led mo's, get in here.

[Paleoreef103]

They are made by Sicce. http://sicceus.com/led_lighting.html

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd want to put an acrylic shield that close to a Vero 13. Even with a beefy heat sink, I'd feel a lot safer if I had an inch plus of space between those monsters and the acrylic. Maybe I am overly cautious though as we have seen evil clusters in ASIS LED heatsinks...

[evilc66]

You don't want to put acrylic on top of a Vero anything. At least an inch between the LED and the acrylic if you don't have airflow between the two. With the ASIS heatsinks, the flow path brings air in at the top center, forces it along the heatsink, then into the body of the fixture (over the LEDs), then out. There shouldn't be any warping issues with that setup.

[farkwar]

Hello Farkwar,

do you have a direct link to 3reef.com for the description of this splashshield?

 

Thanks,

Gerd

You can get it cut to order from Tap Plastics.

They will even cut the corners like that for you.

 

Its just acrylic. Use your router to cut out LED area, then polish it with Novus 1,2,3.

 

Heatsink from Heatsink USA from link above. Powder coat it, cook in oven. Anodize it. Or take it some where local to do either.

 

You can rout out a pocket in the fins for a flush fan mount, leave small gap between shield and heatsink. Noctua fans are ultra quiet.

[farkwar]

Another route would be if you want to use COB LEDs is

 

To use a Nuventix Synjet solution

 

http://www.nuventix.com/twist-module-led-heatsink-58w/

 

Something like that. You need to look up the actual COB to heatsink.

 

And that can be square of any dimension you choose. Take 4 COB LEDs, 4 Nuventix sinks and fans, then mount them to a sheet of aluminum, wood, or carbon fiber, etc. Whatever your aesthetics and skills are.

 

 

Sketch

[RayWhisperer]

Ok, I'm ordering 6 of these.

http://www.newark.com/bridgelux/bxrc-50c4000-f-04/led-hb-vero-white-4000lm-5000k/dp/62W5826

Do I need those mini molex connectors, too? If so, how many? What else? I can't find the optics for them. Are none made?

[jedimasterben]

Ok, I'm ordering 6 of these.

http://www.newark.com/bridgelux/bxrc-50c4000-f-04/led-hb-vero-white-4000lm-5000k/dp/62W5826

Do I need those mini molex connectors, too? If so, how many? What else? I can't find the optics for them. Are none made?

Those are the 70CRI versions.

 

90CRI 5000K: http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/BXRC-50G4000-F-04/976-1197-ND/4747503

90CRI 5600K: http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/BXRC-56G4000-F-04/976-1198-ND/4747504

 

Yes, you'll need the Molex connectors.

 

There aren't many optic choices for the Vero series, though these have an 18mm die area and you can use the Ledil Brooke W reflector, just use some silicone to attach it to the LEDs. http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/CA11183_BROOKE-W/711-1083-ND/2354013

[RayWhisperer]

See? This is why I need you mo's to do things for me. I never would have caught that.

 

Wanna build this thing for me free of charge, too?

 

Thanks.

[HM3105]

See? This is why I need you mo's to do things for me. I never would have caught that.

 

Wanna build this thing for me free of charge, too?

 

Thanks.

 

If they won't I might....

 

I enjoyed building my light personally.

[RayWhisperer]

Ok, mo's. What bluefish stuffs do I need since I wanna try a bluefish controller?

 

The bluefish guy is talking about buying something so I don't need to cut any cords. I don't even know WTF he's talking about... I ain't got no cords.

[gus6464]

Vero 18's with Ledil Brooke-W's. Lights are hanging almost 2ft from top of tank. Also just using 90CRI 5600K Vero 18's is not enough spectrum for a proper planted tank. You will be fine with green stuff but red pigments is not going to happen. Is this going to be a high tech planted setup?

 

[evilc66]

Ok, mo's. What bluefish stuffs do I need since I wanna try a bluefish controller?

 

The bluefish guy is talking about buying something so I don't need to cut any cords. I don't even know WTF he's talking about... I ain't got no cords.

You will once you get a Bluefish.

 

With the standard Bluefish controller, you have three 3.5mm jacks (same as for headphones, cables are included) that have connections for two channels each. You use a cable that looks like a headphone cable to break those two channels out of the unit and connect to whatever drivers you have. The breakout boards that he is talking about just eliminates the need for cutting up a cable and running the very thin wires to the drivers.

 

This is the breakout board he is talking about

 

https://aquarium-led-controller.com/product/lighting-controller-diy-breakout-board-2-channel/

 

This just makes it so that you can take a male-male 3.5mm stereo audio cable (included with the Bluefish) and plug it between the Bluefish and the breakout. On the other side of the breakout are screw terminal blocks that allow you to connect heavier gauge wire from the breakout to the drivers. Larger wire will be easier to work with, and more durable.

 

With the Bluefish Mini, you use a ribbon cable (not included by default, so keep that in mind) to break out the channel connections from the controller to the drivers. These wires are a little easier to work with than the 3.5mm audio cables (still small and fiddly though), and can be run straight to the drivers.

