donnie
New Member
Not sure if I should've posted this in LED, Controller or the DIY section, but it seems like everything was working until I hooked up my LEDs so I'll go with this one...
I researched and researched before I built my LEDs and thought I had everything figured out but I've ran into numerous problems and I don't know where else to turn. I've asked (more than once) for help on the "other" site and didn't get a single response. I even called the place that sold me everything and they're stumped too, so I'm hoping someone on here with a similar setup can shed some light on this, no pun intended.
Here's my wiring diagram:
https://donnie.co/aquarium/LEDSchematic.png
I have two heat sinks with 66 LEDs each for a total of 132, all 3W Crees. I have 7 channels total. 4 (daylights) are a mix of 24 Royal Blue XT-E and Cool White XP-Gs wired in parallel as suggested here: Wiring Diagrams - Reef LED Lights. Then I have a set of 12 Blue XP-Es (moonlights), a set of 12 Red XP-Es (sunrise/sunset) and a set of 12 white XP-Es (high noons).
For the controller part of it, I followed this diagram, http://www.reefledcontroller.com/images/arduino_transistor_simple.jpg. I have two Arduino Mega 2560s controlling everything, lights on one and float switches, temperature, pumps, and an ethernet shield on the other. They're both permanently connected to a laptop computer via USB so I can develop and upload sketches remotely from the command line. Most of the code and work comes from the laptop, so the Arduinos are just acting as a middle-man.
Initially, I had the Arduinos communicating with each other and an RTC DS1307 over the I2C bus (with 4.7k pull-up resistors), but as soon as I plugged in the LEDs, that quit working. So back at the drawing board, I decided to ditch the RTC and use serial communication since I could offload some of the overhead from the necessary libraries and since I already had a constant connection to the serial port anyway.
I have an input file with all of the levels I want to adjust the lights to based on the time of the day that kicks off via a cron job every 15 minutes, and another cron job that disconnects and reconnects (effectively resetting the board) every night at midnight.
Since the DIM of the drivers uses 10VDC, I got a 10VDC regulator and used a standard 12VDC wall wart from Radio Shack. The first one (only a 300ma) produced strange results and eventually fried, so I got two, one for the 4 daylight drivers at 12VDC 1.5A and one for the other three, moonlight, sunrise/sunset, and whites at 12VDC 1A. Then everything worked (except the reds never go completely off... maybe unrelated).
I spent the next two days getting them wired up and mounted inside my canopy and they worked for a few days after that, except my serial connection would drop intermittently, sometimes to the point where I had to physically unplug the power and USB from the Arduino and plug it back in. Then yesterday morning, I could smell something burning and it turned out to be one of the voltage regulators had overheated and quit working, so now all of my daylight drivers are out. I've unplugged those for the time being but my serial connection continues to drop, just on that card though, not the other.
One thing I should mention is that my controller and drivers are in my basement and the LEDs are on my main floor so the wiring (22awg) between my drivers and the LEDs are about 15' and terminated with standard terminal blocks from Home Depot.
Sorry for the long post, and thanks for reading. Just wanted to make sure I explained it in full detail... Any ideas? I've put too much time and money into these lights to turn back now. I'm really hoping someone here can help me before I lose my mind and/or burn my house down...
I researched and researched before I built my LEDs and thought I had everything figured out but I've ran into numerous problems and I don't know where else to turn. I've asked (more than once) for help on the "other" site and didn't get a single response. I even called the place that sold me everything and they're stumped too, so I'm hoping someone on here with a similar setup can shed some light on this, no pun intended.
Here's my wiring diagram:
https://donnie.co/aquarium/LEDSchematic.png
I have two heat sinks with 66 LEDs each for a total of 132, all 3W Crees. I have 7 channels total. 4 (daylights) are a mix of 24 Royal Blue XT-E and Cool White XP-Gs wired in parallel as suggested here: Wiring Diagrams - Reef LED Lights. Then I have a set of 12 Blue XP-Es (moonlights), a set of 12 Red XP-Es (sunrise/sunset) and a set of 12 white XP-Es (high noons).
For the controller part of it, I followed this diagram, http://www.reefledcontroller.com/images/arduino_transistor_simple.jpg. I have two Arduino Mega 2560s controlling everything, lights on one and float switches, temperature, pumps, and an ethernet shield on the other. They're both permanently connected to a laptop computer via USB so I can develop and upload sketches remotely from the command line. Most of the code and work comes from the laptop, so the Arduinos are just acting as a middle-man.
Initially, I had the Arduinos communicating with each other and an RTC DS1307 over the I2C bus (with 4.7k pull-up resistors), but as soon as I plugged in the LEDs, that quit working. So back at the drawing board, I decided to ditch the RTC and use serial communication since I could offload some of the overhead from the necessary libraries and since I already had a constant connection to the serial port anyway.
I have an input file with all of the levels I want to adjust the lights to based on the time of the day that kicks off via a cron job every 15 minutes, and another cron job that disconnects and reconnects (effectively resetting the board) every night at midnight.
Since the DIM of the drivers uses 10VDC, I got a 10VDC regulator and used a standard 12VDC wall wart from Radio Shack. The first one (only a 300ma) produced strange results and eventually fried, so I got two, one for the 4 daylight drivers at 12VDC 1.5A and one for the other three, moonlight, sunrise/sunset, and whites at 12VDC 1A. Then everything worked (except the reds never go completely off... maybe unrelated).
I spent the next two days getting them wired up and mounted inside my canopy and they worked for a few days after that, except my serial connection would drop intermittently, sometimes to the point where I had to physically unplug the power and USB from the Arduino and plug it back in. Then yesterday morning, I could smell something burning and it turned out to be one of the voltage regulators had overheated and quit working, so now all of my daylight drivers are out. I've unplugged those for the time being but my serial connection continues to drop, just on that card though, not the other.
One thing I should mention is that my controller and drivers are in my basement and the LEDs are on my main floor so the wiring (22awg) between my drivers and the LEDs are about 15' and terminated with standard terminal blocks from Home Depot.
Sorry for the long post, and thanks for reading. Just wanted to make sure I explained it in full detail... Any ideas? I've put too much time and money into these lights to turn back now. I'm really hoping someone here can help me before I lose my mind and/or burn my house down...
