48" LED Array - Up and Running...Mostly

[Ron99]

Well I now have most everything I need to build this so here goes. I'll start with pics of the parts. Here's the housing (an old Hamilton housing with acrylic splash shield) the array will go into along with my 3 heatsinks and two lengths of aluminum angle to mount the heatsinks in the housing.



And these are the 8 Meanwell ELN60-48P drivers for 80ish LEDs (each can drive up to 13 LEDs), 80 Cree XR-E emitters (half cool white, half royal blue) and a bag of 60 degree optics. I do actually have some 40 and 80 degree optics to experiment with but I think 60 will be the way to go.



I forgot to throw all the nice stainless steel bolts I picked up into the pictures. What I still need are fans when I decide exactly what the configuration of those will be and some Arduino bits to make a controller. The plan is to program it to gradually bring the blues from off to full illumination over 15 to 20 minutes and then gradually bring the whites up over another 15 to 20 minutes for a nice gradual sunrise. Sunset will be the opposite.

So now to start drilling and tapping the aluminum angle...

[StirCrazy]

what are you using for a soldering gun Ron?

Steve

[hillbillyreefer]

Should be a nice setup when your done. Could you keep us updated on costs and suppliers too.

[banditpowdercoat]

OOHHHH Nice

very nice where did you order the kit from?

Bill

[Ron99]

Steve, just a plain jane handheld soldering iron. If I can remember where I put it when we moved in December

Hillbillyreefer and bvlester, the supplies came from different places. LEDs, drivers and optics came via the nano-reef.com group buy (better pricing that way). The housing was a freebie that was going into the trash elsewhere. Heatsinks were salvage/surplus from eBay (they aren't the prettiest but they were a third the price of buying a new heatsink and they'll do the job). Angle aluminum from a metal supply shop (Metal Mart; half the price for the same stuff at home depot etc. and they cut it to length for me). Stainless hardware came from Airarms (fastener supplier). The stainless bolts were like one third the price of the same thing at home depot

I really recommend buying supplies anywhere but one of the big box stores if you can. The stainless bolts were a great example. They were something like 40 cents each from an actual fastener supplier and $2.50 for a pack of 4 at Home Depot. Same for the aluminum angle. IIRC an 8 foot length at HD was $40 plus tax. Paid $20 at Metal Mart.

So all in so far I think I am in for around $1000 in parts, most of that being spent on the LEDs, optics and drivers. A couple of fans will cme from computer suppliers; probably NCIX or similar and the Arduino parts will probably be ordered from robotshop.ca.

[donlite]

Hi, I own a company Sensa-Light Ltd. We do custom lighting. The LED set up you have looks good, but it looks like you have good heat dissipation from the heat sinks. If you can hook up a "K" probe ( most cheap ohm meters will have or use one) and test the heat you may be able to forget the noisy fans.

I am using 1 watt lumileds in blue and white combination to get about 14,000k
I think I have about 30 LEDS on a 55 gallon tank. The home made unit does not need any fans. Good luck, if I can help let me know, Don

[superduperwesman]

NICE! Want to build me a 6' one?? ahah

[rstar]

Tagging along! Keep up the good work, lookin good!

[Edmonton newbie]

looks great cant wait to see how that works for you, thinking i need something like that for my next tank