Building an 'evil cluster' - DIY LED on steroids

1.0reef · Oct 9, 2013

Sweet scape Jedi!

jedimasterben · Oct 12, 2013

New T5 bulbs will be here on Tuesday, two ATI Blue Plus. The Coral Plus just wash everything out, it's far too white for my taste, and I prefer 'daylight', aka more realistic lighting.

jedimasterben · Dec 24, 2013

A few updates.

Moving my tank to a new stand in a new room, and will be returning to my original plan of having the 24x24x12 tank plumbed in.

My current canopy will be scrapped instead of cloning it for the smaller tank, and I will instead be using two Nanobox heatsinks and housings with the T5 tubes attached. Color scheme will be white on white. For more info on Nanobox, check 'em out here. http://nanoboxreef.com/

Will also be changing around the LEDs I'm using, because why not :)

4x Bridgelux VERO10 4000K @ ~250mA (2x in parallel on two 500mA LDD)
8x Luxeon M RB @ 1000mA
8x Cree XP-E2 blue @ 1000mA
8x LEDGroupBuy HV @ 700mA
8x LEDGroupBuy TV @ 700mA
2x 39wATI Coral Plus

The little tank:
2x Bridgelux VERO10 4000K @ ~250mA (2x parallel on a 500mA LDD)
4x Luxeon M RB @ 1000mA
4x Cree XP-E2 blue @ 1000mA
4x LEDGroupBuy HV @ 700mA
4x LEDGroupBuy TV @ 700mA
2x 24w ATI Coral Plus

Note that those are maximum currents and I probably won't run them that high in practice, and if I do, it'll be on a parabolic or bell curve over the course of the photoperiod. Aiming for ~150 PAR across the sand. I don't think I will be dimming the T5 bulbs since it reduces the useful life of the phosphors by quite a bit. I took the dimming function off of the current array a couple of weeks ago and haven't seen any negative responses.

You guys will notice that I am reducing the amount of violet by good amount (down from 20x HV with tight optics in my current array) and doing a 50/50 ratio of 430nm and 405nm. This is due to the immense amount of PAR that the HV are capable of, if I run them at full power I cannot keep anything else turned up and the tank is pretty dim. I want to have a hard limit of 500 PAR at any point in the tank, no coral can photosynthesize above that and any pigments will still show up without needing more to activate the coral's protection.

Also of note is the (planned) switch to the XP-E2 for the standard blue, as long as they test out to be lower in wavelength (hopefully order code XPEBBL-L1-0000-00302) than the Rebel blue which are closer to cyan in output.

Tank is still doing fairly well. I have lost some corals still, dealing with ever-reappearing dinoflagellates is a real PITA, I don't think I'm ever going to be truly rid of them. The corals that I've had since before the dinoflagellates first appeared are still spreading and have fantastic color.

TJ's Reef · Dec 24, 2013

Awesome build thread Ben, looking forward to your updates on this creative DIY fixture. So many changes and or improvements to LED tech in past couple years that I really need to start a new build myself to keep current, but will have to complete my mechanical room and build tank first. Have been debating on adding the 'Ripple Wide' optics to my fixture to see if they would still give me a blended light or not. Currently running without to better blend and not really needing higher PAR #'s with a shallow 20" tank. Now may have to order a few of the 'Elliptical' as well for front row. Anyhow... Good Stuff and thanks for sharing.

Cheers, Todd

jedimasterben · Dec 24, 2013

Thanks for following, Todd :)

I really enjoy sitting down and trying new things and sharing them, I just wish I had more expendable money to try more things :)

I actually used some Carclo wide ripple lenses as a test, they are very, very tight. I can't imagine using them on primary colors, I had them on violet chips and it was noticeable. They have a 44Â° radiation pattern for most LEDs, some are even less than that, and the effective cone is only around 22Â°, so if you're planning on clustering LEDs together and not spacing them out like a fluorescent light, they'll make wicked hotspots which can induce photoinhibition in those areas whereas in other areas you will have significantly less PAR, and I would imagine have disco.

As far as the elliptical, they're also very tight radiation pattern (~47Â°x8Â°), but they do have their uses.

I don't think I'll be running any lenses on this array, partly because the Nanobox housing is not tall enough to hide the Ledil reflectors which are 40-80mm tall. If I do use lenses, I'll have to hang the lights pretty high if I can't find the right reflectors.

hung · Dec 27, 2013

This a pretty great build thread Ben, but I wish you would stop with all these new build threads :bigsmile:. You've given me so many ideas that I have no clue as to what to decide for a lighting setup for my new tank. I went from DIY LED, to a Reefbreeders Photon 48 for ease to now a T5/LED hybrid.

Are you going to start a new build thread once you get the Nano-box housings?

jedimasterben · Dec 27, 2013

I'm apparently really great at making everyone else spend just as much money as I do lol

Nah, I figure I'll keep it all together so everyone can see the evolution of it :)

jedimasterben · Dec 28, 2013

Whoa, got the Vero 10 in already. Digikey is pretty fast. These things are ridiculously tiny.

