LED Lighting Help

[tylerandersen]

This will probably come off as me not knowing anything which is probably true with lighting. Does anybody know if it would be possible to separate the whites from blues as far as connecting to different power sources. I would like them on their own independent timer. I'm sure it's hard to say without looking "under the hood" as of now the lights come out the back as one line but have their own independent switches on top of the lid.

 

[Reefing Madness]

If they have their own switches but only one power cord, your not going to be able to seperate them that way. You'd have to put them on a 12v relay so that you could program that relay for what light you wanted on when.

 

[tylerandersen]

Ahhhh.. Seems like something I'd probably mess up haha. For now I have just a marina blue led that goes on but I would love to just use what's built in rather than adding that led by suction cup.. I'll have to do some research

 

[Reefing Madness]

If you just want the blue led look when the mains are off, then just use a stip led from ebay, thats what I have on my tank.
Aquarium Moon Light Waterproof LED Lighting Strip SMD 3528 300 LEDs 20 ft Blue | eBay

 

[tylerandersen]

I tried the led strips and there just isn't enough area to place them for the effect that I want. Is this the type of relay timer I would need?

 

[Reefing Madness]

No, you'd have to crack open the unit, to get at the wiring for the different colors, they'll have their own seperate wires from the on/off switch. Thats where you'd need to pull your siring for your timer. Depends on how they hav it wired up, you might be able to just exend those wires and put a plug on it, and you'd be able to just plug it into the wall, and use a normal light timer for it.

 

[tylerandersen]

Yes I had opened up the lid. There are two (-) wires coming from the metal sheet the LEDs are placed on. One controls the white and one blue. There is one (+) wire coming out as well. I'll have to open it again and take pictures. I thought maybe that timer would fit in between one of the wires in the lid or something (not good with this stuff). I appreciate your thoughts on this.

 

[Reefing Madness]

Yea, I can't remember if the on/off swithes are the low voltage or not, but thats what it is sounding like.
But yea, I guess the timer you have listed above will do the job for you.

 

[simonellis86]

if you wanted to independently switch the white from blue you may need to change the led driver for 2 new ones as you would be changing the amount of current on the circuit and splitting it across two circuits, but its hard to say without seeing inside the fitting.

 

[tylerandersen]

I will take a picture this evening.. Finally a day off! Thanks for your help

 

[tylerandersen]

Okay here are some pictures of underneath the hood.

Disconnecting green turns off white, blue turns off blue.. Any ideas?

 

[Reefing Madness]

Red must be the common then, strange!!
But there ya go, red and green are the Whites
Red and Blue are for the Blues

 

[newguy2014]

If all of the LEDs are powered by a single driver, you have only two choices. One - get two separate drivers in which you will have to figure out the voltage and amps for each string of LEDs and match with a correct driver( you will burn up the LEDs if you push too many amps and volts through them). Two - as previously mentioned, use two relays in place of the manual switches and wire them up to your timer.

 

[tylerandersen]

That is completely out of my scope of practice haha. Any idea where I could find a guide. Maybe it is easier to hook up the relays than I am thinking. I'll have to search the almighty google.

 

[Reefing Madness]

If im not mistaken you can still do it, you'd need timer or relays on both of the leads in, this would run either or of the colors. Can still be done. Your big timer can still do it I think, just by looking at it, it can run either side I believe, pretty sure its still doable using that 12v timer. You'd have to make sure you got that Red common wired correctly though. the driver is split, but its split there where you can see it. I'd still give it a go, I don't see a problem with it.
Most would have to look up your timer there, but its a 12v low voltage timer.

 

[simonellis86]

The problem you would have by just putting the timer in the circuit and switching the white and blue leds separately is that the led driver that runs the leds will have a minimum load current for it to run so if you take half the load off the driver it may not have enough load to run the remaining leds

 

[Reefing Madness]

The problem you would have by just putting the timer in the circuit and switching the white and blue leds separately is that the led driver that runs the leds will have a minimum load current for it to run so if you take half the load off the driver it may not have enough load to run the remaining leds

He would have to use the leads, that are tied to the wire terminal seen in the pic, not the actual colored wires. The terminal is where the power would be from.

 

[simonellis86]

The led drive will be able to run at half load thinking about it so all you need to do is run those switched negatives though your timer and it should work fine

 

[Reefing Madness]

Yea, right, he can also crack th driver and adjust it if need be, but its already running both sides, and we aren't doing anything different to the circuit but adding a timer to it. Im assuming that we can't see the driver, and its just out of eye shot, but connects to the terminal strip. Should be pretty straight forward I would think, maybe needing a jumper across the - side of the timer.

 

[simonellis86]

You would need the 12v + and - to run the timer and then the switched negatives that go into the existing switches into the common terminal of the timer switch and then the out going negative from the existing switches to the leds into the normally open or normally closed terminal of the timer (assuming thats how your timer is wired)(do you have a pic of the timer terminations)