DIY refugium LED's: where to source those red-blue spectrum COB LED panels?

[saltyfish24]

I have a 29 gallon Biocube, and I'm interested in making a fuge light that shines through back glass at the middle filter chamber. I have a spare constant current LED driver, which can be used to operate and dim 12V LED's. I'm having trouble finding a small COB LED panel that has the right red and blue spectrum LED's.

I do see cheap options like these on Amazon. But they're not dimmable, and I'd like the ability to control the brightness using the LED driver I already have. I also want to make it pretty flat to fit the space between the wall and the tank.

I've seen 6000k COB LED panels on sale for $11. They're pretty bright too, but not the right spectrum. Hoping someone knows of something similar to this but with the optimal spectrum.

12V 70W 7000lm LED COB Panel Light Strip Shape Lamp Light Warm White 220x112mm | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 12V 70W 7000lm LED COB Panel Light Strip Shape Lamp Light Warm White 220x112mm at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

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[Ratherbeflyen]

I bought my leds on ebay.

They work pretty good.

 

[saltyfish24]

I bought my leds on ebay.


They work pretty good.

Hey, thanks for the tip, that's what I was looking for. I'm curious how you built yours. Like what did you use for the DC supply and how did you enclosed the LED's in a way that still allowed heat sinking and water protection?

Very cool.

 

[Ratherbeflyen]

I have a 24V dc power supply that runs just about everything in my stand. I just wired an LED controller into that to run my scrubber and fuge lights.

I don't have any better pictures of my scrubber right now.

I drew it up in sketchup first. The top is sealed with a lip around it, that keeps any of the water channeled back towards the screen. Then I just carried the outsides 1/2 way down to make an enclosure for the lights. Then I just have the leds mounted on a small heat sync and that's held on to the scrubber with nylon bolts. It protects them from any water from all directions but the bottom up. It's not perfect though salt creep does get on them after some time. I bought 10 of those cheap ebay leds for about the same price as one waterproof led. So far I've only had to change out 1.

 

[saltyfish24]

Impressive setup. That's great. So your LED controller takes 24VDC as input and steps it down to 12V? I assumed the LEDs you got are 12V nominal LED.

 

[Ratherbeflyen]

Actually I think the 10 watt led chips are ~10v. I'm not sure, because the led controller does step down the volts/current and I just measured the watts and led temperature. I know the more wattage the chips the higher the voltage required was. An actual led driver should work just fine.

 

[oreo54]

What driver do you have?
Kind of crucial info.

 

[saltyfish24]

What driver do you have?
Kind of crucial info.

It's a 40W driver that's capable of varying voltage from 8-12V, and can source 3.2A.

 

[oreo54]

It's a 40W driver that's capable of varying voltage from 8-12V, and can source 3.2A.

So 3.2 A constant current.
Diode array should be like 6-7 rows
4 total "3w" diodes alternate r / b per row .
V(f) of about 11v.

11 x 6 x .533 = 35.178 Watts