sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
If you don't know my posting style, I start with a rather wordy intro/description of what I'm going to do, complete with side stories, and all the pretty pictures are at the end. So scroll through as you see fit 
Decided to throw around a few LED ideas I had rolling around in my mind. Next tank I want LEDs on, I might still have halides... might not, but either way my (soon to be) anemone tank will be my test bed for my ideas with my "next tank"
So bottom line is most of the builds out there I've seen involved either a huge hunk o' metal with leds evenly spaced, or some bar with LEDs evenly space, planar & linear, of which I don't particularly care for. I mean after all, do I really need all that light over the bottom of the tank if there's no corals there? Sure maybe some light, but not a huge amount of it. Basically the "next tank" is a pretty damn large foot print, and I'll be damned if I want to uniformly light the whole thing on my meager teachers salary
The idea really came about a long time ago, before LEDs really were on the radar, with some Japanese reefs that didn't incorporate a few big halides but rather multiple spot lights, with different color combos to make an artsy fartsy design. Now sure those tanks probably use a ton more electricity but this is different. So the idea of the spot light came about. Seeing the Kessil fixture really made me want to go in that direction, but being as Kessil's are a bit hard to come by.. and my inherent tinkering ability, I wanted to go my own direction, plus I really light the idea/looks of blue only "actinic" for certain times of the day, which is something none of the existing "spot lights" on the market do.
So how to go about it? Well one idea that was passed to me was to use buck pucks simply one per spot light, which seemed like a good idea, however never having used them, and from what I'm gather they need a DC input, seemed like making that idea work would be a little to problematic. Meanwell (or other AC input) drivers it is! But that'd be a waste to connect one driver that can drive 14 or so LEDs to one tiny spot light, so why not connect them? But remember I want some flexibility in my lights, perhaps move things around... so I thought MODULAR!
Now my ideas were endless, I can mix and match color schemes on any one "spot light" no need to worry about how any one thing is wired (beyond the LEDs in that particular area), I can simply add LEDs as I see fit (up to the driver limit of course).
So for my anemone tank which has a rather small foot print, 32" x 24" I decided with 5 "spot lights", the first one, which is more of a "main light" is simply a 6" x 6" heat sink with 9 LEDs on it, 5 royal blues and 4 cool whites. The other 4 I opted more towards the bluer end of the spectrum, and are roughly 4" x 4" with 5 LEDs each, 4 RB + 1 CW. The whites are going to be driven at 1050mA compared to the blues 700mA, so it won't be overly blue, just leaning heavily in that direction, plus I experimented over the temp tank, with 10 blues to 3 whites and while the blues are more spread out the overlap areas have a decent color.
Now this is the key component to my modular system, a polarized ballast disconnect, basically it has unique male/female ends, and the polarized part simply means there's only one way to plug them together. They ordinarily handle 18 gauge wire which is more than sufficient for wiring, which I get from "thermostat wire" (simply pull the wires out of their outer envelope), so all is well. Had to be a bit careful in the way I connect wires to the disconnects, however I figured out a way that is "stupid proof" meaning that if wire anything up wrong it still will work. Note: it is pretty stupid to unplug/plug in while power to your driver is on (I know from experience)
So here's 5 blues and 4 whites all wired up, each color of course has a separate in/out. I wrote that on the heat sink simply so I remembered how to wire each disconnect as that is a critical part of this whole design, power must flow in the right direction! Optics are 40°, as I've found anything larger than that really spreads out way too much for my liking. There will be an acrylic shield over the whole thing too just to prevent any potential splashing on the stars. Colored the royal blue ones with a marker just for remembering which plugs go to which colors.
The back side of the heat sink which is the ugly side with all the wires coming through, I did this mostly to avoid a sea of snakes on the front side, but also to help limit any potential movement of wires. I also got the heatsink rather than try and make my own from C-channel at home depot (which does work, but for $10 I didn't feel like putting the effort in). RapidLED does have great prices, with really fast delivery times (they're over in Oakland!).
This right here is the terminator for any string. Basically the driver has the output positive, which goes to the positive of the first LED, then out the negative, to the positive of the next LED, etc.. + - + - + - well that last LED needs to come back to the negative lead of the driver, and that's what this does, allows the circuit to complete. BTW, the black stuff? Liquid electrical tape! Coolest thing EVAR!!!!!
So just to test it, I hooked the out of the blues to the in of the whites, terminate at the white out and fired that sucker up! Voila instant light!
Here's a fish eye view if they happen to look straight up!
