DIY LED Using 10 Watt Arrays

[byee]

Mike,

Thanks for sharing you LED build.

I'm also in the process of designing me LED setup on paper. I will also be using the 10W LED's.......prob looking at 24 LED's for my 120 gallon reef tank. I will be using the Mean Well drivers instead of 12VDC 20A power supply with dimmers. I will also be just about finished building my programmable 4 channel light controller based on the Arduino PLC. The controller can be programmed to dim the lights throughout the day via PWM. The Mean Well drivers can be dimmed via PWM.

Did you design you setup with a 12VDC for simplicity? Dimming the lights is done manually using the dimmers?

Once again, thanks for sharing!

[mike31154]

Originally Posted by byee

Mike,

Thanks for sharing you LED build.

I'm also in the process of designing me LED setup on paper. I will also be using the 10W LED's.......prob looking at 24 LED's for my 120 gallon reef tank. I will be using the Mean Well drivers instead of 12VDC 20A power supply with dimmers. I will also be just about finished building my programmable 4 channel light controller based on the Arduino PLC. The controller can be programmed to dim the lights throughout the day via PWM. The Mean Well drivers can be dimmed via PWM.

Did you design you setup with a 12VDC for simplicity? Dimming the lights is done manually using the dimmers?

Once again, thanks for sharing!

Your plans sound interesting & it should be a great set up with the controller etc. A build thread to show your progress would be great. Not sure what your plans are with respect to livestock, but you might want to add a few more LED arrays for a 120. As you can see, my 77 uses 27 LEDs plus two strips of SMD5050 LEDs.

As far as my decision to go with constant voltage 12 VDC power supply, simplicity comes into play a bit, but cost was another consideration. One of the things I'd like to do in the future is put up a solar panel array for my home & this could potentially provide most if not all the power for my LEDs. Most photovoltaic systems are designed to produce 12 or 24 volts DC to charge batteries, so I could potentially run my LEDs off the solar array or battery bank. Need to keep in mind that the charging voltage will be higher than 12 volts to charge the batteries, so resistors in series with the LEDs would be needed. This is one of the reasons I chose 10 watt LEDs as opposed to the larger chips. Most 10 watters have a Vf of between 9 to 12 volts, so that keeps things really simple & cuts down on the amount of voltage conversion (drivers & other hardware) to run the LEDs. I see now there are a few 20 watt multi chips LEDs that have a Vf in that range. For now I like the idea of only having 2 power supplies. The number of electrical outlets I have available for my current set up would mean I'd need a few more power bars to run multiple Meanwell or other constant current drivers. I already have enough of a wiring rat's nest around my tank & more power bars to run multiple drivers are just not an option at the moment.

With respect to dimming, I like it simple there for sure. My dimmers are manual and I haven't touched them since setting the Vf at 8.5 volts for all the LEDs. I use digital timer power bars to bring the lights on line in a staggered cycle to provide a crude dawn/dusk effect. The RGB SMD5050 LEDs help in that regard as well. Less to go wrong, no programming or controller required and for my livestock, not much of a change from the blast of light they used to get from my old MH/T5HO rig.

For a larger future build, I might go a bit more sophisticated with the dimming, maybe. I'll certainly consider using larger, fewer multichips mounted higher up with optics. This would also cut down on the number of drivers, fans, wiring, etc required. By the time I get around to that build, I'm sure the price will have dropped even more on those, better spectrum & other innovations will be available. If I were to rebuild using the 10 watt chips, I might arrange them a tad closer together, like 4 inches on center rather than 4 & 1/2. Maybe even 3 inches. That would allow more LEDs & additional colours to be packed into the same area. I see there are now 10 watt chips available with blue & white on the same chip. Might also consider getting the larger heatsinks for them that don't require a fan. This seems to be the weak link with my build at the moment. I've replaced 3 of the fans to date & a few more are showing signs of weakness. A positive side to this issue is that none of the LEDs have burned out despite some of them running for hours with a stalled fan with no apparent ill effects. It may well be that even these heatsinks don't really need the fan to sufficiently cool a 10 watt LED. The open design with aluminum rails may have something to do with that.

Best of luck with your project, hoping to see how that goes.