Bluefish with custom LED fixtures

[LSA Reef]

I am in the process of building my own LED fixtures and I have custom drivers being made. My drivers are PWM and work from 2v-40v at 120hz. I can have them bumped up to 240hz but not sure I need it. Thoughts?

 

Also I have the big boy Bluefish and want more than 6 channels. Each fixture has 5 drivers powering a string of 7 leds. I have 4 fixtures. I want an east-west effect so I am using channels 1-4 for the blue/uv strings of LEDS, 1 channel for each fixture and then the channels 5-6 each control 2 fixtures on the white strings of LEDS. I would really like to be able to get more customization over it but need more channels to do so. Has anyone been able to figure out a way to do this? I thought about buying a second bluefish so that I could have 6 channels for 2 fixtures and then another 6 channels for 2 fixtures but the hassle of dealing with 2 controllers really makes the point of a controller a bit cumbersome.

 

Thanks for any thoughts and input you may have.

 

Levi

[jedimasterben]

Your drivers are 120Hz only? I'd toss them. You'll be able to see the flickering at that low of a frequency. The Bluefish is only capable of ~480Hz I believe (it's somewhere in that range), so your drivers will have to work with that.

 

There is no way (as of now - not sure if it would ever be planned, but it is possible to do so) to link multiple controllers together, you'd have to keep them separate with a separate Bluefish account, but that part is actually really easy. I have two BF Mini, one over my reef, one over my planted tank, and I have one with my regular username and one with a 'p' added to the end of it to denote the planted tank. You have to use different email addresses on each account, but luckily if you're using Gmail, you can add '+xxxxx' to your regular username and it will go to the same inbox, Gmail ignores everything after the plus sign.

[LSA Reef]

Maybe I am wrong about the Hz on the drivers, I will check with the guy building them to see and let him know about the bluefish. Is there any difference to the mini and regular for my application? I just wanted the cool box all premade but after reading more I believe these drivers would have worked with the mini being that they work at 2v. I may end up getting a mini just to handle the additional channels that I want to seperate out on the fixture.

[evilc66]

Just be sure you know what frequency you are asking about. What Ben was mentioning was the frequency from the BF output that would tie to the control input of the driver IC. The chip needs to be able to handle that ~480Hz so that it sees a valid dimming signal. The output from the chip will/should be much higher, up into the hundreds of kilohertz, or even megahertz. The faster the output frequency, the less chance of flicker, the greater the efficiency of the driver, but a greater chance of high frequency resonant noise (that fun little squeal you hear from some electronics).

 

If you don't mind me asking (I'm sure others are curious too), are you building these fixture for yourself, or are you looking to produce these for sale on a reasonable level? If it's just for yourself, there are many inexpensive driver options out there that are very reliable and will work with the BF without any issues.

 

There is a difference in the outputs between the BF and the Mini. The BF has outputs buffered to 5v or 10v for pwm, while the Mini is only 3.3v. That limits some options on pre-made drivers. For example, you can't use the Meanwell LDD-L with the Mini, as it needs a minimum voltage of 3.6v to register a high signal on the pwm input. The BF is much more universal.

[LSA Reef]

I did find out more, the drivers work from 120hz all the way to way up there like 4000hz or something really high. They also work down to 2.2v all the way to 30v so it is able to handle a ton of situations.

 

I am just building for myself, I have considered duplicating these fixtures to resell but not sure how well they would do at the price point. Comparable power to XR30 pro, the same footprint, 6 channel custom spectrum, bluefish mini controller for $200?

[evilc66]

120Hz to 4KHz sounds like the input frequency, and not the output frequency (that would be way too low). I have to ask, why not use the LDD-H? They are plug and play with the Bluefish Mini, have a wider input voltage, are pretty cheap (can be found easily for less than $10 each), and very reliable.

 

The only way you would be able to sell a comparable fixture to the XR30 would be to avoid premium LEDs, get everything sourced and assembled in China, and drop the Bluefish. The BF Mini along is half of your proposed price.