.:.:.10 channel Storm X DIY LED build.:.:.

[skulls_and_sparrows]

Before I go into any sort of detail, I want to preface this and explain my intention with this build...my intention was to be able to have ABSOLUTE control over every aspect of color, not just “making” it good enough...but making it on another level, not worrying that I may have way to much light, but having enough to get the most out of each color...I am a go big or go home kind of guy and I would rather something be overdone, than under done and you’ll see that with this build.

With that said…...

I had starting looking at a few options for lights...I was between the hydra 52 and the Ecotech Radion gen3 pro, I was almost ready to pull the trigger, but the fan design really, really threw me off...and since my tank is going to be zoas, ‘shrooms and quite a bit of NPS and they all carried way to much white for what I needed. Since I will not have to really worry about a ton of light, I wanted to focus on stellar color...but with any off the shelf option, I would have to deal with too “white” much light and the so many different colors on the same channel, so I feel like you lose some potential of the color those leds can offer, because some will out compete certain colors on that channel. I.e. if you have red and green on the same channel, red is SO powerful, that you have to tone it done quite a bit and then lose a lot of the green...where we are at in the world of technology...why should we have to make those compromises? I then began figuring out what colors of LED’s I wanted, I took a lot of “inspiration” from the Ecotech light, but skewed and and messed with the ratios a bit. This is what I came up with for LED’s:

6x 1up - Royal-Blue Cree XPE - Driver 1

6x 1up - Blue Cree XPE - Driver 2

2x 1up - Warm-White Cree XTE - Driver 3

4x 1up - Cool-White Cree XTE - Driver 4

2x 1up - Neu-White Luxeon Rebel - Driver 5

1x 1up - Cyan Luxeon Rebel - Driver 6
1x 1up - Cool Blue Exotic - Driver 6
1x 1up - Turquoise LED - Driver 6

4x 1up - Hyper Violet Exotic - Driver 7
4x 1up - True Violet Exotic - Driver 7

1x 1up - Yellow Osram SSL - Driver 8
1x 1up - Amber Luxon rebel - Driver 8

2x 1up - Green Cree XPE - Driver 9

4x 1up - True UV - Driver 10
4x 1up - Indigo - Driver 10


I started to look around at options for putting something together, after some extensive research of “ build your own” set ups, I ran across corlux controllers and they just released a new controller, that has 16 possible channel options and I knew that was what I was going to start with. I originally had each individual color on a it’s own channel, but that required an extra driver board, extra drivers, extra power supply and that started to take the build into a massively expensive undertaking (its already quite expensive as it is) and added additional pieces that just took up more room...so I decided that I would keep some of the similar “shades or hues” of colors on the same channel and still be able to achieve my end goal, very well.

I was going to incorporate red into the build, but I bought a color changing LED light and starting messing with colors over my “holding” tank and red, just did not do much at all, really...I experimented with all the other colors (well it was in a very “rough” manner of the colors I wanted) and got an idea of what colors did in triggering colors in corals and red did nothing, so it was nixed from the build.

I am going with Meanwell 5 up driver boards, which will have 3 - 1000 LDD drivers & 2 - 700 LDD drivers on one and 3 - 700 LDD drivers & 2 - 1000 LDD drivers on the other...this will allow the best amount of load balancing possible.

I am going with 2 meanwell 100w 8.5A power supplies, I went with 2 as this should really spread the load out and not be pushing them to their max with the amount of LED’s i am running. They are passively cooled, so no fans (which goes with my end goal of my new tank, being as quiet as possible).

I will be using a 12” makersled heatsink kit...I chose this because of not having to drill and tap holes and be able to really customize the layout of the LEDs and if in the future I want to add or remove some LEDs, I will be able to reconfigure the LEDs. It also as some nice, “finishing” elements to it, that other heatsinks do not.

As mentioned, earlier the coralux storm x controller will be the weapon of choice to be the brains of it all...I will also, be using the fan and temp probe options with it.

I will also be using the BJB solderless connectors for the wiring of the LEDs...these do say they require solid conductor wire, I hate working with solid conductor as it is not flexible AT all...so I will be going with stranded wire, and ferrules crimp on the ends...this should allow me to hook it up to the solderless connectors, but still retain the flexibility of the stranded wire, which will allow a much cleaner running of the all the wires (Ill get into more detail later about that, with pics).

I am still in the midst of figuring out what to put the driver boards and drivers into as well as the power supply...I am probably going to go with an aluminum project box of sorts.

I am having Ben from Coralux solder all the drivers to the boards and take care of all of that that way, I should not have to solder anything AT all...All I can say is that Ben has been a massive HELP, super nice guy and has let me ask him a TON of questions and look over my idea and confirm that it will work and also noted corrections that I need to make to the build, just a lot of back and forth and all Im doing is spending a couple hundred bucks...stand up guy and has gone above and beyond (a lot more than I can say for a few of the other vendors that I have spent a couple hundred bucks with), I would highly recommend checking his stuff out if you are wanting to go DIY leds.

 

[ravi197699]

I built similar fixture with 96 Cree leds and used coralux strom x controller and 6 drivers board and 4 drivers board, I am running 14 3w led's with each driver. I am very happy with the build. I have this light laying on the side since I am not ready to hang on the tank yet. I have color ratio 3:1 blue and white and whites are mix of warm white and in addition 14 uv, 14 led mix of red, green, cayan.

 

[reeferaddict420]

great info so far as im looking to turn an mh/t5 fixture i bought used into a hybrid led/t5 or led/mh fixture.. following thread..

