LED Aesthetics: What do you really think of your color?

[Miami797]

Nothing fancy. Only RB Cree XP-E. A friend of mine contacted a company in GA that can populate these same boards with whatever mix of colors you want, but they wanted a crazy price to only make 2 of them.

 

I will be using these to add some actinic to my 70W sunpod. I made a few strips, but driving them at 750 is too much for what I need.

 

I am hoping to drive these at 350 on one of the heatsinks that can fit where I would like to mount these. The heatsinks will be mounted to L brackets that I can use to swivel the light. This weekend I will be doing thermal testing on different heatsinks to see if it will work.

 

Heatsinks and L Brackets are going to be black anodized, so they will blend in with my Sunpod.

 

Here is my plans for these. Pardon my 10 min. paint skills.

 

You can see in this picture where I plan to mount them to my sunpod. If you notice the left and right are slightly different. Size wise, either will work. I prefer to mount them a little closer inside (as on the left), but I'm wondering if the heat from the glass will effect them.

 

 

And this last picture shows how they can be adjusted so I can play with coverage.

 

 

 

 

If they are too hot or the coverage sucks, then I will go back to strips @ 350ma.

[pumarjr]

Getting ready now to add the LEDs to my tank, I'm just going to install all 12 LEDs into the current retro to give me a total of 36 LEDs in my bc29. All will be turned down to the lowest possible settings as a test.

[blasterman]

Looking forward to your results. Again, call it as you see it and tell us what your preferences are.

[pumarjr]

All I have to say is, WOW!, I should have build the whole setup with NW's and CB's! Photos coming soon, I'll take them with my iPhone so that there is no image controls. As soon as I put them on, my zoas and other corals almost immediately came out, the colors and corals look 100 times better. All with only 5 NW's and 4 CB's added. I'm just so happy with the color right now. As soon as I have the old LEDs re- wired I'll post all pics and you be the judge. Imma little ole no body and my opinion may not amount to a hill of beans, but, I'd recommend others try this in their tanks to give it a run. With as happy as I am now with the LEDs, hopefully the cool whites and royal blues only add to my happiness, if not, I'll take them all out and go strictly with nw's and CB's. Sorry if I'm going on and on, but I'm happy!

[Miami797]

I can't imagine you being disappointed with RBs. People are split between CW and NW, but I don't know anyone that doesn't like RB.

[pumarjr]

I never said I didn't like them, I said the mix of the two, together was great!, now with all four colors on it's absolutely perfect!

 

I'll post pics tomorrow. One nice thing is that my camera doesn't wig out any more taking photos under the mix of rb and cb.

[Miami797]

I never said I didn't like them, I said the mix of the two, together was great!, now with all four colors on it's absolutely perfect!

 

I'll post pics tomorrow. One nice thing is that my camera doesn't wig out any more taking photos under the mix of rb and cb.

 

I know, I was just commenting on you saying "hopefully the cool whites and royal blues only add to my happiness."

 

I hope I am excited as you are after my heatsink testing this weekend.

[Mr. Microscope]

I never said I didn't like them, I said the mix of the two, together was great!, now with all four colors on it's absolutely perfect!

 

I'll post pics tomorrow. One nice thing is that my camera doesn't wig out any more taking photos under the mix of rb and cb.

Cool to hear that your camera works better with the new light combo. Please make sure to post your ratio of LED colors and also how dimmed you are running each color channel in the images. Can't wait!

 

Edit: Oh, and also the drivers you are using. 50% dimmed means different things on a 1A driver VS. a 350mA driver. 'Just thought of that.

 

Thanks for your build!

[blasterman]

Yeah....we really want to know the ratios, or just the approximate ratios going on that people like.

 

LEDs ROCK baby! Yo Evil - fist bump.

[Genj]

arrrrgh... no pics makes me sad. Puma has a setup now that is very close to what I'm going to see on my setup.

 

We need pics!

[pumarjr]

First image is with just the CW's and RB's. CW's are at about 30%, RB's are at about 40%.

 

This image was with all four LED's on, CW at about 30%, RB's at about 35%, NW's at about 25%, and CB's at about 25%.

 

the pictures do not even come close to doing it justice, the difference is obvious and just what I was after.

[Miami797]

Looking good.

 

Pictures never do justice.

