DIY led primer? Where do i start?

Sayn3ver

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I've read through a couple threads but none of the information seems to be consolidated for a beginner.

I'm looking to build a light for either a 20x20 or 24x24 cube.

My concern with going led is disco ball and shadowing.

Are there diy build employing diffusion lenses?

My concern about buying into commercial led products for me seems to be the the apparent lack of ability to update / modify as technology does.

I feel a diy route will give me the ability to easily replace any diodes that burn out. I feel it will allow me to tweak color over time as my needs or tastes change or add new colors or new advancements as time goes on.

The beauty of halide and t5 setups were with basic electrical knowledgeable mods were easy.

Any threads or webpages that are recommended reading would be appreciated.
 

Ron Reefman

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Just a point or two. First, on any well made fixture these days, leds almost never 'burn out'. And with the range of colors used, ramping schemes and 6+ channels of color control, you'll unlikely feel the need to upgrade due to new advances. I think the DIY led was primarily started because fixtures were so expensive and poorly made. But today's fixtures are still about the same prices (maybe the low end Mars Aqua is a bit lower than it was), but the fixtures are SO, SO much better made than they were 5 or 10 years ago. And 9 times out of 10 the DIY fixture really looks very DIY and not very aesthetically pleasing.
 

lilgrounchuck

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Second. When I was keeping other things 5-10 years back commercial LED products weren’t available but from a few manufacturers, and those offerings were crazy expensive. Folks wanting to make the jump from t5 to LED went the DIY route because it would usually come out way cheaper. Before I bought my mars I priced out components to DIY and they came out about the same, but no way could I make that contraption look presentable on an open top tank, so I went with the Mars. I’ve since added control of it through reef pi so I can dim and have the option to replace diodes here or there to adjust the spectrum if I want.
 
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Sayn3ver

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Not apples to apples but I work as a commercial electrician. Drivers and led boards do arrive doa or die shortly on brand new installs.

I'm not sure how commercial lighting fixtures compare to low volume aquarium fixtures but they are electrical devices and things do fail.

Again, some of it is a diy/self sufficient aspect for me. I can easily service or modify metal halide and t5 fixtures. I don't know much about leds. I'm not proficient at electronics soldering either. I know some diy led products use push in connectors now.

I can easily make a wood or other floating canopy to conceal a diy led fixture.

Although I guess with the release of the gen5 radion i could probably pickup a gen4 on the cheap, right?
 

h2so4hurts

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I prefer DIY-leds over commercial fixtures for exactly the reasons you outline. If a diode burns out, they do, a lot, then you're SOL on a commercial fixture. Most LEDs have a 10 year life. I built a 240 LED fixture 5 years ago with top of the line CREE XPG/XTE LEDs and have had at least 2 a year go out. $3 later and they're shining as brightly as ever. Read the reviews for diode array LEDs like Kessils over at BRS, people love them until they die and then it's a 100% replacement. You might as well just burn $400 at that point.

If you don't like the DIY look of a DIY build then go with a higher end DIY kit. The MakersLED heatsink kits look decidedly professional, and if your tank has a canopy, who cares what they look like? If you go the MakersLED route, they have a bunch of really good tutorials on YouTube about how to assemble their kits and link up your LEDs, it's easy, but tedious.
 
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Sayn3ver

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You think i could rock 2x blueacro 48w cob's on a makers heatsink? Only going on a 20x20x20 more than likely.

Realize the irony of using a cob's.
 
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Sayn3ver

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I guess maybe you can answer me this?

Can i oversize the power supply? For example. Say i pickup two 48w acrostar chips and two of their drivers (2x two channel drivers = 4 channels of control right?). Say I want the option of adding another two persay if i find coverage/shadowing is poor.

Is oversizing the power supply an issue or is it like other ac/dc applications where the ac/dc wall adapter just needs to be able to supply the rated voltage and max amapacity of the load.

Example. I use a 12v 1amp(1000ma) ad/dc adapter to power some pc case fans that run at 12v. Each fan draws 0.2amp. I could probably max at 5 fans but would be better running 4 fans with some safety room.

If that's the case do I just size my power supply for maximum amp draw of all the LEDs in the array plus losses through drivers, controllers, etc?

What i still haven't comprehended yet is need for different channels to be driven at maximum different currents per manufacturer. I see some are limited to 500ma some at 750ma and some at 1000ma.

I see those cheap lld meanwell drivers and then places like blueacro and steveled offer in house drivers that look like small pc boards for more money. Im getting lost in the small but I'm sure important details somewhere.

I also assume for diy aquarium lighting we are utilizing constant current not constant voltage drivers, correct?
 

h2so4hurts

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The drivers will draw what they need from the powersupply. The only risk is really in getting a powersupply that's too small, and even then it'll just end up underpowering your LEDs, they'll still light, they just won't get as bright.