 

[skulls_and_sparrows]

So most of my parts have come in...there are still a few odds and ends that I need to pick up...but figured I would at least update with what I have so far.

Advanced Aquarist just put out a big led article about some extensive research that was done for rapid led’s new pucks, they are putting out. The great thing is my set up is actually very, very well done (much to my surprise) in regards to different spectrum's and NM’s values. There is a bit of difference from mine and there’s in regards to to using red and green...they say there is no use for green as it is covered in other spectrum's...but playing around with my other multi-color led light, I see a massive color improvement with the green led. They say red is needed for some of the spectrum and to bring out more colors, but I am not convinced from the reading I have done, as majority of the warm whites have enough of the red spectrum for color...furthermore, I will be using the amber and the yellow leds which they said had a ton of red in those spectrums. From messing around with my mutli-colored light, the colors of amber and yellow enhanced the same colors as the all red, but just not nearly as invasive as the red is….however since I have it...I may just use it for good measure. It’s very nice to see the hours I spent reading on leds and colors and searching for the violets and yellows was time well spent.


Here are the LED’s...I haven’t taken them out of the packages, because I need to pick up some sticky dots (like what you use at a garage sale) to write what each one is and put it on the bottom of each led star, because with out the packages there is no way to be able to tell which is which, so when I am ready to starting laying out the LED’s (pre-wiring), I won't get them mixed up. The yellow led’s i order from Germany...are on much smaller stars than the bjb wire connectors fit...so either I am going to have solder them or re-flow the led off the star and onto a bigger star...I just haven't decided what I am going to do.





I got all the BJB solderless connectors and the holes were to small for the wire ferrules. I thought that might be the case, so I just drilled out the holes slightly bigger and BAM, works like a champ. Also some of the violet leds have lenses on them already, so I had to modify the centers of the bjb connectors to get them to fit...but they work like champs now.

Wire ferrules


The orginal and modified bjb connector for violet leds









The makersled is a sweet little thing, with the channels for the screws to hold the leds in place...it changes the game for the DIY led crowd, that doesn't want to drill and tap a bunch of holes. Plus it also allows you some flexibility that if you screw up, you wont have a bunch of extra holes in the heat sink. While the makersled has really tried to make their heatsink look nice on it’s own, it is still a giant hunk of metal hanging above your tank and for most, it probably is just fine...but for me, it just wont work. I then started to think about what could I do, build an acrylic box, but that still wouldn’t look good. I thought about using a aluminum project box, but they don’t make them very big and the few that are, are INSANELY expensive and still not super appealing to look at. Then it hit me...what is metal and rectangular in it’s form and have a pleasing aesthetic to them by design? Car amplifiers! They could potentially fit the bill, I knew that a new amp could be in the hundreds of dollars and being that I would be ripping it apart, I didn’t want buy a new one...but I figured searching Ebay for “broken†ones could turn up something and it did. There were lots to choose from and considerably cheaper than brand new ones (but still quite expensive, but still less). The other good thing about amps is there components produce a ton of heat and need to let the heat escape...same idea as a the led lights. I wanted to find one that looked like it had some great heat vents/grilles/holes.

 

[skulls_and_sparrows]

I landed on a MTX jack hammer amp. It has tons of vents for heat to escape and has a very nice look to it. It was a bit shorter than the makers led, but I will get around that problem by cutting most of the fan sides/walls off and the acrylic shield sides/walls off, which will allow me to still utilize the tracks of the makers mark and take advantage of the heat dissipating fins. It does mean that I can not use the makers led fan, but I will add some little computer fans to the inside of the amp case to help get some air movement across the heatsink and keep things cool. While the amp case looks ok...I am going to change it up a bit. My buddy makes knives on the side and has a blast cabinet, so I am going to blast the black paint off, and repaint it, I need to pull the grilles out and paint those and the thing that says “jack hammer” is metal, so I will grind the letters off and paint that as well. I am still figuring out it’s “scheme or look”, but since I am huge fan of custom and modified cars, I will draw some inspiration and styling cues from that arena (no flames or anything, LOL). The stand is all black, but I do love color schemes that are dark shades with pops of color, so it will be probably end up black and charcoal grey with some pops of color, but we shall see.









Some of the amp all torn apart...








the guts....




A quick couple of shots of the power supply...I don’t like to have these just sitting out, in the open under the stand, So I am working on finding something to house these in as well for under stand, so they aren’t so open to the elements nearly as much and so it just looks that much cleaner overall.







Here are a few of the other components from coralux...the drivers, the temp probe and jumpers.







That’s it for now...I will report back once I get the other odds and ends and start to put it all together.

 

[skulls_and_sparrows]

double post

 

[skulls_and_sparrows]

Quick update...I got my wire to run from the board to the power supply...

I decided to go outside the box and instead of going with just plastic wrapped wires or hiding them in the lighting rig, I went outside the box and embraced the wire a bit by getting fabric wrapped twisted wire that not only has a vintage flair, but also comes in tons of colors. I opted for sky blue, since I will have splashes of it in my otherwise gloss and matte black stand.

 

[TJ's Reef]

Very COOL and will be following along on this one. And I thought my East-to-West DIY LED array was complicated....lol


Cheers, Todd

 

[skulls_and_sparrows]

Ok a quick update... I was able to trim some of the heat sink, so it will fit with in the amp housing. Good news, it does.

 

[skulls_and_sparrows]

Not the cleanest cuts, but im not worried with it, as it's all hidden inside the amp case.

Next steps are to mock everything up for wiring and the sanding and painting the amp case.

 

[skulls_and_sparrows]

Double post