General DIY LED thread

Lingwendil · Feb 16, 2019

Dropping back in to share how I did my cheap light hanging setup. The pipe straps are screwed to a 20" strip of wood, and the poles are between the stand and wall, so that the assembly can be lifted up and away while I get it set up how I want. The blue doohickeys are silicone "gear ties", handy for wire management, and for keeping the keyring from sliding. Once I drill for eye hooks they come off and the wire hangers will hook on, and I'll paint it all black.

Kampo · Feb 16, 2019

Looking good!

So been rethinking my cubes lighting. need more and more even. plan was to build a floating canopy with 4 24" t5s + my diy led. but I dunno...dang cat will still prolly "sun" itself like its been doing, and I lose a lot of light with the glass lid. thinking going full blown canopy, its a rimless cube so that feels to be a bit of a waste, but I feel that it may be best. fully enlocsed so I don't need any cover on the tank itself for jumpers.

then I"m going to use my second unused 12in makers slim heatsink. and add a bit to my lights.

Each Makers slim 12in will have one of the Radeon clone pucks centered. on either side will be a K16 and 2 mints. the k16s I'm thinking and this might be a terrible idea but I think ok to run in parrell at 1amp, worse case if I lose one of the leds the other gets an amp which is fully in spec.

so that is
4xK16 at 500ma each 84 watts
8x RB Cree at 1amp 28
4xCree Cool Whites 2xCyan 2xDeep Red 2xRB @ 700ma 25
8xMint @ 700ma 17
8x395 @600ma 17
8x420 @ 600 ma 17
8x480 at 600ma 17

main ratio is white to blue I look at so thats 112watts of Royal Blue to 27 White so fairly close to the 4:1 I was wanting.

then on either side of the light will be 2x24" t5s, currently just using the bulbs that came with the retrofit which is 3xactinic and a 10k generic type bulbs. will swap to atis prolly in the next few months.

205 watts of LED power full out and 96 watts of T5. now debating how high to have them off the water. currently light is 6in but new canopy is going to be 18 in tall do I dare put them all the way at the top of the canopy?

Steven Garland · Feb 16, 2019

Have you guys found a good source for decently priced 395's ?

Lingwendil · Feb 16, 2019

Maybe PM @theatrus as he mentioned them not too long ago?

Otherwise here are bare LEDs-

https://www.futureelectronics.com/p...nt=instock&utm_campaign=Octopart_Ext_Referals

Might be mounted here, no real details, though-

https://www.futureelectronics.com/p...nt=instock&utm_campaign=Octopart_Ext_Referals

theatrus · Feb 16, 2019

Lingwendil said:
Maybe PM @theatrus as he mentioned them not too long ago?

Otherwise here are bare LEDs-

https://www.futureelectronics.com/p...nt=instock&utm_campaign=Octopart_Ext_Referals

Might be mounted here, no real details, though-

https://www.futureelectronics.com/p...nt=instock&utm_campaign=Octopart_Ext_Referals

The latter looks like a module for CO1 LED, which is a 270nm. Maybe useful for a sterilizer, but will cook any living things

http://www.seoulviosys.com/common/download.asp?idx=51

Lingwendil · Feb 20, 2019

Man, these look friggin' rad.

Potato camera cannot into proper color rendition, but I really like these.

Current layout of drivers/emitters:
500mA royal blue k16
700mA cool blue, violet
300mA mint, sunplus cool white
1000mA lime (surprisingly)

I'm thinking a single 500 or 600 for the mint/white/lime channel would probably be about right. I might could do with just white/lime and then try a amber instead of mint? I'll have to try that at some point. As it is now, I can simply tidy up the wiring and hook up the cooling wiring and run it as is. Very fun experiment so far, and will replace the blueacro rig for a while to see how I like it

Lingwendil · Feb 27, 2019

Has anyone use the Saber Z4 "mixer boards" over at LuxeonStar? I was considering buying a custom 4-up board from them for my pendant project, and was considering the following loadout, pending what available bins they have on the cyan LEDs-

https://www.luxeonstar.com/saber-z4-luxeon-z-20mm-square-color-mixing-array

They come on a 20mm square, and I think I can make it fit with a worst case adjustment and new drilling/tapping to accommodate them.

Steven Garland · Feb 27, 2019

I looked into it a few weeks ago,overall they look really promising. With you use the 405nm prices aren't bad. Anything else and it shoots up in price real quick.

theatrus · Feb 27, 2019

Steven Garland said:
I looked into it a few weeks ago,overall they look really promising. With you use the 405nm prices aren't bad. Anything else and it shoots up in price real quick.

