Cultural Learnings of Borat Continue To LED Light

[Borat]

Hello my technologically less advanced friends from a friendly US&A province. I this thread I am going to educate US&A people how to build a LED light for your marine fish pets.

Please tell me how excited you are about it..

 

[Amphibious Wallet]

Moderately excite.

 

[findingsimple]

 

[Borat]

Ok here's teaser of what I am aiming to build:

I have done a similar project 2 years ago, I wish I made a larger fixture back then...

DIY Light Bar 100W 100cm, 3 channels, PWM Dimming, Temperature Control, Active Cooling

Vlad - did you buy an IR thermometer? If so, try using that on the heat sink for a comparison temp. I would run the fans based on a target temp. You don't really care what the season is or the temperature in the room. What you care about is keeping the LEDs at a reasonable temperature and the...

www.ultimatereef.net

Back then it was a 120w light fixture with 47 Bridgelux LEDs on 3 independent channels, 5 temperature probes, 2 PWM fans and LCD screen. No external PSU, 240v mains are directly connected to the unit (best setup in my opinion - however due to space taken by LCM-40 LED drivers, I could not fit more than 2 fans..).

This one will be similar in external look and will feature:
- 8 PWM fans, each independently managed via PWM controller
- 100x 3w Cree leds on 8 heatsinks, each heatsink powered by an MW LDD driver
- at least 8 temperature probes (one per heatsink)
- Mega 2560 controller + internet via ESP32
- RTC clock periodically synchronised via NTP
- LED display
- External PSU
- Customisable lighting programme
- Professionally looking acrylic enclosure - with LEDs covered by lens

 

[Hats_]

I am very excite. will follow

 

[eleslie3]

This could be interesting....

 

[Wasabiroot]

I wish you great success

 

[Borat]

OK, here we go..

I ordered 2 items:

Duratool D03323 2 IN 1 SMD REWORK STATION : £84
HLG-320H-54A LED DRIVER PSU, AC-DC, 54V, 5.95A £117...

I expect the bill for this light bill to come near £600 mark.. some tools I need anyway - like the hot air soldering station.

 

[Borat]

So the plan has changed a bit:

I am going to buy a number of 7-LED MCPCB and solder Cree (original) leds myself...

The fixture will have 20x 7-LED MPCB assemblies, that will be approximately 300w power. I will limit myself to between 6 and 8 PWM fans, which should be sufficient to keep this monster arctic cool.

Tell me how excited you are !

 

[eleslie3]

I'm popping my corn kernals!

 

[oreo54]

So the plan has changed a bit:

I am going to buy a number of 7-LED MCPCB and solder Cree (original) leds myself...

The fixture will have 20x 7-LED MPCB assemblies, that will be approximately 300w power. I will limit myself to between 6 and 8 PWM fans, which should be sufficient to keep this monster arctic cool.

Tell me how excited you are !

Ohh ...excited
Are you using something like this:

282, 7 cell MCPCB LED Prototyping Board for Cree XP-C, XP-E & XP-G Series LEDs, SSC Z5 Series LEDs | RS

my.rs-online.com

Suggest you look into alternate ways to mount the LEDs than a rework gun.

Electric fry pans, toaster oven or even hot air fryers are arguably easier and better than hot air on al boards.

 

[Borat]

Ohh ...excited
Are you using something like this:

282, 7 cell MCPCB LED Prototyping Board for Cree XP-C, XP-E & XP-G Series LEDs, SSC Z5 Series LEDs | RS

my.rs-online.com

Suggest you look into alternate ways to mount the LEDs than a rework gun.

Electric fry pans, toaster oven or even hot air fryers are arguably easier and better than hot air on al boards.

Thank you. I considered different options, the good thing I liked with the hot air rework station is that I can control the temperature of hot air. I don't need to blow that air into LEDs directly - I can blow it onto an aluminium plate (from below) and place the LED MCPCB on top of such aluminium plate..

That way I can control the temperature to be just above the melting point of solder - and also control the cooling time/curve to match the curve recommended by solder paste manufacturer.

Let's see how it works out.. I could not source LDD-700H drivers from either US or UK. Mouser sells them but tdoes not ship to consumers in UK/EU, only to business users. I ended up buying a batch of LDD-600H on AliExpress, in retrospect - it's cheaper and also I am anyway better off having more of LDD-600H's, so that I under-drive XPE2's.. I also bought a large number of small heatsinks, I hope they will be OK considering superior ventilation I am planning to use..

 

[Borat]

PSU and SMD rework station arrived today..

 

[Borat]

I ordered 25 MCPCBs from RS Components - should hopefully get them on Friday..

These are these:

282, 7 cell MCPCB LED Prototyping Board for Cree XP-C, XP-E & XP-G Series LEDs, SSC Z5 Series LEDs | RS

uk.rs-online.com

 

[C4ctus99]

Following, also planning on building my own light, but in a different way

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following!! Curious to see the finished product!

 

[thatmanMIKEson]

Of course I'm following, I don't understand any of it but he always packs the thread full of pictures, wa wa wee wa!

 

[Borat]

First goodies started to arrive! I ordered these last night (8pm) and receieved them today!

 

[Borat]

I was initially very puzzled by prices diffences for Royal Blue XPE2 LEDs... but after doing some research and reading - things seems to start making sense to me..
Here are the things I have learnt:
- there is no such thing as the "Royal Blue XPE2" LED. Specificially there are 13 different variations of Cree Royal Blue LED chips, they all differ by lumenous intensity (more lumens = higher price) and by other characteristic, specifically how narrow LED spectrum is (more narrow = more expensive) and maybe a few other things... So buying LEDs from China - will almost guarantee you that you get the cheapest LED at best, and actually most likely a counterfeit copy of Cree LED (some websites even have an honest disclaimer warning you that you are buying not an original Cree led but a "Chinese Cree led version").

Here's the extract from XPE datassheet for Royal Blue (https://assets.cree-led.com/a/ds/x/XLamp-XPE2.pdf):



For example, XPEBRY-L1-0000-00S01 (highlighted in yellow) cost about £1.52 per LED, whilst the cheaper versions, say XPEBRY-L1-0000-00Q01 cost £1.15 per LED. I could not get hold of realistic prices for the more expensive LEDs from groups 39 and 40 (they are available on order basis, but I bet you need to order a serious amount of them, say 10,000 units), group 38 is best I can do at the moment (it is in stock at Mouser.co.uk), so I will go with XPEBRY-L1-0000-00S01.

I need to decide on white LEDs separately, the price difference for different LED versions is mainly dictated by
- CRI ratio (100 = fully replicating natural light, anything less = partially replicating natural light). CRI of 80 is considered "OK-ish" and CRI 90 as pretty good. For the purposes of mixing white and Royal Blue it probably matter less than if you had white light onely (but I still need to think about it!)
- obviously luminous flux (luminocity), the higher this - the more expensive the LED would be
- and spectrum colour temperature (warm vs cool)

Again, same story about buy these from China - at best you would get the cheapest chip, but normally you would simply get a counterfeit replica..

 

[Borat]

I ordered 40mm glass lens from China, they are basically just pieces of round glass that i will try to use in conjunction with led pcbs.

Its a bit of a gamble as i dont yet know how i will attach them or whether the glass will be of good quality..lets see.