LED Light Hood Design

LCornelius

LCornelius

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Hi all,

I have decided on running LEDs on my new tank.
After much reading and input from forum members, this is what I have come up with.

So the hood will be 2m x 1m.
One of the big attractions to me is having sunrise/sunset/lightning and clouds!

The price of buying a unit this size is very expensive, so I did allot of reasearch and ended up with the following:

Controller:

Going to use 3 Typhon LED Controllers Typhon LED Controller Kit by BoostLEDâ„¢

These controllers can do sunrise and sunset, but it is build on a Arduino board and is programmable. I had a long chat with the owner of BoostLED and got a nice discount on the controllers, since I will be coding lightning and clouds then sharing the code as open source. I will also be building a web interface to controll multiple of these controllers. Will be a master board running slaves. I will also controll the master over WI-FI.

Order placed and should recieve the controllers next week!!!! :yeahdude:

Drivers:
This was a big issue, firstly SA suppliers should be smacked for poor service delivery and pricing. I will be using Mean Well ELN-60-48P drivers, 12 of them!
Each running 12 LEDs. Buying from US and paying half the price! Got some great service from RapidLED. If I buy in bulk I get nice discount

Still need to place order.
CPT people let me know if you are intrested in a group buy!

LEDs:

This was a difficult one, Cree vs. Bridgelux.
I chated to a few guys on the net and they had great things to say about both brands. Cree = very expensive Bridgelux very affordable.

I have decided on Bridgelux. Once again, buying in bulk will save you allot!

Still need to order, so open for CPT group buy!

Now some design pics:

hoodj.png


This is the outlay of my hood. 6 Drivers for white LEDs and 6 Drivers for the blue drivers.

controll.png


The above pic shows the schedules that the LEDs will use.
Keep in mind that the white drivers will always start sunset and then followed by the blue drivers. Sunrise will be the other way around. I will have a moving moon over the 6 stages of my light hood.

So what do you guys think?
 
Very cool! I would be interested but what kind of price are we talking here?
 
You might want to look at the LPF-60D series rather.

The ELN-60's are the very first generation of the supplies. They are not recommended for new designs.
Rather go for the LPF-60D-48.

I used the ELN-60-48P drivers for my LEDs and 2 of the 4 drivers had an issue. The Leds didn't turn off completely when you use a 0% PWM signal. After a couple of emails to their engineering team, they basically told me that I should have gone for the LPF-60D series as the other one is not recommended and because there isn't a "huge" issue, they are not going to replace them.

Meanwell Power Supply Products

Having half the LEDs not turning off completely irritated the shit out of me.

What are you going to use as a heatsink? If you run those LEDs at 700mAh or 1000mAh each, they are going to get real toasty, so be sure to have a couple of fans on them. Oh and don't be stingy on the heat paste;)
How far apart are the LEDs being spaced?

Hope this helped...
 
tjiPPi said:
You might want to look at the LPF-60D series rather.

The ELN-60's are the very first generation of the supplies. They are not recommended for new designs.
Rather go for the LPF-60D-48.

I used the ELN-60-48P drivers for my LEDs and 2 of the 4 drivers had an issue. The Leds didn't turn off completely when you use a 0% PWM signal. After a couple of emails to their engineering team, they basically told me that I should have gone for the LPF-60D series as the other one is not recommended and because there isn't a "huge" issue, they are not going to replace them.

Meanwell Power Supply Products

Having half the LEDs not turning off completely irritated the shit out of me.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, will follow it up with my supplier!
That would have pissed me off as well!
Glad I have not placed the order yet!!

What are you going to use as a heatsink? If you run those LEDs at 700mAh or 1000mAh each, they are going to get real toasty, so be sure to have a couple of fans on them. Oh and don't be stingy on the heat paste;)
Click to expand...
I have not planned that yet! Will still shop around for heatsinks. Will be running monster fans on the Heatsinks!

How far apart are the LEDs being spaced?[/qoute]

At the moment LEDs will be spaced 8cm apart, but I will first build a test hood for a 500 x 500 cube to get a better understanding of what I need to do. The guys at rapid led said my calculations is spot on, but will test first!

Hope this helped...
Click to expand...
Very helpful indeed!!!!
Click to expand...
 
lcornelius said:
...
I have not planned that yet! Will still shop around for heatsinks. Will be running monster fans on the Heatsinks!
...
Click to expand...

You can use aluminum U-stips from Builders or the like for the heatsinks and you can join them together for the correct width. They work really well and it's quite a bit cheaper than normal heatsinks. You should be able to buy the aluminum in 2m lengths iirc. At 8cm spacing and a couple of fans it will work 100%.

My diy Led unit had groups of 4 Leds with each group spaced about 150mm apart and running them all @ 1000mAh for 7 hours with 2x 120mm PC fans on only 9V kept the whole light unit quite cool. Length of unit was about 740mm I think.

Good luck with the build and ask if you have questions.
It is going to be a helse groot LED unit:thumbup:

Oh and keep us posted;)
 
tjiPPi said:
You can use aluminum U-stips from Builders or the like for the heatsinks and you can join them together for the correct width. They work really well and it's quite a bit cheaper than normal heatsinks. You should be able to buy the aluminum in 2m lengths iirc. At 8cm spacing and a couple of fans it will work 100%.

My diy Led unit had groups of 4 Leds with each group spaced about 150mm apart and running them all @ 1000mAh for 7 hours with 2x 120mm PC fans on only 9V kept the whole light unit quite cool. Length of unit was about 740mm I think.

Good luck with the build and ask if you have questions.
It is going to be a helse groot LED unit:thumbup:

Oh and keep us posted;)
Click to expand...

I will be using these fans: CM Storm Force Blue LED - Cooler Master

Was thinking of using those U-strips you talked about in your thread!
What do I ask for at builders?

Thanks for your response!
 
Wow great stuff...I agree that SA suck at cree leds ect....How much LEDS can I run on one driver as I'm very intrested in LED upgrade but importing alone is way 2 expensive...
 
Arries said:
Wow great stuff...I agree that SA suck at cree leds ect....How much LEDS can I run on one driver as I'm very intrested in LED upgrade but importing alone is way 2 expensive...
Click to expand...

On the drivers I'm going to use you can run 12 LEDs per driver.
 
What price range are we looking at??
 
Just got a quote for the Mean Well LPF-60D drivers, and they are much more expensive. Going for $49 each vs ELN-60-48P driver at $29
 
Have you spoken with the local meanwell supliers. I am nit sure on which unit, they quoted me about R300-00.
You can also look at the Inventronics drivers. With these you would be able to have less as you can alot more LEDs off 1 unit. They are also dimmable. Pricing starts at around $50 to $100.
 
wukkie said:
Have you spoken with the local meanwell supliers. I am nit sure on which unit, they quoted me about R300-00.
You can also look at the Inventronics drivers. With these you would be able to have less as you can alot more LEDs off 1 unit. They are also dimmable. Pricing starts at around $50 to $100.
Click to expand...

Thanks wukkie, where did you get the quotes from?
I got a quote from switches.co.za for R530 each.
 
I think current automation are the importers for Meanwell.
The Inventronics I got directly from them, Inventronics. If you need the spec sheets I can send them to you.
 
lcornelius said:
Hi Evo, what price are you looking for?
Click to expand...

You said that it would be better if we did a bulk buy.
So how much would a "unit" cost.
Unit as in 1 driver and the 12 Led's and what ever is needed to run them.
Also what size are they, so that i/we can work out how much i would need.
eg. you are using 12 drivers and 144 led's on a 2m x 1m area.
 
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