General DIY LED thread

Kampo

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so we have lots of derailing talk in other threads about DIY lights and what would be the optimal LED layout these days. would love to start a conversation about this.

As for a project i'm working on.

I'm planning a diy light for a frag tank in my fish room as something for some tinkering. Here is what i'm thinking layout wise would be ideal.

2x Violet (prolly 2 hyper violets or 395/420 semileds)
4x RB
1xWhite (luxeon C 5700k)
1xMint

the white has good coverage in the 470-500 range we usually fill with a cyan and true blue so leaving them out. what are your guys thougts? will actually more likely consist of 3 clusters. one K16 Luxeon RB running at 600mah (25.2 watts), 4 Violets, 2 Whites, and 2 Mints. heck though since its for growth not show I might just remove 1 white and 1 mint.
 
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Are you using any controller? If so how many native ports / channels does it support? This is usually something I consider first so that I can then look at the LED layout for tuning spectrum purposes. While I have not used Kessils nor am I saying they are bad but it is one feature I like of theirs in that they have a dedicated nob to adjust color for the user. Other than that one thing I've been considering, and no idea if this is actually helpful to the corals or livestock, is back to the channel thing. If you have a channel with RB or B in some form you could always use it for a moon light effect provided you can dim low enough.

Sort of like an additional feature for free :D Oh - I've never used Mints - only lime green. What is the difference or how do the two spectrums compare?
 
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Kampo

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using a reef-pi, so channels is really limited in any way. just more LDDs for more channels lol. agree on having ability to tweak spectrum, but from what ive found messing with my current light is that once I find the spectrum I treat the multiple channels (7 on my current light) as 2 channels Blue and white.

Mint is same as Lime essentially with a bit of bleed over in the violet spectrum, blends a bit better from what i'm told.
 
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Kampo

Kampo

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@dantimdad can more than likely offer some input and I also think @OllieNZ will be interested too.
I figured dantimdad would find his way in here soon. just more wanted to get a led nerdery thread going, seems like the conversation comes up often in non related threads and derails them.
 

crusso1993

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@crusso1993 Cheers bud,
I'll be following this with interest

Back at ya! I'm a DIY LED total newbie. Haven't even built anything yet but already have some really great info and ideas when the time comes. The DIYLED'ers on R2R, namely the people you'll see in this thread, really know the *hit from the shinola!
 

dantimdad

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NERD ALERT!

:D


I have studied this at length and conferred with quite a few "experts" and manufacturers over the last decade of me studying LEDs and aquarium lighting in general.

So, let's start with what is proven:

1: There are three MAJOR peaks in lighting that photosynthetic organisms need to survive and grow. They are used in varying degrees by terrestrial and aquatic life but we will generalize for now. Those peaks are (approximately) Chlorophyll A - 410-420nm, Chlorophyll B - 430-455nm and BetaCarotine - 495nm. Now, there are important secondary peaks for all of these at 660nm,630nm and 510nm respectively.



2: There is no such thing as a true white light led. (or any color but blue but I digress) They are all different phosphors coating the diode to produce the desired color.
3: You can grow corals with nothing but red and blue light (But, there are side effects which would be an entirely different discussion altogether)

Now, given the above, you can see where the peaks, if hit properly in the right amounts, can grow photosynthetic corals very well. What it may lack is visual appeal.

So how do we compromise?

Well, usually the manufacturers will throw in Windex blue bulbs and Cool white to make it more "Natural" looking to our eyes. This is a terrible approach. It wastes energy, causes you to turn up the other colors to compensate and possibly bleach your corals due to excessive photosynthetic radiation. Or, almost as bad, raise your lights way up causing light spill and, again, wasted energy.

The best way, in my opinion, may be to eliminate white lights all together and get back to basics. This is not a new concept! At least one manufacturer has been testing this for a while. But, I tend to study when I am interested and drew a similar conclusion to them. (actually, using identical LEDs just in different amounts)

So that is where I came up with the mix I stated earlier. I believe it may be the future of LED lighting and I wish I had the money to develop it before someone already in the industry realizes it and beats me to the punch.

The end result would be way less expense in manufacturing lighting and power to run them So a long term savings as well. On top of that, I believe much happier and healthier inhabitants.

I hope this helps.
 
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Kampo

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NERD ALERT!

:D


I have studied this at length and conferred with quite a few "experts" and manufacturers over the last decade of me studying LEDs and aquarium lighting in general.

So, let's start with what is proven:

1: There are three MAJOR peaks in lighting that photosynthetic organisms need to survive and grow. They are used in varying degrees by terrestrial and aquatic life but we will generalize for now. Those peaks are (approximately) Chlorophyll A - 410-420nm, Chlorophyll B - 430-455nm and BetaCarotine - 495nm. Now, there are important secondary peaks for all of these at 660nm,630nm and 510nm respectively.



2: There is no such thing as a true white light led. (or any color but blue but I digress) They are all different phosphors coating the diode to produce the desired color.
3: You can grow corals with nothing but red and blue light (But, there are side effects which would be an entirely different discussion altogether)

Now, given the above, you can see where the peaks, if hit properly in the right amounts, can grow photosynthetic corals very well. What it may lack is visual appeal.

So how do we compromise?

Well, usually the manufacturers will throw in Windex blue bulbs and Cool white to make it more "Natural" looking to our eyes. This is a terrible approach. It wastes energy, causes you to turn up the other colors to compensate and possibly bleach your corals due to excessive photosynthetic radiation. Or, almost as bad, raise your lights way up causing light spill and, again, wasted energy.

The best way, in my opinion, may be to eliminate white lights all together and get back to basics. This is not a new concept! At least one manufacturer has been testing this for a while. But, I tend to study when I am interested and drew a similar conclusion to them. (actually, using identical LEDs just in different amounts)

So that is where I came up with the mix I stated earlier. I believe it may be the future of LED lighting and I wish I had the money to develop it before someone already in the industry realizes it and beats me to the punch.

The end result would be way less expense in manufacturing lighting and power to run them So a long term savings as well. On top of that, I believe much happier and healthier inhabitants.

I hope this helps.
What was the spectrum/led layout you had in mind?
 

dantimdad

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Yes, that would be another choice, but, I have now seen the combo on a temporary, cobbled together heatsink over my cube for about 20 minutes (until it started to get HOT) and the color was amazing! Dimmers only on the blue/cyan and lime. (I didn't have mint but have ordered some).



If I can, I will redo the DIY light on the nano cube and use the above color combo and will probably never look back.

This also depends on how much I like the K7 pro I won in the drawing. (It is supposed to be here today!)

I would love to work with them and implement my design into a new light (K8 perhaps? ;) )
 
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Kampo

Kampo

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I have a luxeon 6500k freshfocus "fish" cob that I used on a fresh tank. I'm really tempted to hook it up and run is along side a luxeon k16 to see what the color looks like on that simple led. the below spectrum seems very advantageous one you throw the blue/violet at it to fill it out.
upload_2018-12-31_13-31-3.png
 

dantimdad

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Channel 3 - mints, isolated is a good choice. That will probably be the one that you will use to tune to your eye/pleasure.


Correct. That was what I had it planned for. You can overwhelm things with mint/lime in a hurry.
 

Matt Carden

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4xRB (ch1)
2x410 (ch2)
2x420 (ch2)
1x395 (ch2)
2xmint (ch3)
1xcyan (ch4)
1xblue (ch4)

But, I want to forgo the 395
Don't you speak about secondary peaks in the red-orange and red spectrums? Why don't you include those in your setup?
 

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