You can go about this both ways really, you can have a powersupply/driver for each channel, or one powersupply connected in parallel to a couple drivers. The MakersLED 5Up Pro system is setup as the latter, you get a 48V powersupply to connect to the driver board that has 5 LDDs to control the 5 channels. The wattage of the power supply is whatever it needs to be to provide enough power at the desired current for each LED (take whatever wattage each LED is at the given current and add them together to get total watts required and the pick a powersupply that has like 20% more wattage). It's smart to keep LEDs of the same current together on the same LDD, otherwise you might end up under driving or over driving them.

You get a constant voltage power supply and then the drivers push whatever current they're told to push (but keep in mind if you have 5x 1a LDDs and your power supply can only push 4a you're going to end up underdriving your LEDs, which in most cases is OK, for my build I only run them at 75% so I'm choosing to under drive them anyway).
 

lilgrounchuck

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I prefer DIY-leds over commercial fixtures for exactly the reasons you outline. If a diode burns out, they do, a lot, then you're SOL on a commercial fixture. Most LEDs have a 10 year life. I built a 240 LED fixture 5 years ago with top of the line CREE XPG/XTE LEDs and have had at least 2 a year go out. $3 later and they're shining as brightly as ever. Read the reviews for diode array LEDs like Kessils over at BRS, people love them until they die and then it's a 100% replacement. You might as well just burn $400 at that point.

If you don't like the DIY look of a DIY build then go with a higher end DIY kit. The MakersLED heatsink kits look decidedly professional, and if your tank has a canopy, who cares what they look like? If you go the MakersLED route, they have a bunch of really good tutorials on YouTube about how to assemble their kits and link up your LEDs, it's easy, but tedious.

That's what I like about the black box solutions like the Mars though: if a diode dies, I can just grab another 3W diode and replace it. That factored in when I was buying. If I want or need to make a change, I can without much effort. With those other commercial solutions, anything above baseline isn't happening, and if it does, it's not going to be a straightforward job. For the most part, with those, if it dies, it dies.
 

h2so4hurts

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So my build I got a 30" MakersLED kit and a 5UP Pro Board with 5x 1a LEDs. I'm running all CREE XPE2 LEDs (look at my build thread to see why I picked these, they're older and less efficient, but have better penetration than XTE and XPG). I have 63 XPE LEDs which have a max current of 1a, forward voltage of 3.5V and output 3W. Each channel has 13 LEDs (so 39watts/45volts @1A per channel). For 5 channels that comes out to needing ~200W if driven at 100%. I'm only driving at 75% for the blue channels and 65% for the white channels so I'm well within the 200W draw of my power supplies (MEAN WELL LRS-200-48).
 

TDEcoral

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If you want to do something with cobs, I would look into these:


There's different sellers, not sure if each one has a different led layout.
 
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Sayn3ver

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So my build I got a 30" MakersLED kit and a 5UP Pro Board with 5x 1a LEDs. I'm running all CREE XPE2 LEDs (look at my build thread to see why I picked these, they're older and less efficient, but have better penetration than XTE and XPG). I have 63 XPE LEDs which have a max current of 1a, forward voltage of 3.5V and output 3W. Each channel has 13 LEDs (so 39watts/45volts @1A per channel). For 5 channels that comes out to needing ~200W if driven at 100%. I'm only driving at 75% for the blue channels and 65% for the white channels so I'm well within the 200W draw of my power supplies (MEAN WELL LRS-200-48).


What's the importance of or what is forward voltage? I'm not familiar with that term. Typically in a series dc circuit each device has a known voltage drop. Is this another way of describing that?
 
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Sayn3ver

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The drivers will draw what they need from the powersupply. The only risk is really in getting a powersupply that's too small, and even then it'll just end up underpowering your LEDs, they'll still light, they just won't get as bright.

You can go about this both ways really, you can have a powersupply/driver for each channel, or one powersupply connected in parallel to a couple drivers. The MakersLED 5Up Pro system is setup as the latter, you get a 48V powersupply to connect to the driver board that has 5 LDDs to control the 5 channels. The wattage of the power supply is whatever it needs to be to provide enough power at the desired current for each LED (take whatever wattage each LED is at the given current and add them together to get total watts required and the pick a powersupply that has like 20% more wattage). It's smart to keep LEDs of the same current together on the same LDD, otherwise you might end up under driving or over driving them.

You get a constant voltage power supply and then the drivers push whatever current they're told to push (but keep in mind if you have 5x 1a LDDs and your power supply can only push 4a you're going to end up underdriving your LEDs, which in most cases is OK, for my build I only run them at 75% so I'm choosing to under drive them anyway).



