Cultural Learnings of Borat Continue To LED Light

[Borat]

I am working on the enclosure assembly:
- side walls will need zillions of ventilation holes drilled and also have cut-outs for LCD display and PSU
- top cover will need 60mm cut-outs for 5x Arctic F8 FANS

 

[yougo]

Following! If borat want to try i am a canadian borosilicate glassblower and could provide you a few different shape of lens of boro glass to try magnificent magnifying

 

[Borat]

Side walls with LCD display, I still need to drill vent holes..

 

[Borat]

Cut-outs for 5 fans.. top cover will be a sandwich made of 5mm acrylic and 3mm acrylic sheets. Fans will have anodised aluminium grille cover.

 

[thatmanMIKEson]

Cut-outs for 5 fans.. top cover will be a sandwich made of 5mm acrylic and 3mm acrylic sheets. Fans will have anodised aluminium grille cover.

wa wa wee wa!

 

[Borat]

 

[Borat]

Drilling holes in acrylic is not for faint-hearted..

 

[Borat]

Enclosure being glued.. I will work on end walls (sides from front perspective) today..

 

[Borat]

After a few things I needed to fix for my reef tank - I am back into working on this LED project.

This is the draft PCB:
- approximately 650mm long and 45mm wide
- there is an RTC clock, 11x LDD-600H drivers, Arduino Mega Mini connected to ESP32 via logic level converter, relay (so I could completely shut the lights down, instead of driving them to minimum), 16 channel PWM controller PCA9685 and there will also be temperature probes connected
- each of the 11 drivers will drive 2 LED arrays and there will be 11 channels total

I need to go through an additional step of checking every connection on the board.

Also I had to make it long and narrow - so that the PCB does not obstruct the air from fans to reach heatsinks (which will be on both sides of the enclosure).

I am still unsure if 2x48mil tracks (each wires is duplicated) for each of GND and VCC connections will be OK, given that they will have to carry up to 5A current. If not, I may need to solder additional wires later.

..some minor problems with connection - I will upload the PCB later today.

 

[thatmanMIKEson]

After a few things I needed to fix for my reef tank - I am back into working on this LED project.

This is the draft PCB:
- approximately 650mm long and 45mm wide
- there is an RTC clock, 11x LDD-600H drivers, Arduino Mega Mini connected to ESP32 via logic level converter, relay (so I could completely shut the lights down, instead of driving them to minimum), 16 channel PWM controller PCA9685 and there will also be temperature probes connected
- each of the 11 drivers will drive 2 LED arrays and there will be 11 channels total

I need to go through an additional step of checking every connection on the board.

Also I had to make it long and narrow - so that the PCB does not obstruct the air from fans to reach heatsinks (which will be on both sides of the enclosure).

I am still unsure if 2x48mil tracks (each wires is duplicated) for each of GND and VCC connections will be OK, given that they will have to carry up to 5A current. If not, I may need to solder additional wires later.

..some minor problems with connection - I will upload the PCB later today.

we need some visuals of this bad boy!! sounds sweet!

 

[Borat]

I had to ask my neighbour, the acting president of Kazakistan for permission to use his computer. It is connected to the super-fast presidential internet line of 56kbit/second, this enabled me to upload this huge file in less than a day!

 

[Borat]

To add to the above - this beast will be powered by 320w Meanwell HLG 54v/6A PSU...

 

[thatmanMIKEson]

I had to ask my neighbour, the acting president of Kazakistan for permission to use his computer. It is connected to the super-fast presidential internet line of 56kbit/second, this enabled me to upload this huge file in less than a day!

bang bang, skeet skeet

 

[Amphibious Wallet]

Right, I've bought a tank and having it resealed or braced, depending on what the builder thinks. Post more LED stuff that I can steal. Extra points if it's all made from box-section aluminium that covers 1800x600 with 500 individual LED's.

These LDD meanwell drivers, can I just caveman them up with a 0-10V dimmer?

 

[Borat]

Right, I've bought a tank and having it resealed or braced, depending on what the builder thinks. Post more LED stuff that I can steal. Extra points if it's all made from box-section aluminium that covers 1800x600 with 500 individual LED's.

These LDD meanwell drivers, can I just caveman them up with a 0-10V dimmer?

As far as I can see LDD drivers don't have the 0v-10v dimming. GIven that you may not need compactness of components, perhaps you should think about using AC drivers, such as Meanwell LCM-60?

Those drivers are much simpler and work either with PWM signal or 0v-10v input.

