Horerczy Posted July 3, 2013 Author Share Posted July 3, 2013 Sorry about the lack of updates. The power box is ready to be stained but the weather in the area has been very wet and unsuitable for the task at hand. I can't say the powerbox came out perfectly but I am satisfied with the results and most of the imperfections will be hidden once the stain is on any everything is a nice shade of ebony. The power box. Minor air pockets in the wood. Nothing a little putty can't' fix. You can see all kinds of imperfections in the wood working but I'm not a carpenter so I'm not worried about it. I'm going to try and get some wiring finished up and do some sample shots of the frag tank since it looks like I'm going to be waiting a while on the staining. Plus I have new incentive to finish the light in the form of a new coral I bought from Petco today. For the sake of comparison with the Lumia build later here's some pictures of it under T8 Fluorescents and a Wavepoint Microsun 8 watt Daylight/Super Blue LED lighting. You can tell the one with the Wavepoint by the extreme amount of blue in the picture. Can't wait to see what full spectrum does to this guy. Ignore the bright green ball corals in the background (I know it's not a coral. It's algae. Lesson learned on crappy superglues) Link to comment
Horerczy Posted July 7, 2013 Author Share Posted July 7, 2013 Good news and Bad news. The good news it I was able to wire up part of the fixture today. The bad news is I broke three wire leads on the DE-15 connector. http://smg.photobucket.com/user/misogi/media/P7060501_zps7ca67204.jpg.html'> It almost lives! Funny story. While I was trying to wire this up I couldn't get power to the terminal block to make sure everything was wired up right. After 15 minutes of testing all the components it turns out that one of the connectors was upside down so I was trying take voltage readings from wires that weren't attached to anything. Link to comment
gulfsurfer101 Posted July 7, 2013 Share Posted July 7, 2013 Reported for being so much more awesome than my build! Haters gonna hate! Nice job though, I was looking into using these over my 150g but costs of powering three to four of these is getting out of my price bracket. I'm following along to see how this turns out though cause I'm curious to see how it will then out. Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted July 7, 2013 Share Posted July 7, 2013 How the frack are you running only half of that channel? Link to comment
Horerczy Posted July 7, 2013 Author Share Posted July 7, 2013 How the frack are you running only half of that channel? Its cool blue with TV so i think the TV is overshadowed by the CB. Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted July 7, 2013 Share Posted July 7, 2013 Wow, looks like they aren't even running! Fckin magnets! Link to comment
Horerczy Posted July 13, 2013 Author Share Posted July 13, 2013 So close to getting the electricals done. Somewhere in the wiring there is an error keeping my royal blue channel and 20mm cool blue stars from lighting. I got some new wire today. Stranded 22 Gauge. Got new DSub connectors today as well. One is to replace the one with broken leads since I don't feel like undoing all the soldering on it to fix the leads that are broke the other is a male DE-9 connector so I can drop using the gender changer and get the cable on tighter. http://smg.photobucket.com/user/misogi/media/P7130511_zpsd410ed36.jpg.html'> Everything wired up on the floor in one big mess. Can't wait till It stops raining so I can finally stain that friggin box. It will probably be a day that I'm working though .... UNLIMITED POWER!!!!!! Ok not really. The RB and the 20mm Stars are the only things not lit here. I know it's a wiring issue though as I took working leads and swapped them out to make sure it wasn't the stars themselves. Controller works. I figured out that clouds really don't work well with a single Lumia. it looks weird when half the channels drop by half and the others don't. Also don't set clouds to 50%. The channels will bounce back and forth faster than mating epileptic rabbits. I was going to get a FTS of the frag tank with what channels were working today but by the time I got done the normal lights were already off for some time and I don't want to disturb the corals rest time for pictures I can take later. Link to comment
Horerczy Posted July 18, 2013 Author Share Posted July 18, 2013 Ok getting a little annoyed now. Either the terminal block has grounded, or a wire has broken inside the DE-15 cable. Alternatively there is an invisible solder bridge somewhere. The drivers are fine individual channel testing runs fine. But two channels will invariably not light up. Gonna switch out the VGA cable to see if that's the issue first. Hopefully it is because i've already resoldered the DE-15 connectors once and I dont want to have to hunt down new terminal blocks. Link to comment