I'm glad I ordered the wire connectors for them, or I'd be screwed lol.

hung · Jan 23, 2014

How are the new fixtures coming along?

jedimasterben · Jan 30, 2014

Hey hung, sorry I missed your reply, didn't get a notification for it.

I got word that the two Nanobox enclosures are finished and just need to get painted! I decided on this for the paint:

I also got my LDD/SCW boards from O2Surplus on RC, and ordered the Meanwell SCW05C-12 from ebay. ETA is still like four week away lol. I have some specific-binned XP-E2 coming from LEDgroupbuy in about 3 weeks or so that are 465nm dominant instead of the 475nm-485nm you typically see everywhere. These diodes will be the 'Windex blue' from the olden days of DIY.

I also ordered two Mean Well HLG to power the LDD drivers - one HLG-240H-48A and one HLG-120H-48A.

This is the proposed final layout. I was considering getting some 21mm Sinkpad II stars to mount the Luxeon M on so I didn't have to use the massive 30mm square PCB from Steve's, but I went into Illustrator and it looks like they'll fit, and there really isn't much difference in the distance between the centers of the NW and RB diodes - 0.68" vs 1.04".

I'm also going to be running the Vero10 on 1000mA drivers (so 500mA going to the diodes, giving 13.9 watts each and throwing around 1600 lumens each, instead of 6.5 watts and 870 lumens each at 250mA), simply because I have them, and this means I only need to purchase a single LDD-700H instead of purchasing three LDD-500H and one LDD-700H. Deal with it :P

hung · Jan 31, 2014

No worries Ben,are you going to painting the top of the T5 reflectors to match the color scheme?

jedimasterben · Jan 31, 2014

Yes, the T5 tubes are the two rectangles on either side of the main housing.

GMguy496 · Feb 12, 2014

hello im liking ur new setup idea and was wondering what u thought about using 2 of the clusters but adding exotic red and turquoise to the mix with 4 t5 bulbs 2 blue+ and 2 purple+ instead of 2 on a 30x12x22 tank. i would also be using exotic 475 blue instead of cree. and another ? as im new to diy led wouldnt using 1000ma drivers on vero 10 blow out led since they have a max drive of 700ma or does the power actually get split like that thanks
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jedimasterben · Feb 12, 2014

If you're adding any T5, then you'll have your cyan and usually far red covered. If you're using high-quality white LEDs (Philips, Bridgelux 80CRI+) then you'll definitely have your warmer colors set.

For that size tank, four T5 is too much. I would stick with two, or decrease the amount of LEDs you are planning by a large amount. You'll see everywhere that there is no such thing as too much light, but there definitely is. The two 36" Coral Plus bulbs gave 75 PAR on my sandbed across my entire tank (48x24x16, and 10" above the top of the tank). If I had another pair of bulbs, it would be at least 100 PAR all combined, which is nearing the 150 PAR target that is typical of an SPS dominant tank.

The Vero 10 are rated for 700mA maximum, but I'd imagine they can tolerate more current without damage. I would not, though.

Running in parallel cuts the current by the number of strings, and they should match about evenly as long as the voltage of each string is similar. If you did, say, a Vero on one string and a Vero and two deep red on the other, the one with the deep red will have much more current going to it because it has more voltage.

jedimasterben · Mar 5, 2014

Final revisions - most of the parts are ordered.

FINAL FINAL FINAL V8.6 FINAL FINAL

Paint scheme

LED layout

Before painting/powdercoating.

LEDs are
4x Vero 10 4K @ 350mA (~1,180lm each)
8x Luxeon M RB @ 1A (~6,750mW each)
12x Luxeon Z B @ 1A (~85lm each)
4x Luxeon Z C @1A (~74lm each)
8x Luxeon UV 0400-0450 @ 1A (~960mW each)
8x Luxeon UV 0425-0650 @ 1A (~1,260mW each)

All but the Luxeon M are ordered. The Z and UV will be mounted to 4up boards (they are ultra tiny, four fit in the same space as a single 3535 package chip (like the XP-E, XT-E, etc), and will be mounted by Steve's LEDs (many thanks!). The power supply is a Meanwell HLG-320H-48A. T5HO will still be ATI Coral Plus.

jedimasterben · Mar 15, 2014

I still can't believe how impossibly tiny the Luxeon Z/UV are!

hung · Mar 23, 2014

How's the project coming along Ben?

jedimasterben · Mar 23, 2014

I got the MDPC sleeve in the mail yesterday, and according to Dave Fason the heatsinks are still having issues with the paint not drying with it being so cold and humid in his shop, stuff has been taking a week or more to be fully dried! I don't envy him right now, he is backed up by 4 weeks now on all orders coming in!

Besides the heatsinks/housings, the only thing I really have left to get are the Luxeon M boards - but I'm waiting on the 'E' bin of the Luxeon M - they are 4,800-5,000mW output at 700mA/85Â°C (7.7w of power), and at 1A, that increases to 6,480-6,750mW! That's ~59% electrical efficiency! The most efficient Cree XT-E (bin Q) does 600mW at 350mA/85Â° (1w of power), so it only manages 60%, but with less than 1/10th the total output of the Luxeon M. That's a whole lot less soldering to still have the most efficient build possible :)