[gus6464]

If you want full spectrum I would go with Vero 18 no optics and a square heatsink with the following cluster on each corner:

 

1 Vero 18 3000K 97CRI Decor

1 Vero 18 5600K 90CRI

1 Rebel ES 3-up - 2x lime 1x cyan

1 Rebel ES 3-up - 2x cool blue 1x royal blue

4 LEDgroup buy violets - 2x 410nm 2x 430nm

 

Pack that cluster as tightly together as possible. For high tech don't go over 80 PAR on the substrate or it will be hard to keep up with maintenance.

 

Or

 

Super simple setup with enough PUR to do red pigments while keeping a nice to look at CRI.

 

1 Vero 18 3000K 97CRI Decor

1 Vero 18 5600K 90CRI

2 Rebel ES 3-up - 2x lime 1x cyan

 

Run the 3000K at half the power of the 5600K. Then the lime and cyan will take care of increasing the CRI to something pleasant around 6000K.

 

Or

 

Hybrid setup with T5.

1 Vero 18 5600K 90CRI

2 Rebel ES 3-up - 2x lime 1x cyan

2-4 T5 with UVL Red Sun

[RayWhisperer]

Evil makes sense of the nonsense. Thank you.

 

Gus, it's not just the vero's. I'll be using far reds, a cyan, or two, and some royal blues, as well. No violets, though.

 

As far as what type of planted tank. Well, it's not quite high tech, but way above low tech. I'm not really concerned with red pigments in the plants as I'm not planning on using any. It's only going to have 3 or 4 types of plants in it.

[gus6464]

Far red is useless on a planted tank. Deep red is better but it has horrible color banding. Use 3000K Vero 18 97CRI bin to fill chloro A.

[CrazyEyes]

This prime I have over my tank isn't going to last long with all this diy talk going on. Sorry for thread jacking.

Oh yeah, I remember what I was originally going to post, the new enclosures from rapid are actually really nice for the price. Still, if I wasn't always so budget conscious I'd without a doubt use a heatsink from Asis, such sex.

[SpencerShepard]

You will once you get a Bluefish.

 

With the standard Bluefish controller, you have three 3.5mm jacks (same as for headphones, cables are included) that have connections for two channels each. You use a cable that looks like a headphone cable to break those two channels out of the unit and connect to whatever drivers you have. The breakout boards that he is talking about just eliminates the need for cutting up a cable and running the very thin wires to the drivers.

 

This is the breakout board he is talking about

 

https://aquarium-led-controller.com/product/lighting-controller-diy-breakout-board-2-channel/

 

This just makes it so that you can take a male-male 3.5mm stereo audio cable (included with the Bluefish) and plug it between the Bluefish and the breakout. On the other side of the breakout are screw terminal blocks that allow you to connect heavier gauge wire from the breakout to the drivers. Larger wire will be easier to work with, and more durable.

 

With the Bluefish Mini, you use a ribbon cable (not included by default, so keep that in mind) to break out the channel connections from the controller to the drivers. These wires are a little easier to work with than the 3.5mm audio cables (still small and fiddly though), and can be run straight to the drivers.

Thanks Clive! Better than I could explain it...

[RayWhisperer]

Crazy, jack away! Ok, that sounded a bit odd.... I don't care if you hijack the thread.

 

Bluefish guy. You didn't believe me when I said I was a complete moron when it comes to led stuffs?

[RayWhisperer]

Ok, mo's, more stupid questions...

I'm gonna have 6 700ma (or whatever they are) driving the vero's. I'm thinking 3 300ma drivers for 2 hyper reds, 2 cyan or turquoise or whatever the hell they are, and one moonlight. I know, useless, but I like it.

 

Now, would a 300ma driver be fine for 4 royal blues? Can I combine the royals and cyan on a 700ma, 500ma, 300ma driver? Would it be better to keep them separate for controllability? What am I going to need to power all this shit? What can I put all this shit in so it doesn't look like a giant pile of spaghetti wires with some circuit boards floating in it? These are questions inquiring minds need answers to.

 

Right now I have 7 700ma mean well ldd drivers, 1 5up board (I know I need another), and all the led's. I have the Asis, a couple of extra fans lying around, plenty of thermal compound and a few 500ma power supplies. I'm gonna start sticking chips to the heat sink while you all formulate your answers. GO!

Oh yeah, one last thing. The hyper red led's are 1 watt led's, so I'm pretty sure I'll need a separate driver for those. GO!

[jedimasterben]

Nah, a single moonlight isn't useless if you like looking at things at night. Don't have the same worries with expensive corals and having too much moonlight intensity

 

I know you saw my build - I run one channel for warm white and violet, one channel for cool white, one channel for royal blue, blue, and cyan, and one channel for lime. I keep them all at the same intensity (except lime, I used four LEDs and should have used two), and all are run on 350mA drivers (the white LEDs are in parallel, so their current gets cut to 175mA). 300mA is more than probably all you need for the colored LEDs - I would suggest leaving out the hyper red, though, red LEDs can be distracting if not very well diffused.