If i buy a 48v power supply, does each driver individually put out the correct voltage and current it's spec'd for.

I've seen reference to both different ampacity requirements and different voltages.

More so, are the LEDs wired in series or in parallel? If in series, do you just add up amp draw of the various leds or does voltage drop play a role as well?
 

h2so4hurts

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Yes, each driver will push the appropriate current for that channel depending on what the dimmer tells it to. If there's no dimmer then it's full amps

They're just listing what the forward voltage is at that current.

The LEDs are wired in series. Multiple strings can be wired in parallel.
 
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Sayn3ver

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Screen shot of blueacro's page. Maybe I'm confused what the information is listed as.

At the end of each channel description, i understand the required amps. But the required voltage is confusing me. Is that the minimum voltage for that one channel on one chip to function correctly? So with say 4 chips in series, with all channel one's in series for example would be 15v x 4 = 60v power supply?

Or is 15v the maximum voltage allowed period?

I looked up forward voltage and it refreshed the couple chapters that we covered semi conductors in apprenticeship classes. It's the minimum voltage required to basically open the flow of current through the diode. From there regardless of voltage it will still only drop it's rated forward voltage.

Can you over volt the diodes if you need a certain voltage above their forward voltage to accommodate all the tiny voltage drops?

Screenshot_2020-02-21-19-52-12.png
 

h2so4hurts

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You got it. If you want 4 of those in series get a 60v power supply, although I haven't seen any of those (meanwell has 48 and 54 at the top end) so you might need to do two 30's.
 
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Sayn3ver

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You got it. If you want 4 of those in series get a 60v power supply, although I haven't seen any of those (meanwell has 48 and 54 at the top end) so you might need to do two 30's.


However, The driver will limit what voltages it can take?

Their dual driver chips seem to only allow up to 48v input and after their voltage drop out out 45v.

So in theory I could put 3x channel 1's on a single driver. I get 2 drivers per chip so if I wanted all 4 channels separated for dimming purposes I would need 2x of their dual driver chips for three full power 48w acrostar leds off a single 48v power supply (assuming I can find a large enough ampacity psu.

I suppose the next question then is, they note max efficiency is when input and output voltages almost match.

So if i needed to go to 4x 48w acrostars I basically would need four of their dual driver chips if I'm running all four channels separated?

And then at that point my efficiency is then going to be going down as each driver is then less loaded?

If I'm understanding correctly then it looks except channel 4 @ 9v, the rest benefit from being groups of 3.

Although their description says a pair of dual driver chips can power 5 of these? I guess they combine channels?

Am i reading the driver description correctly as well. I can tune each individual drivers current output with an onboard potentiometer?

Screenshot_2020-02-21-21-51-43.png
 

bblumberg

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However, The driver will limit what voltages it can take?

Their dual driver chips seem to only allow up to 48v input and after their voltage drop out out 45v.

So in theory I could put 3x channel 1's on a single driver. I get 2 drivers per chip so if I wanted all 4 channels separated for dimming purposes I would need 2x of their dual driver chips for three full power 48w acrostar leds off a single 48v power supply (assuming I can find a large enough ampacity psu.

I suppose the next question then is, they note max efficiency is when input and output voltages almost match.

So if i needed to go to 4x 48w acrostars I basically would need four of their dual driver chips if I'm running all four channels separated?

And then at that point my efficiency is then going to be going down as each driver is then less loaded?

If I'm understanding correctly then it looks except channel 4 @ 9v, the rest benefit from being groups of 3.

Although their description says a pair of dual driver chips can power 5 of these? I guess they combine channels?

Am i reading the driver description correctly as well. I can tune each individual drivers current output with an onboard potentiometer?

Screenshot_2020-02-21-21-51-43.png
Here is an example that may make things less confusing:

I run 6 Blue Acro 48w chips on a 48" Maker's heat sink.

Each set of 3 (to keep under the power supply max) is driven by a 6-up board (from O2surplus) - 4 for the Blue Acro, 2 for separate neutral white COB pucks. Each channel is handled by a meanwell LDD-H. 1000 ma and 700 ma for the Blue Acro and 1500 ma for the white pucks. One board is slaved to the other and controlled by a Bluefish mini. This mini has 6 channels of control - 4 are used for the BlueAcro pucks and 2 for the whiltes

Power supply is a 54v Meanwell (HEP-600-54 ). High efficiency and plenty beefy.

So to summarize, each board runs 3 Blue Acro 48W chips and 2 white COB chips. 2 boards together run the 6 BlueAcro plus 4 white pucks. One Bluefish mini controls both boards. When I get around to it, i will replace the neutral white with royal blue COBs because I find that I don't like the looks of the tank with whites on.
 
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