Melted AI prime

[JVU]

Kessil is really for people who like "blue" tanks. I don't.
Yes, they are adjustable, etc. But you can tell.

Hmm I totally disagree with this. I‘m not in the super-blue camp and I use Kessils. I have them ramp from blue in the morning to white in the midday when full strength then back to blue in the evening, then moonlight. I’m not saying you should get Kessil, just that having Kessils and preferring more balanced lighting are not at all incompatible, not even a tiny bit. There is no reason besides taste why a Kessil user would run their tank more or less blue than anyone else using a different kind of light. Including DIY.

I would say it is more that you don’t really care for the features Kessils offer at the premium price point, which is completely fair.

 

[rygh]

Hmm I totally disagree with this. I‘m not in the super-blue camp and I use Kessils. I have them ramp from blue in the morning to white in the midday when full strength then back to blue in the evening, then moonlight. I’m not saying you should get Kessil, just that having Kessils and preferring more balanced lighting are not at all incompatible, not even a tiny bit. There is no reason besides taste why a Kessil user would run their tank more or less blue than anyone else using a different kind of light. Including DIY.

I would say it is more that you don’t really care for the features Kessils offer at the premium price point, which is completely fair.

Good points.
Do you have the Tuna SUN or Tuna BLUE??

What I see missing in Kessil is some of the ambers, reds, and greens.
Especially seen in fish, since they do not fluoresce.
It is not so much about the white itself.
Of course that is personal opinion. My day job tends to make me picky...

Another issue, was that you had to really tweak the levels to get it white enough.
It was clearly built to look fairly blue.
It can produce white, but that meant over-driving some LEDs, and under-driving others.
And over-driving LEDs is not good for longevity.

One of the best ways to visually compare lights:
Find some of those old plastic ATI tester color cards, with various shades of red, yellow, and green for ammonia and nitrate.
Look at them under Kessil, set to the white balance you like.
Look at them under lights that emphasize balanced spectrum.
Look at them outside in the sun.
Compare how well you can differentiate the various color shades.

That said: It has been a few years since I really checked Kessil closely. They very likely improved things, and the Tuna-White did not exist.

--

Not so worried about price.

Since I want more spread, I would probably want 2x Kessil 160, instead of 1 x Kessil 360. But the 160's are older and do not have Tuna-White.

Kessils heavily rely on fans, and right now I am on an anti-fan rampage.

 

[Ibn]

Let me know if you guys want some spare LED parts/clusters to play around with. These parts are from my old 36" Maxspect Recurve, which shorted out, when the fixture fell into the water.

Still have the ballast in the garage and these parts were pulled off the light. I cleaned the covers for the cluster and stashed everything into a ziplock bag.

 

[JVU]

Good points.
Do you have the Tuna SUN or Tuna BLUE??

What I see missing in Kessil is some of the ambers, reds, and greens.
Especially seen in fish, since they do not fluoresce.
It is not so much about the white itself.
Of course that is personal opinion. My day job tends to make me picky...

Another issue, was that you had to really tweak the levels to get it white enough.
It was clearly built to look fairly blue.
It can produce white, but that meant over-driving some LEDs, and under-driving others.
And over-driving LEDs is not good for longevity.

One of the best ways to visually compare lights:
Find some of those old plastic ATI tester color cards, with various shades of red, yellow, and green for ammonia and nitrate.
Look at them under Kessil, set to the white balance you like.
Look at them under lights that emphasize balanced spectrum.
Look at them outside in the sun.
Compare how well you can differentiate the various color shades.

That said: It has been a few years since I really checked Kessil closely. They very likely improved things, and the Tuna-White did not exist.

--

Not so worried about price.

Since I want more spread, I would probably want 2x Kessil 160, instead of 1 x Kessil 360. But the 160's are older and do not have Tuna-White.

Kessils heavily rely on fans, and right now I am on an anti-fan rampage.

I have 8x A360x’s (Tuna Blue) over my display. Tuna Sun is for freshwater I think. They are completely adjustable. It does lock in the spectrum required for photosynthesis (aka Kessil Logic), but other than that you can easily adjust to any visible color you want. Deep blue, bluish, white, red, green, whatever. It isn’t hard to make it look white, you just turn a knob, real or virtual in the app. I can show you sometime if you want.

As far as I know they aren’t over-driving anything, if by that you mean driving an LED beyond it’s normal operating parameters and risking shortening their life, but I don’t have any real info about that. Obviously the total PAR output and watt usage would be expected decrease if you tweak to extremes (including blue).

