DIY lighting question

[SkyAurelia]

mostly have the led finished, just needs a few more reds and greens along with a step down for the hyper violets.

now im waiting to see how my anemone and corals do with this light.

 

[MrHermit85]

Awesome to see another diy led build. Not a lot of people doing them these days with the price of fixtures coming down. I have used aquastyle online before and had great success growing LpS and easy stuff like montis. I stuck with mostly rb and warm white with a few greens, violets and blue. I found the blues would make everything seem too "window cleaner" blue. If I remember correctly I used 72 leds on a 4ft 18deep tank.

I see you used some NLDD drivers, I tried the 700ma versions and got a horrible buzzing sound from them. I went back to the discontinued ldds and no buzzing. Did you have to wire a cap as a filter or did you not have an issue?

I got most of my supplies from ledgroupbuy and mouser for my recent build ledgroupbuy has a great sale on heatsinks and bridgelux leds. I have to say though, the slimline sink looks cool. I went with the older makersled sink and it is a monster.

 

[SkyAurelia]

i got my nldds from rapidled, they dont maker any noise i can hear, my leds i got from stevesleds, and my fixture i got from ledsupply. i have not connected my violets yet and am short a few reds and greens buts its almost done.

right now this is a 40g tank with 16 blue, 16 rb 6 white, 2 red 2 green, and 6 violet thats missing there ldd right now, and plan to add 2 more reds and 2 more greens


i tried aquastyle and i do not like them, i bought a fixture and some other parts from them, got made to wait 3 weeks then they refunded it and said some of what i got was out of stock so i messaged back and asked what was out of stock and got ignored so i wont use them now i think there terrible.

 

[MrHermit85]

i got my nldds from rapidled, they dont maker any noise i can hear, my leds i got from stevesleds, and my fixture i got from ledsupply. i have not connected my violets yet and am short a few reds and greens buts its almost done.

right now this is a 40g tank with 16 blue, 16 rb 6 white, 2 red 2 green, and 6 violet thats missing there ldd right now, and plan to add 2 more reds and 2 more greens


i tried aquastyle and i do not like them, i bought a fixture and some other parts from them, got made to wait 3 weeks then they refunded it and said some of what i got was out of stock so i messaged back and asked what was out of stock and got ignored so i wont use them now i think there terrible.

Hmm I wonder what's up with my NLdDD drivers, I might try them again see what happens. The reason I went DIY was so that I can replace and upgrade as I go and the NLDD are supposed to be direct replacements of LDD...

I used Aquastyle online about a decade ago lol, things might have changed since then. I do like rapidled though and ledaupply but can't do much cross border ordering anymore with the risk of Tarriffs which is a shame.

I added some green to my current build so I am curious to see how it goes for you with them. Is that a storm controller you are using?

 

[SkyAurelia]

maybe you got aa faulty nldd? cause i have no noise at all.

i like diffrent suppliers for diffrent things, leds came from stevesleds, heatsink was ledsupply, every thing else is reapidled.

yeah its a storm controller, im not a big fan of it, i have a wifi enabled controller running a smaller diy light for a 10g i want to get another one and see if i can replace the storm controller with it. i have to get a few more connectors in the mean time for the storm controller to enable control of the whites, reds, and greens, there on a diffrent board and i didnt have any more jumpers.

 

[MrHermit85]

Is it the storm x you have or the storm? I have the x hopefully I don't feel the same way on earth I get everything set up. Which jumpers do you need? The two pin female that connects to the controller?

Maybe they were faulty, I tried 2 or 3 from the same batch. I will open up a fresh pack and hopefully can use them as spares. It's a shame with all the tariffs these days as most of the good suppliers are from the states. I was in a bit of a bind with optics as I decided to use more leds and was short. Wound up getting carclo instead but they are pricey.

 

[oreo54]

Hmm I wonder what's up with my NLdDD drivers, I might try them again see what happens.

Maybe a frequency thing ..
What was the frequency of the controller?

Were they quiet at 100%?

Most " whining" comes from capacitor or coil vibrations. Being like solidly potted should eliminate most of that.

Thinking back some people did have the same issue w/ ldd's.
Believe it was mostly due to the frequency on the dim wire.

Anyways . One old example:
https://forum.arduino.cc/t/drivers-meanwell-ldd-hum/190826
Historically doesn't seem like a common problem, or commonly noticed?

 

[SkyAurelia]

if it helps with the ldd thing, i am useing 22 gauge wire to connect the leds together, the another type of wire to run my power wire, its also 22 gauge but not solid its strands so more flexible, i have tried running my leds on all settings all the waya up to 100% as well and no noise at all.

its the storm controller and i am missing the female pins that connect the controller and board, only missing the pins for 2 lines the rest are wired up, i was half alseep when i wired up my ldds i just had to redo them, my green leds where not supposed to be running yet i dont have a ldd for them, now im running my violets, running them accourding to the life thing on the website, says 800ma but i run them at 700 like it says to make them live longer.

alot of places that sell the heatsinks or fixctures i like have shortages on them because there suppliers have stoped, the one i got was missing parts of its hanging kit, so i made a bracket to mount it to the ceiling my self, my bracket i like more its not hook but instead a plate attached to the ceiling providing more support for the light.

 

[MrHermit85]

Maybe a frequency thing ..
What was the frequency of the controller?

Were they quiet at 100%?

Most " whining" comes from capacitor or coil vibrations. Being like solidly potted should eliminate most of that.

Thinking back some people did have the same issue w/ ldd's.
Believe it was mostly due to the frequency on the dim wire.

Anyways . One old example:
https://forum.arduino.cc/t/drivers-meanwell-ldd-hum/190826
Historically doesn't seem like a common problem, or commonly noticed?

They were not quiet regardless as to what percentage they were at. I had read somewhere that some NLDD drivers require a cap on the output to act as a filter but that is a little above my skill level to calculate size. I found it weird that the LDD's work perfectly with the controller though.

 

[oldrev]

They were not quiet regardless as to what percentage they were at. I had read somewhere that some NLDD drivers require a cap on the output to act as a filter but that is a little above my skill level to calculate size. I found it weird that the LDD's work perfectly with the controller though.

The noise from LED drivers comes from inductors and the piezoelectric effect of ceramic capacitors(MLCC), which vibrate under high current driven by PWM signals, producing noise. Commercial adjustable drivers, even from well-known brands like MeanWell, often use 4kHz, the noisiest frequency.

The solution is simple: use a dimming frequency beyond the human hearing range. For example, my DIY design uses 19kHz, a frequency barely audible to the human ear.

As for why commercial drivers don’t do this, besides efficiency and cost reasons, it's because their designs are outdated, using driver chips that can't support such high dimming frequencies.