DIY LED Using 10 Watt Arrays

[mike31154]

A few additional photos showing the 5050 SMD LED RGB strip lighting I recently added to the fixture. Since I don't have a controller running the 10 watt chips, I'm using the RGB strips selected to blue on a timer to provide a crude dawn/dusk effect. I suppose I could have simply purchased a straight blue strip instead of RGB, but the cost difference is minor & it's interesting to play with the different colour combos possible with the IR remote control pad & the RGB strip.

Close up of the strips mounted along the center rail of 10 watt emitters. I simply drilled/threaded the center rail alumiunum angle in 4 locations & used small stainless steel screws to attach the angle holding the LED strips.


This shows a bit more of the fixture with the blue LEDs shining.


Now for some shots over the tank with different colours. Blue, red, violet/purple and white (using all 3 colours). I've left out the green since it's not a colour one would normally use on it's own over a marine tank. Photos are all with respective LEDs at full power. They can be dimmed down to near zero with the 44 key remote control.








As you can see the 'white' shot lights up the tank fairly well with the 2 rows of 5050 SMD LEDs at full brightness. Each row sports 63 LEDs in segments of 3 for a total of 126 LEDs. I have 174 LEDs left on the spool to use on another project. Someone with a FOWLR could easily build a suitable fixture using additional rows of these. Could even work for a tank with softies & LPS. You'd have to mount them fairly low & pack a bunch of rows together, but the stips are available with various levels of water proofing, so that shouldn't be an issue. There are brighter 5630 SMD strips available, as well as less bright 3528 SMD strips. A fairly simple diy to either build a full fixture, supplement existing lights or dawn/dusk effect which is what I use them for.