Sadly the Luxeon UV line is still really expensive. But a nice upgrade in efficiency from a SemiLED

Lingwendil · Feb 27, 2019

Oh no-

"Hello Anthony,

Unfortunately, we can only provide bins if you order enough LEDs for a full reel. In the case of the Z’s, that would mean a MOQ of 2,000 LED modules.

Sorry that I could not be more helpful

Sincerely,

Ron Warris
Luxeon Star LEDs
http://www.luxeonstar.com
[email protected]"

Well, scratch that I guess.

Back to the original plan of ordering violet/blue 3ups from Steve's with a blank third spot, and separate cyans from Digi-key.

theatrus · Feb 27, 2019

Lingwendil said:
Oh no-

"Hello Anthony,

Unfortunately, we can only provide bins if you order enough LEDs for a full reel. In the case of the Z’s, that would mean a MOQ of 2,000 LED modules.

Sorry that I could not be more helpful

Sincerely,

Ron Warris
Luxeon Star LEDs
http://www.luxeonstar.com
[email protected]"

Well, scratch that I guess.

Back to the original plan of ordering violet/blue 3ups from Steve's with a blank third spot, and separate cyans from Digi-key.

Unless you place a factory direct order Lumileds doesn’t offer binning information. However you can expect their median bins in distribution, at least by past measurement.

One exception is the LXUV line, which you can find in at least two bins with distributors.

Lingwendil · Feb 28, 2019

Hmmm. I might just order from Steve's with a blank spot and try reflowing a cyan on there, but my initial thoughts may be that it isn't a huge deal. I just wish they still did them- they state that they can order some cyans but it would be $10 each to have them added to the 3ups, with a several week lead time. I'd rather try it myself at that price point and time frame. Both Mouser and Digi-key have the LXML-PE01-0070 cyan at $4.12 each if ordering onsey-twosey quantities. I'm still thinking that a 3up of cyan, violet, and amber (swapping out the mint) might be the final change I make to these.

On another note, my pendants are now up over the tank- I am running two channels for now with the previously mentioned driver loadout, blue/royal blue/violet on one channel, lime/white/mint on the other. The nice thing about the Synjet cooler is that it can run the control/PWM signal off of the same PWM driving the LDDs, so that's how I have it set up for now, tracking the white channel. I love how quiet these things are

Lingwendil · Feb 28, 2019

Man am I wishy-washy. I may just go for a blue-violet-amber from Steve's. with the higher-wavelength bin blues that they have, and call it good. Less fuss for these pendants. The big fixture I'm working on for the 40 breeder upgrade already has a couple cyan in it to play with, so I don't want to go through all the fuss, and the sunplus cool whites are actually pretty nice without added cyan, easily livable as-is, I just want some more cool blue, and rather than running the current one at 1A I'll add a second and run them both at 600-700mA or so.

Lingwendil · Feb 28, 2019

blue/amber/violets ordered!

Total final count per pendant will now be-
2x violet @600~700mA
2x cool blue @600~700mA
16x royal blue (1x k16) @500mA
1x Sunplus cool white @300~1000mA
1x lime @300~1000mA (might run in series with the white)
1x PC amber @300~1000mA (might run in series with lime/white, depending on how it looks when it gets here)

Realistically, if the "look" feels right off just driver swapping to tune color I may leave it as two channels, blue/royal/violet on one, white/lime/amber on the other. Ideally four channels would be "better" but once I set it to how I like it I'm not likely to fuss with it much at all. If I go four channels I'll likely break it out to white/lime, amber, blue/royal, and violet, with the non-royal colors doubled up to two channels per driver in order to minimize the amount of drivers and power draw from the power supply. With the eventual 40 breeder upgrade, and my love for LPS (it just so happens I don't ever end up with anything that has high lighting requirements) this will be a nice long-term temporary lighting solution until the "bruiser" rig is dialed in. Since I'm not looking for brute-force power, color and growth are my main concerns.

Kampo · Mar 1, 2019

look forward to seeing it running, my nano work tank needs to be done, just keep waffeling. I do have 5 K16s on order.

leaning towards a 12in Steves led bar with 2 clusters

2xK16 running in parrell @1000ma
2xFresh Fish running at 1000ma in parrell
4xHyperviolet @600
2xBlue @600 maybe on same channel as violets.

and calling it a day. kinda wish I could get a 3up with 2xViolets and a Blue

dantimdad · Mar 1, 2019

The three ups like that would be nice.

Lingwendil · Mar 1, 2019

The viosys violets are the standard semiLEDs/Cree 3535 footprint, so it would be pretty easy to do a 3up of them, but finding the multi-footprint lumileds/cree style stars is tricky. I think cutter did them a while back?

What dimensions for that tank the fixture will be for? 4x k16 and 2x fresh fish is a lot of power