Well my LEDs arrived today, so guess I will be building my Lights this weekend, I am no good with video but will document and take lots of pictures .
here is what I have for my grid, can anybody suggest a better layout ?
RB and CW are 60º optics, NW is 80º optics and UV are 120º no optics
looks good but i would recommend optics on the uv. You can judge that when you see their performance
[quote=“dunk, post:3, topic:5321”]
looks good but i would recommend optics on the uv. You can judge that when you see their performance[/quote]
+1
From what I have read the uv leds will need a optic because they get washed out with no optics.
Second you should make sure to under power the UV’s ledgroupbuy says to run them at 600ma instead of the 700ma they are rated for to help extend the life. Some people have burned them out with the full 700ma
i would under power all of them the rb’s are rated at 1300 i think and i run mine at 85% of .900 ma so really under powered just to be safe
My Plans are
UV rated @ 700mA max, driver is a constant current 700mA so I will just use as is.
RB Rated at 1000mA max will run at 900mA
CW/NW Rated at 1500mA max will run at 1350ma
Dimmed to match current par levels which I will test before I take old one down.
Hi Hudz. Im not up to speed on LED circuits. Does that mean you will have to use 3 ballasts for the separate channels? or can you use one big ballast, and 3 channel dimmers?
Just for clarity, what are the Nanometers and Kelvins of each type of LED you bought? are they all 3 watts? or what.
Would you consider a couple 640 nm reds and 2 turquoise? for flouresence ? I think if i built a long light strip with a large number of LEDs i would add a few accent color LEDs too. perhaps on a separate dimmer also. Just to have fun twisting the knobs.
Your plan looks like a good build. It will be interesting to see your PAR readings when its up and running.
And how your corals respond to the duplex of UV and RB spectrums. I think it should be good.
Ken it will be four drivers, one for white, one for UV and two for the blue. You can get stronger drivers and run strings in parallel but without some kind of protection you run a risk if you lose one string you could over drive the the other and blow all the emitters.
The emittersrs are all 3W Crees
RB - dominateint wavelength 465nm
UV - domaint wavelength 420nm
CW - should be around 7500k
NW - Should be around 4500k
I looked hard at other colors and may add them but have heard they are really hard to get balanced so if I do add them I would want each on a dimmable driver.
If you want the colors to be separate you have to do 7 each or maybe 8 on the lower powered ones
[quote=“dunk, post:9, topic:5321”]
If you want the colors to be separate you have to do 7 each or maybe 8 on the lower powered ones[/quote]
Na way to many, just use a resistor of the correct value to make up the difference
Def. too many of red or green. I would hate to waste a whole driver on 1 or 2 LEDs. How about the idea of a diff color along with them.
Hudzon,you didn’t answer my question,did you not want optics for the uv?or did they b/o yours also?
Did I miss something?dont you need a minimum of 8led per driver?of the same color?
You missed a lot! PBJ!
I did not want UV optics to start with, I will order if needed later. You can use as little as 1 LED per driver as long as you compensate with the correct resistor.
Looks like a good design how many of those are you building or how many are you running.[quote=“billrob71, post:16, topic:5321”]
Looks like a good design how many of those are you building or how many are you running.[/quote]
I’ll be building/running two of them for a total of 48 LEDs.
Oh No Mr. Frank!! Not resistors! I hate trying to figure out resistors. How do you do it and where do you get them? I’m really an electrical circuit clutz.
Some Progress, have the LEDs soldered and tested, I still have to add wire connectors and plugs and figure out how and where to mount the drivers, if all goes well, I should be mounting it this weekend.