 

If you want full control over every color, then you can use one driver per color, and once you get them tuned how you like it, you don't really need to touch it again.

 

You need a 48v power supply. You can get an open frame from places like LEDgroupbuy, but I do not suggest keeping them enclosed or anywhere that water can get to them. For more money, you can get a Meanwell CLG or HLG power supply that is sealed to IP67. This has saved me on numerous occasions, most recently the other day when my skimmer filled up and overflowed a bit and put some water on my stand floor where the power supply was, but being sealed, everything was ok.

 

If you'd like, send me a PM. I have some old Nanocustoms driver boxes here and you can have one to put the LDD driver boards in.

 

To prevent spaghetti of wires going from the heatsink to the driver board, you can either sleeve all the wires together (just twist them together really well beforehand, be absolutely sure to label them or use individually colored wire for each + and - of each channel!) or you can use a multi-wire cable. Mcmaster sells a bunch of those for fairly inexpensively. Get one that is ~10' to give you plenty of leeway with length and one that has two wires for each LED channel and one pair for the fan, then run that one wire up to the heatsink and to the driver board.

 

Hope that wasn't too much to go over

[RayWhisperer]

Ok, so that's good. I don't need a crap load of additional drivers. Saves me money. Just to spend more on the power supply....

 

I'm thinking most everything is going to be mounted on the back of the stand, only because the inside of the stand is already going to be stuffed. I suppose I have about 2.5 to 3 inches of free space inside the stand all the way around the perimeter of the inside of the stand. However, that makes any upkeep or part replacement impossible.

 

So, this power supply dilemma... Water will be able to get to it, I suppose. So, are the mean well ones the same that are listed on led group buy? If so, I'll just buy it there, since I'm already going to need to order another 5 up board.

 

Reds are bad, eh? Ok, then out they'll go. I wasn't planning on having optics on any of the colored led's, but they probably won't be too tightly clustered, either.

 

Now, one last thing. I still don't have any molex type connectors for the vero's. I don't know where to get em, or which type I'd need. Would it be fine to just solder them on the pads? If it's better to use the connectors, can I still stick em right on the heat sink, or would I need to space the chips somehow?

 

Sorry for all the dumb questions and thanks for taking the time to answer them.

[jedimasterben]

Well, with the Bluefish Mini, it's wireless control so you won't need to touch any of the electronics to dial anything in or change something. In addition, it's unlikely that you'll need to replace any of the electronics for quite some time (high reliability), so I don't think I'd worry much about that, keeping it inside the stand is really the best place IMHO, just put a couple of screws to hold the power supply and boards and such up.

 

No, the Meanwell NES series that LEDgroupbuy sells are still open-frame. So you have six Vero 18 to run on six LDD-700H. At that current they use around 20 watts of power each, total ~120w. The other individual LEDs, calculated around 2-2.5w each at 700mA, so even if you used eight in total that's a maximum of ~20w, bringing total LED wattage to 140w. The HLG power supply that will give that much power with more than enough to spare is the HLG-185H-48. Here is a link to purchase one, $65 plus shipping. http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10001&productId=2136681&catalogId=10001&CID=GOOG&gclid=Cj0KEQjw4LaqBRD60pfSn43ZwLQBEiQAJv5FLJO45bTqZzMY5nXjt8g5R7pA_tAsfbQVZ5zhowFHj3IaAu-o8P8HAQ

 

What I did for my colored LEDs was got a 3up 'anti disco' star from Steve's LEDs with one royal blue, one blue, and one cyan each. They're so close together that there is no color separation from them. Obviously that means that you'll be ordering from yet another place, but shipping is like $4, so not too bad an extra cost.

 

Reds aren't always the devil, but the hyper red I don't think will benefit you unless you're really pursuing absolute maximum growth and know how much intensity that your specific plants need in that spectrum. Always fun to play around with and tune to your liking, but plants will still grow like wildfire even using mostly-blue low CRI cool white LEDs alone, so I wouldn't worry about adding it

 

You can definitely solder the pads, I did that for my Vero 10 in my build to run them in parallel with each other, so the Molex connectors aren't a necessity.

[RayWhisperer]

Thanks. I think I'm gonna stick with what I already have now. I'll try clustering them tighter together. Otherwise I have a bunch of led's with nothing to put them in. I can tolerate 2 wasted led's, no more. Lol.

 

Thanks for the link, too. I'm gonna be broke because of this shit. Ordering that power supply tonight.

[RayWhisperer]

One last question for today.

If I run 2 of the vero's at, say, half power, can I use 1 700ma driver for both? if so, how does one accomplish this? Is it just a matter of wiring both to one driver and the power is directed to both chips at half of the set power?

[RayWhisperer]

ANSWER ME!!!

[Horerczy]

Just wire them in parallel instead of in series. Then each array will receive a max current of 350mA.