[pumarjr]

Yea, the colors are more vibrant, especially the reds and blues, the purple tinge is all but gone, overall a much better look, I was a fan when I only had the cw's and rb's, now with the addition of the new colors, I'm more happy than I could have imagined. With all turned up pretty high, it's very bright and I'm sure nothing in my tank would appreciate it. So I'm keeping everything turned down to about 20% max on all colors. If I had a par meter I'm sure it would be higher than my 250w mh pendant.

[joelsaxton]

Yea, the colors are more vibrant, especially the reds and blues, the purple tinge is all but gone, overall a much better look, I was a fan when I only had the cw's and rb's, now with the addition of the new colors, I'm more happy than I could have imagined. With all turned up pretty high, it's very bright and I'm sure nothing in my tank would appreciate it. So I'm keeping everything turned down to about 20% max on all colors. If I had a par meter I'm sure it would be higher than my 250w mh pendant.

 

Looks good, but a little hard to tell from just pics, although I do see a difference. What would be your ideal ratio of CW:NW:RB:CB?

[blasterman]

Yeah...that looks pretty good. All the warm colored corals have jumped right up, while not sacrificing anything else. The color temp has mellowed as well.

 

Having run into the same camera issues I totally know what you're talking about when it comes to trying to show it. Once you start dialing in the right color it's a fairly dramatic difference, but it doesn't show up on camera real well.

[pumarjr]

Right now I'm running 12 cw's, 12 rb's, 5 nw's, 4 cb's. Now if I could just get this canon xsi to shoot the image 1:1 you could really see the difference. Some of my corals colors didn't even show on the cw to rb mix, now with the latest addition to them, I'm seeing colors in them I didn't know was there. Overall very satisfied with them. I had some zoas that never wanted to open up under the old mix, with the new colors they are springing to life. Also my kaleidoscope acan now is just very colorful.

[joelsaxton]

Right now I'm running 12 cw's, 12 rb's, 5 nw's, 4 cb's. Now if I could just get this canon xsi to shoot the image 1:1 you could really see the difference. Some of my corals colors didn't even show on the cw to rb mix, now with the latest addition to them, I'm seeing colors in them I didn't know was there. Overall very satisfied with them. I had some zoas that never wanted to open up under the old mix, with the new colors they are springing to life. Also my kaleidoscope acan now is just very colorful.

 

That's awesome. I will have to try that if/when I set up another tank, something in the ratio of 3:3:1:1 cw:rb:nw:cb

 

Anyone you know tried the red led?

[pumarjr]

I'm using one meanwell dimmable driver for each set of 12 cw's and rb's, for the 5nw's I'm using a 1000ma dimmable buckpuk and the same for the 4 CB's.

[pumarjr]

Here is a link to the post I just made, it has pictures and felt it was time for me to move this discussion to my own thread.

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=251125

[blasterman]

It would be interesting to see a comparison of either neutrals turned off or CWs turned off. I still think that having both is redundant, but if it works it works.

[pumarjr]

I'm not sure how you can say it's redundant when both give different colors of light

[blasterman]

The big difference between a CW and Neutrals is just the height of the royal blue and amber/red spectral humps. A CW has a lot of royal blue but very little amber/red. A neutral has much less royal blue, but stronger amber/red. Both have green.

 

So, when you mix CWs and Neutrals you are just overlapping the same colors. CW's *shouldn't* be necessary because their stronger blue spike should be handled by turning up specific RB emitters. I'm just trying to simplify things conceptually because the fewer types of emitters we use the easier it will be for others to follow along.

 

What's most important though is that it improved your color, and just like I found out the difference was like a horse kick in the head.

 

It looks lke the CB to Royal ratio is somewhere around 1:3. It's goofy though how much CB's improve things over royals, but you don't want to use too much CB.

[pumarjr]

I agree, but there is a difference in my tank between the cw's and nw's, I'll take some pictures with just the cw's on and then another with only the nw's on. Same with the rb's and CB's.

[joelsaxton]

The big difference between a CW and Neutrals is just the height of the royal blue and amber/red spectral humps. A CW has a lot of royal blue but very little amber/red. A neutral has much less royal blue, but stronger amber/red. Both have green.

 

Would this same trend also apply to the warm whites?

[Mr. Microscope]

Blasterman,

 

Good point with the green overlap on the CW and NW and minimizing LED choices. So, NW:RB = 1:2 and CB:RB = 1:3, but do you think the CBs should be added on top of the mix of NW and RB or in place of a few of the RBs (or maybe in addition to the RB with an additional NW)?