A sneak peak, LED lighting experiment

[OceanicCorals-Eugene-]

A sneak peak into what Ron and I have been working on for a while now.

With many hobbyists looking to save money on the LED emitters, we have decided to test out 4 different emitters, and using a brench mark emitter such as the CREE XR-Es to show if it is actually worth while or even efficient to use other brands for our application.

Generic Chinese Brand (there may be some higher PAR versions)
SemiLED
CREE XR-E
Edison

This test will allow us to see if its really worth saving the $3-5 on an emitter when paying $6 or so for the CREEs would actually benefit more in the long run as well as giving out greater PAR values.

The testing strip currently has: (fans to be added)

Generic Chinese Brand (there may be some higher PAR versions)
SemiLED
CREE XR-E

and a spare heatsink waiting for the edison starboards to arrive.

**Picture of the test strip running is useless as all the emitters end up looking the same, so until we get a chance to test the PAR (waiting for edisons to be hooked up) it is kind of pointless to show the test turned on.

If anyone is interested to see how different brand emitters perform we will have the test strip in the store for all that want to view it.

What we are going to do with this: This emitter test strip once completed will be put over a 4ft tank this tank will then have 4 pieces of SPS from the same colony as a bench mark coral. The experiment will show us and you guys(hobbyists) if investing in good emitters will be worth while and give all of us a chance to see how delicate corals such as SPS can do under LED lighting.

Some pictures of construction:

heatsink in place:


LEDs mounted:


generic LED with generic lenses (they dont stay so we had to use silicone to hold it in place)


all lenses up: