AcroStar DIY LED Build!

Poseidon · Feb 22, 2017

Good evening everyone, it has been a long while since I posted anything on the boards about my tank! I am still in the hobby, recovering from a case of LARS (Lazy A** Reefer Syndrome) where I did lose quite a few corals. Unfortunately they were the SPS that are hard or impossible to find, the old school ones.

Anyway, I have moved away from the metal halide/led combo and went 100% LED using these AcroStar pucks. I decided to go with the 1/2 Mega, 8 3W emitters on a 2" puck. My first plan was to use my existing power supply and 6 of the pucks, but that didn't work as the power supply was to small to drive all 6 properly with the LDD drivers. (The supply was 36v, 150W max, and I was pushing that to the edge, with no success.)

With that plan not working out, I upgrade my supply to a 45v 350W version and ordered 2 more of the pucks from Yann.

I couldn't be happier with the results!

Here is a list of what I am using:
45V 350W Power Supply from Amazon
2 LDD 1000 mAH Drivers
2 LDD 700 mAH Drivers
1 AcroIQ Micro Driver (Also from Blue Acro) This thing is NEAT, and TINY
https://blueacro.com/acroiq/
1 Voltage dropping thing from EBay, 45v in, 12v out to run the fan and
1 O2 Surplus 0-10V to 5v PWM converter board
8 Half-Mega 18k Blue https://blueacro.com/acrostar/
PCI cooling fan from Amazon
36" Makers Slim Heatsink

Ok, now that the list is out of the way, some pictures!

These are the old light, 14k Phoenix 4 Luxeon M 12W LED's

New Light:

The emitter itself, still in the plastic. Really well done, looks like a full on commercial production product, not something designed and built by a hobbyist.

Project starting:

Here the fan is in place, and you can see the center lines for the 3 pucks, this was updated to 4 later:

A better picture of the emitters mounted to the heatsink:

Here we have after many hours a nearly complete fixture, the reflectors and diffusers are mounted and you can see my wiring 1.0, it was also upgraded when I added the 2nd pair of pucks.

Cont...

Maacc · Feb 22, 2017

Pic links are broken for me.

Poseidon · Feb 22, 2017

First picture of the tank with the 6 pucks and my old power supply, this was a 1 AM picture:

Here we go again, 2 more pucks and more wiring to do:

I did a much better job on this endcap, I can plug in the ethernet cable that goes to my Apex for control right into the side of the light:

Let the wiring begin! Three of the 4 components are viewable here, but none of the wires:

AcroIQ Driver, remember I said this was SMALL?:

After about 3 hours of cutting, stripping, and screwing in tiny wires to tiny terminals:

Power side endcap, I am pleased with how this turned out:

Poseidon · Feb 22, 2017

Maacc said:
Pic links are broken for me.

Try now, I think I fixed them.

Poseidon · Feb 22, 2017

And FINALLY! On the tank, the sun was actually shining into that window of course, but this pic shows all 8 pucks in operation over the tank.:

For some numbers, I have the LED's about 6" off the surface of the water the top of my rock work or the tips of the green acro on the left are getting about 325 PAR, the Rastas also to the left are 250 ish, and the sanded varies from 80 to 100. These values are straight from the clubs apogee PAR meter. I have set the Apex to ramp up the blue channel to 75%, and the white to 50% over about an hour, then it stays there for 8 hours and ramps back down over about 2 hours.

I have only had the lights in operation about 10 days, and I have a few immediate observations. The Jason Fox Witch Hunter monti LOVES these lights, I think I can see it growing in front of my very eyes. The algae that grows on the glass has been reduced by 80%, most likely due to the light being so focused down onto the rock work. My black background also seems to have faded into the back even more, I am sure also due to the focused light no longer illuminating the glass panes themselves.

I'll make sure to update the thread as my tank grows, I added several new frags this weekend from a local swap, and so far everything is HAPPY!

Thank you Yann for making such a quality product, I fully anticipate a surge in both growth and color over the next few weeks and months.

-Mike

gus6464 · Feb 23, 2017

Nice.

How come you went with a mix of microiq and ldd? You could have just done all microiq. Also you can cut your drivers to only 2x microiq an a 48v power supply. 4 pucks per microiq. That is if the half mega is truly 12V per channel. For power supply I highly recommend meanwell hlg.

You can also power it with just the 4 ldds you have as 4 pucks plus meanwell ldd is 51v per channel so you are good. Then you can get a meanwell hlg 54 and be in business.

This would suffice.
http://www.trcelectronics.com/View/Mean-Well/HLG-240H-54.shtml

Poseidon · Feb 23, 2017

Mostly went with the combo because that is what I already had. Those microiq drivers are fantastic though. I almost ordered 3 of them to run 3, 3, 2, to keep the voltage well below the 45 I have with the power supply. As it is, the 4 LDD's and 1 micro do a good job. We all know there are so many ways to tweak this or that, especially controlling LEDs.

Dale Jones · Mar 14, 2017

Any new news or info I want to do this setup with round heatsinks with fans running each unit what's the footprint of your tank thanks

Poseidon · Mar 15, 2017

Things are moving right along with this light, I did lose a couple tiny frags, likely due to me moving them up to high to fast.

My tank is 36x24 footprint.