Gotta build the smaller ones, and need to figure out how I'm going to mount these now!
Decided to throw around a few LED ideas I had rolling around in my mind. Next tank I want LEDs on, I might still have halides... might not, but either way my (soon to be) anemone tank will be my test bed for my ideas with my "next tank"
So bottom line is most of the builds out there I've seen involved either a huge hunk o' metal with leds evenly spaced, or some bar with LEDs evenly space, planar & linear, of which I don't particularly care for. I mean after all, do I really need all that light over the bottom of the tank if there's no corals there? Sure maybe some light, but not a huge amount of it. Basically the "next tank" is a pretty damn large foot print, and I'll be damned if I want to uniformly light the whole thing on my meager teachers salary
The idea really came about a long time ago, before LEDs really were on the radar, with some Japanese reefs that didn't incorporate a few big halides but rather multiple spot lights, with different color combos to make an artsy fartsy design. Now sure those tanks probably use a ton more electricity but this is different. So the idea of the spot light came about. Seeing the Kessil fixture really made me want to go in that direction, but being as Kessil's are a bit hard to come by.. and my inherent tinkering ability, I wanted to go my own direction, plus I really light the idea/looks of blue only "actinic" for certain times of the day, which is something none of the existing "spot lights" on the market do.
So how to go about it? Well one idea that was passed to me was to use buck pucks simply one per spot light, which seemed like a good idea, however never having used them, and from what I'm gather they need a DC input, seemed like making that idea work would be a little to problematic. Meanwell (or other AC input) drivers it is! But that'd be a waste to connect one driver that can drive 14 or so LEDs to one tiny spot light, so why not connect them? But remember I want some flexibility in my lights, perhaps move things around... so I thought MODULAR!
Now my ideas were endless, I can mix and match color schemes on any one "spot light" no need to worry about how any one thing is wired (beyond the LEDs in that particular area), I can simply add LEDs as I see fit (up to the driver limit of course).
So for my anemone tank which has a rather small foot print, 32" x 24" I decided with 5 "spot lights", the first one, which is more of a "main light" is simply a 6" x 6" heat sink with 9 LEDs on it, 5 royal blues and 4 cool whites. The other 4 I opted more towards the bluer end of the spectrum, and are roughly 4" x 4" with 5 LEDs each, 4 RB + 1 CW. The whites are going to be driven at 1050mA compared to the blues 700mA, so it won't be overly blue, just leaning heavily in that direction, plus I experimented over the temp tank, with 10 blues to 3 whites and while the blues are more spread out the overlap areas have a decent color.
Now this is the key component to my modular system, a polarized ballast disconnect, basically it has unique male/female ends, and the polarized part simply means there's only one way to plug them together. They ordinarily handle 18 gauge wire which is more than sufficient for wiring, which I get from "thermostat wire" (simply pull the wires out of their outer envelope), so all is well. Had to be a bit careful in the way I connect wires to the disconnects, however I figured out a way that is "stupid proof" meaning that if wire anything up wrong it still will work. Note: it is pretty stupid to unplug/plug in while power to your driver is on (I know from experience)
So here's 5 blues and 4 whites all wired up, each color of course has a separate in/out. I wrote that on the heat sink simply so I remembered how to wire each disconnect as that is a critical part of this whole design, power must flow in the right direction! Optics are 40°, as I've found anything larger than that really spreads out way too much for my liking. There will be an acrylic shield over the whole thing too just to prevent any potential splashing on the stars. Colored the royal blue ones with a marker just for remembering which plugs go to which colors.
The back side of the heat sink which is the ugly side with all the wires coming through, I did this mostly to avoid a sea of snakes on the front side, but also to help limit any potential movement of wires. I also got the heatsink rather than try and make my own from C-channel at home depot (which does work, but for $10 I didn't feel like putting the effort in). RapidLED does have great prices, with really fast delivery times (they're over in Oakland!).
This right here is the terminator for any string. Basically the driver has the output positive, which goes to the positive of the first LED, then out the negative, to the positive of the next LED, etc.. + - + - + - well that last LED needs to come back to the negative lead of the driver, and that's what this does, allows the circuit to complete. BTW, the black stuff? Liquid electrical tape! Coolest thing EVAR!!!!!
So just to test it, I hooked the out of the blues to the in of the whites, terminate at the white out and fired that sucker up! Voila instant light!
Here's a fish eye view if they happen to look straight up!
Gotta build the smaller ones, and need to figure out how I'm going to mount these now!