MeepNand Posted July 19, 2013 Share Posted July 19, 2013 Ok getting a little annoyed now. Either the terminal block has grounded, or a wire has broken inside the DE-15 cable. Alternatively there is an invisible solder bridge somewhere. The drivers are fine individual channel testing runs fine. But two channels will invariably not light up. Gonna switch out the VGA cable to see if that's the issue first. Hopefully it is because i've already resoldered the DE-15 connectors once and I dont want to have to hunt down new terminal blocks. I assume you've already tried testing the leds with batteries? And running the led string without the terminal blocks? Link to comment
Horerczy Posted July 19, 2013 Author Share Posted July 19, 2013 I assume you've already tried testing the leds with batteries? And running the led string without the terminal blocks? I swapped a set of leads I knew was working up the terminal blocks to test each string. So i'm assuming solder bridge or bad VGA cable. Link to comment
farkwar Posted July 19, 2013 Share Posted July 19, 2013 You have a multimeter with a continuity buzzer, right? Pretty easy to find the short with that. Link to comment
Horerczy Posted July 21, 2013 Author Share Posted July 21, 2013 Checked the continuity of my DE-15 Cable. Two pair pins that were being used have no continuity. Going to have to resolder the connectors now. Hopefully that will be the end of it. Link to comment
Horerczy Posted July 21, 2013 Author Share Posted July 21, 2013 All channels are up an running! Channels running at minimum. Closeup of channels Wooo!!!!! There was still a continuity error somewhere with one of the channels so I combined the HV and TV/CB channels in parallel. I almost did the two CB with the CB/TV channels before I realized the different FVs would have made that not work so well. Now all I need to do is the fans and hang it. and get the power box stained. Link to comment
gulfsurfer101 Posted August 21, 2013 Share Posted August 21, 2013 For real, lets see some coral pics under different channels. Link to comment
Horerczy Posted August 22, 2013 Author Share Posted August 22, 2013 Sorry guys life hit me hard. I'll try to get some pics in the next couple days. Link to comment
Horerczy Posted August 24, 2013 Author Share Posted August 24, 2013 Unable to do pictures of the light over corals tonight because my light was off all day so the corals are super ticked. >.>" here's the tank it's going over though and the soon to be residents. Clarki's, There's a Regal demoiselle as well but it's always hiding. Link to comment
Horerczy Posted August 25, 2013 Author Share Posted August 25, 2013 http://smg.photobucket.com/user/misogi/library/#/user/misogi/library/Makers%20Heatsink%20Test?sort=3&page=1&_suid=137740481823502851422448242517 I'll pick through the pictures in the link and tell what some of them are pictures of later but I'm in a bit of a hurry right now. Lumia over my ten gallon frag tank. Also individual channel shots. (The HV channel and TV/CB channel are run in paralel so they're shot together). It has a really nice look to it when everthing is run at 100% but I'll probably turn the NW channel down a tad to make it a little bluer. Not a lot bluer but just a little bluer. Link to comment
Horerczy Posted September 23, 2013 Author Share Posted September 23, 2013 The good news today is I have finished the box finally and have painted the conduit it will hang from. Unfortunately my DE-15 VGA cable has fried in too many spots to be even remotely useful. Turns out draging 700mA with voltages between 7.2V and 38V isn't good for the cable (go figure. really should have seen that coming). Tomorrow I'm going to swing by radioshack and pick up some 15 pin male connectors, shields, and something to cover the wire and make my own cable. I don't think it will be nessesary to replace the DE-9 cable since the fans are far less power intensive. Link to comment
Horerczy Posted September 26, 2013 Author Share Posted September 26, 2013 So I was getting ready to solder the new 15 pin connectors and i decided that i didn't want to mess with all that soldering for the umpteenth time decided to ram a dremel bit through the connector and just run wires through that instead. Turned out pretty good all things considered. Link to comment
farkwar Posted September 26, 2013 Share Posted September 26, 2013 Next build, I recommend the Molex connectors. Easy to work with, and look good too. Would have saved you all the heartache of/from those d sub connectors. http://www.mouser.com/Search/Refine.aspx?Keyword=microfit+3 Link to comment
Horerczy Posted September 26, 2013 Author Share Posted September 26, 2013 I promise there was zero heartache involved. Just a headache and my wallet has a small bruise. Link to comment
NirvanaandTool Posted September 26, 2013 Share Posted September 26, 2013 Clean build. Can really see all the effort you put into making the wiring and power setup super clean. Keep up the good work! Link to comment
Horerczy Posted September 27, 2013 Author Share Posted September 27, 2013 I appear to have broke my power source ... On the plus side.my wiring is complete. Pictures in a moment. Link to comment
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