Roee`s 10g LED - aquastyle online kit

[Roee1982]

Hello friends.

This is my first LED DIY

Some tank details:

About 40 liter (12G)

The tank is 33cm long, 30cm high and 40 cm deep.

The tank has a back chamber 10 cm deep, so the display is roughly 33*30*30

The plan is for softies+lps, maybe sps later on.

 

After reading a lot I decided to buy a dimmable kit from http://www.aquastyleonline.com/

All leds a 3W

6 - Natural white (NW)

9 - Royal blue (RB)

2 dimmable drivers (1 for each color)

a 30*18 cm heat sink

60 deg lens

Wires, connectors glue and such were included in the kit.

it`s similar to this kit:

http://www.aquastyleonline.com/products/Aq...mmable-Kit.html

Only with 15 leds and not 24.

115$ total shipped to Israel.

 

I started out with this design:

 

But after some thinking and discussions here

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=283644

 

and to make a long story short,

I sketched (Google sketch up) the light output cones

 

And decided to go with the 3 rows design

 

This will give an even light spread (leds are about 5cm apart) and the colors will blend nicely.

 

The next stage was to glue it all together.

I started by drawing a grid on the heatsink (pencil and ruler)

 

I received 2 glue tubes, used only 1/2 of the first one.

I applied a small drop of glue to the back of the led, used a small toothpick to spread it around and glued it to the heatsink.

 

The final result

I glued all leds so the + are to the left and the- to the right. Makes soldering easier later on.

 

The instructions say 10 minutes for drying, but i had other things to do, so the glue had a good 24 hours to dry.

 

 

The next day i started with the soldering.

(If u can`t solder, YouTube has some nice instructional clips)

Each led has a + and a -

The leds are connected in such way that each led + is connected the next led -

The first leds + is connected to the drivers +

The last leds - is connected to the drivers -

 

Next thing was connecting the dimmer and the driver.

The driver has 6 wires

On the left side are 2 white wires for the power cord

On the right side are 4 wires:

2 white for the dimmer.

Red (+) and black (-) that connect to the leds.

 

Dimmer:

 

To connect the dimmer, you need to solder one of the right white wires from the driver to the middle part of the dimmer and the second right white wire to one of the other dimmer connectors

(Doesn`t matter which one, as long as one wire is connected to the middle)

 

To connect the driver to the leds:

Connect the red driver wire to the first led +

Connect the black driver wire to the last leds -

 

To connect the driver to the power cord:

Connect one of the left driver wires to one of the power cords wire

Then connect the other two.

(Doesn`t matter which one goes where in this kit)

 

Now- pray and light it up!!!

 

 

Troubleshooting:

At first, my blues didn`t work.

I soldered everything again, then found out that the power cord wasn`t connected properly to the driver...

 

I took some pics of my kitchens ceiling so u can see the different color combinations:

White and blue at 100%

 

White and blue at minimum setting

 

It's a bit hard to see the strength of the lights but it's very bright

 

White at 100% blue at min set

 

Blue at 100% white at min set

 

and a clip (it`s upside down, please ignore that...)

 

Now just need to build something to hold it over the tank

[dan06277]

Nice build Roe.

[fmfa0801]

Great step by step

[iball1804]

Absolutely perfect how-to.

 

I just purchased my own kit from there, and am just waiting on shipping.

 

Oh and nice gloves

[Roee1982]

thanks guys

iball, i can send u some gloves