 

[oreo54]

Right, I've bought a tank and having it resealed or braced, depending on what the builder thinks. Post more LED stuff that I can steal. Extra points if it's all made from box-section aluminium that covers 1800x600 with 500 individual LED's.

These LDD meanwell drivers, can I just caveman them up with a 0-10V dimmer?

No you need 5v pwm. 100-1k frequency
There is a way to use like 0-2.5v but that is a bit tricky .

That said a simple hack turns a strip light dimmer into a 5v pwm dimmer.

Manual PWM dimmer and LDD-h

www.plantedtank.net

Or same concept using a tc-420 or 421 with a mod.

 

[Amphibious Wallet]

Love you guys. Let me know if you'd rather me start my own thread on this for bouncing ideas.

I'm not overly concerned about compactness nor constrained by a sketchiness limit (peer review notwithstanding), so long as only DC is over the tank. Eventually I could run out of room, though.

My initial thoughts are some 1w/3w LED's in various wavelengths and banks of 14pc or 10pc series so 30VDC+ in whatever amps it eats. 14x1W on a 250x45mm aluminium PCB doesn't get too hot to touch, so light density is the only concern I guess if mounted to aluminium extrusions. I have fans for Africa in any case.

LCM-60, had to double check my forgotten stash thinking I had some of these but turns out a dozen is only 2x Tridonic versions which would have been perfect with the DIP switches. I hate moving house and misplacing things.
Also uncovered some of these DALI drivers I've a couple dozen of that could finally be useful if I can make them work for me. Modules, too, but they're white/red clusters.

I like the PWM mod, more knobs = more better amirite?

 

[oreo54]

Love you guys. Let me know if you'd rather me start my own thread on this for bouncing ideas.

I'm not overly concerned about compactness nor constrained by a sketchiness limit (peer review notwithstanding), so long as only DC is over the tank. Eventually I could run out of room, though.

My initial thoughts are some 1w/3w LED's in various wavelengths and banks of 14pc or 10pc series so 30VDC+ in whatever amps it eats. 14x1W on a 250x45mm aluminium PCB doesn't get too hot to touch, so light density is the only concern I guess if mounted to aluminium extrusions. I have fans for Africa in any case.

LCM-60, had to double check my forgotten stash thinking I had some of these but turns out a dozen is only 2x Tridonic versions which would have been perfect with the DIP switches. I hate moving house and misplacing things.
Also uncovered some of these DALI drivers I've a couple dozen of that could finally be useful if I can make them work for me. Modules, too, but they're white/red clusters.

I like the PWM mod, more knobs = more better amirite?

Was always wondering how one could use like "stage lighting" systems.

Yea probably should be in its own thread..

 

[Borat]

I have been a bit busy recently - so didn't have time to work on the project very actively, however that's not to say that the project has been put on pause:

I ordered some PCBs from China, usually I collate all kinds of other projects that I did in the past to improve the earlier versions of circuits. This time I printed 3 sets of PCBs:
- for this project
- for existing 120W light fixture that I built 2 years ago (https://www.ultimatereef.net/thread...leds-6-fans-temperature-control.918130/page-6)
- improved PCBs for Alkalinity monitor/doser

Here's how the PCB upgrade for my 120W light fixture looks like, I will replace it tonight when the tank lights are off. This has Arduino Mega + ESP chips connected via logic level converter, 3 PWM boards (PWM signal from mega -> 0-10v signal to the LED driver), connector for temperature probes (5 of those are chained and utilise a single connector), connectors for 2x PWM fans and LCD and an RTC clock. There is also a relay to switch off lights completely during night hours.




In terms of PCB for this project - it is long and narrow:



It took me some time to find the correct buck converter: to convert input 56v into 12v to power 5xfans and voltage regulator. I estimated that I needed about 1A - but looked for a buck converter delivering at least double that current. This one was ordered from US&A supplier and was rather expensive (so I ordered 2x of them!):



I also bought a 16 channel PCA9685 chip by Adafruit:



I am going to solder the buck converter tonight and test it, if it works as intended, I will solder other components testing them as I add them...

 

[Borat]

I have done some work on soldering LED arrays: 24x total of which 2x are spares for future use. I used a cheap Chinese made reflow station that I bought on Amazon for under £10. It works pretty well - keeping temperature at promised 260C. I wanted lower temp - so I controlled it using a mini heatsink (chunk of aluminium painted in black ) and a fan.