They do have fans since their LED arrays are tightly grouped they need to be proactive about cooling. I haven’t heard of Tuna White before, but I’m guessing you mean Tuna Sun? The newer lights are much better than the older ones if you haven’t looked at them recently.

 

[H2OPlayar]

What I see missing in Kessil is some of the ambers, reds, and greens.
Especially seen in fish, since they do not fluoresce.

Another issue, was that you had to really tweak the levels to get it white enough.
It was clearly built to look fairly blue.
It can produce white, but that meant over-driving some LEDs, and under-driving others.
And over-driving LEDs is not good for longevity.

I run 2x AP700's and really like the ability to bring out more of the reds and greens with the app. I have different app settings based on if I want "sunlight", "deep blue", or "just a little blue, but more of everything else"

That being said, the spread is good, but it could be improved with a larger array of LED's, which seems to be their style and reason for fans. The fans don't bother me as they are dead silent compared to the rest of my tank.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Let me know if you guys want some spare LED parts/clusters to play around with. These parts are from my old 36" Maxspect Recurve, which shorted out, when the fixture fell into the water.

Still have the ballast in the garage and these parts were pulled off the light. I cleaned the covers for the cluster and stashed everything into a ziplock bag.
View attachment 27735

I wonder if the lights themselves got zapped, or just the electronics (drivers) that did it. I'm kind of curious about the long stretch of LEDs the "fluorescent" bulb part.


Gotta ask... how did it fall in the water? Failure on mounting/hang? Or "user error" ?

 

[rygh]

As far as I know they aren’t over-driving anything, if by that you mean driving an LED beyond it’s normal operating parameters and risking shortening their life, but I don’t have any real info about that. Obviously the total PAR output and watt usage would be expected decrease if you tweak to extremes (including blue).

The longevity / power plot of an LED is fairly linear.
So if you slightly over drive, like driving a 5W LED at 5.2W, it gets linearly worse. It does not die really fast.
There is a breakdown point, but that is different.

But that also means there is a big difference if you drive it lower.
For example, a 5W LED driven at 2.5W can last twice as long as one driven at 5W.

Now if I was designing a light...
I would design it to the "most common" setting, such that all LEDs are running about half level.
That gives you longevity. But more importantly, a large range of current you can adjust.
It allows you to have an app that cranks settings up/down substantially, to tweak the color.

What that means:
All of those LEDs may have lasted 5 years at that 2.5W level.
But by tweaking the color, some are running maybe 4W now.
It will not kill the light by any means, but you are definitely shortening the lifetime for those being driven harder.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Not sure how things have changed, but used to be LED life spans (e.g. from Cree data sheets) were based off a set temperature (can't recall it off the top of my head) and a current of 300mA. So you have a 3.3V drop of the LED x 300mA you get your "1 watt" LED, so any more than that is considered "overdriving" even if they are spec'd out to take up wards of 1500mA, so your 1500mA x 3.3V is your "5 watt" LED, and and ~1A x 3.3V would be your "3 watt" LEDs. Now how that changed or changes with multi-emitter chips like COBs I couldn't say, but I imagine the "rated lifespan" is similarly rated at lower current levels.

Ultimately though I don't know if rated lifespan that lighting fixture manufacturers base on are based on the spec sheets of the LEDs, or if they do any accelerated testing of the fixture.

 

[Ibn]

I wonder if the lights themselves got zapped, or just the electronics (drivers) that did it. I'm kind of curious about the long stretch of LEDs the "fluorescent" bulb part.


Gotta ask... how did it fall in the water? Failure on mounting/hang? Or "user error" ?

Ah, you're probably wondering about the "wings" that attaches to the central cluster of LEDs. Here are the three parts of it. The aluminum wings themselves, the LED strip, and the cover. The LED strip sits in the black recessed groove on the wing there and then that's covered up with the cover.

The leads are all on the right hand side; here's a closer shot of when it was attached.

I'm guessing that it's the board that's bad on it, but I don't know enough about electronics to fiddle with it. Plus it's all pulled apart now.

As for how it was shorted, human error. I was working on the tank and was finishing up and was about to put the light back on. The fixture sits on the tank via legs, but I missed the edge of the tank and that side dipped into the water. Pulled it out, but it was already too late by then. I'm currently reusing the legs to hold up a Radion G4 Pro over my 20G instead. I've been making sure that the same thing doesn't happen with the Radion as it did w/the Maxspect...