JB`s LED Build Thread

Doesn't Radio shack have that wire?? What Drivers did you go for and what leds each and did you decide on series or Parallel?

 

Radio shack does have solid 18 AWG wire, but not multi-conductor like this. Plus it's stranded so it will be more flexible and should conduct a bit better.

For drivers, I went with the ELN-60-48D which I will be hooking up to 12 LED's in series. When I do my display lights, I may run one or two strands in parallel, but I'm not sure yet.

 

As I understand it for each ELN-60-48D you can run:
two strings of 12 XP-E for a total of 24 leds
one string of 12 XP-G for 12 LED's
Is this how you understand it as well?
What about the XML's on ELN-60-48D? I understand it is also 12 per?
How far apart are you going to set the LED's? I am thinking 2" on center??
What optics did you choose and why? I am thinking either 60 or 70 degree per ReefLeds par readings. Did you find the optics for the XML's?
What size heat sink?
Sorry so many questions, I am trying to finalize my order.

 

You can run 3 strings in parallel on the ELN-60-48, but you'll be driving the LED's at a 3rd of the current, so they will last a lot longer, but not output as much light. The ELN 60-48 is rated at 1.3 amps (though ReefLedLights.com says they actually do 1.7 amp), so you can drive XP-G's or XM-L's at the drivers full power, but they have to be tuned down a bit to run a single string of XP-E's in series because they are only rated for 1 amp.

The XL-M's are rated for a lot more current, so you can still run 12 of them off of the ELN-60-48, but they won't be driven anywhere close to their full capability (which should lead to longer life).

For optics, I went with the 80 degree optics for the XP-E's (there are no optics available for the XM-L's yet). When I do my display tank, I'll probably do with the 60 degree optics instead as there is less area for the fixture to cover.

For the heat sink, I went with a 18" x 8.46". Since I'm doing 36 LED's this is perfect for 2" spacing like you suggested. The 24" version would be perfect for 48 LED's.

I hear you on the questions, I did a ton of reading before I took the plunge and I'm sure I still made some mistakes... That's why I'm doing my frag tank first....

 

So did you end up with 26 XPE and 10 XML?
If you went with 24 XPE and 12 XML you could use only 2 drivers correct? But since you have 26 XPE this means they need two drivers right?

 

I got conflicting information on how many XP-E's a ELN- 60-48 could drive, so to keep things simple, I went with 24/12. I would have liked to do 26/10....

 

Can't you do 24 XPE (1) / 12 XPG,XML (1) on 2 drivers? I thought you said you were using 3 drivers, maybe to get full power.

 

Yes, you CAN drive 24 (or even 36) XP-E's off of a single driver.

I chose to go with 3 drivers so that I could have 3 independently controllable series of 12.

 

I'm not impressed with rapidled.com so far. I have not received any type of shipping confirmation or status update from them yet for the order I placed on 4/6. I placed all of the orders on the same day and I've already received the one from ledgroupbuy.com and the order from reefledlights.com is arriving today...

I hate it when you order stuff online and your order just sits there for days... /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default//emoticons/sad.gif

 

Heatsink, drivers, optics and the rest of the LED's showed up today.   I'm still waiting on the thermal adhesive and a few other items before I can get the fixture completely built, but there where still a few things to do...
The Heatsink is 18" x 8.46"  (and a bit heavier than I expected)...
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First things first, drew out a 2" grid with a pencil (so I can erase later).   Turns out that I don't totally suck at math...   Almost perfect for a 4 x 9 array of 36 LED's...
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Next, mark where the LED's go with a sharpie just in case the pencil marks start to wear away...
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Only thing left to do (for now) was mount my fan.    I picked up som 3/4" aluminum bar, 1/2" #8 self tapping metal screws, and some 90 angle bars from home depot.   For cooling, I robbed a 120mm fan from an old gaming PC case that I had lying around and a 12V power supply from an old Netgear router... 
This part was the trickiest part, figuring out how to get get everything laid out right.   The angle bars that I bought from Home Depot had 2 holes on each side and as luck would have it, both of them were right over the heatsink fins.   Luckily, I had some other angle bar lying around with single holes per side and they worked out perfectly so that the hole was right between the fins.
I mounted the aluminum bars first, then I laid the fan on top and pre-drilled with a metal bit.   Then I removed the metal bars, screwed in the fan from the bottom, and then attached the bars back to the heat sink.   Time to try it out...
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Worked like a champ!   Even the fan has it's own LED lights!
Tomorrow I will be mounting a small project box from Radio shack just to the right of the fan.   This is where I will attach the LED leads and the fan to the 9 conductor cable I bought...
That's it for now...

 

Ok, I apologize that I didn't document this process a bit better, but honestly, it's all SUPER easy and it's all documented in about 1000 different threads across the interwebs..
I basically have everything all done and working now.   The last thing that I need to do is build the cables to connect the dimming circuit on the drivers to my Apex, but I left the crimper tool at work so I can't actually hang it over my frag tank yet...
Anyway...
Here is all three circuits with the optics attached to the XP-E's.    I used 3 different color of 20 AWG wire so it would be a little easier to keep straight if there were problems or if I needed to debug it.   Luckily, everything worked on the first try.  
A few notes:
1) I was a bit messy with some of my solder joints on the stars and it came back to bite me when I went to put the optics on.   They fit very closely to the solder pads and if there is any excess solder or overlap, they wont' fit properly.   Luckily with a solder sucker and a decent soldering iron, I was able to clean up the joints pretty quickly.
2) I used some extra "L" brackets to add feet in all 4 corners of the fixture.   This allows me to turn work on the top of the fixture without worrying about damaging the LED/Optics.
3) I drilled a couple of holes in the middle and ran all 3 positive leads through one hole and all three negative leads through the other.   This made for a really clean install and it helped me a lot when I had to finish wiring things up.
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Here's what the top ended up looking like.   The 9 conductor "street wire" that I ordered worked out really well.    I attached a small project box from Radio Shack using another strip of aluminum.    I then drilled 3 holes into the project box for the wires (1 for positive leads, 1 for negative leads and 1 for the 9 conductor wire).   I used rubber grommets (also from Radio Shack) to project the wire and I used cable ties inside the box to prevent the wire from pulling out and putting stress on the connections.   The connections themselves were all soldered and covered with heat shrink for projection.   Again, the end result was a very clean install with no wires running everywhere.
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Here's the drivers connected to a box I built in order to test  the dimming functionality.    The output from the box is connected to the blue/white dimming leads on the drivers.
These drivers are rated at 1.3 amp, but are capable of much more (one of mine will do almost 2 amp!)   Because the XP-E's are only rated for 1 amp, the drivers have to be tuned down a bit.    This is a really simple process that only requires a multimeter and a screw driver.   Once you remove the top of the driver, there is a small potentiometer that allows you to make the adjustment.
Since I have 2 strands of XP-E, I adjusted 2 of the drivers to 900 mA, this gave me 10% headroom.    The XM-L's on the other hand can handle MUCH more voltage than the these drivers can put out, so for them, I adjusted the final driver up to 1.7 amp  (I may need to back off this a bit so I'm not stressing the driver, not sure yet).
Again, this is a very simple process that is well documented on reefledlights.com.
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Here's the circuit that is inside the black box.    This was probably the most time consuming part of the project, but only because it had been a while since I did any electronics work like this and it took me a while to get my find soldering mojo going.
How it works:
Vin/GND are connected to a 12 volt wall wart type power supply.   The power supply can be anywhere between 10V and 35V for this to work.     The LM317 is a voltage regulator that works in conjunction with the 10K potentiometer to create the desired output voltage.    The potentiometer is adjusted until the voltage on Vout reads exactly 10V (this is what the dimming circuit expect to indicate full power.
After creating/testing the circuit, I added another 10K potentiometer and put vOut/Gnd on the hi/low leads.     Then I ran another wire to the middle lead.   This wire and GND form your dimmable output.   Turning the potentiometer adjusts the output voltage between 0 and 10V which is how the ELN-60-48D handles dimming.
I realize that I just did a terrible job of explaining this, so if someone has more questions I'll be happy to answer them.
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Now, here it is at full power...   The photo makes it look about the same, but believe me it's not even close (notice how much darker the background is (that's the camera adjusting for the brightness).
On full power, these babies are BRIGHT.   In fact, they are so bright that if you look at them for more than a second or two, it's really hard for your eyes to adjust once you're not looking at them any more...   IMO it's much brighter than looking at a 250W MH.    It hurt my wife's eyes so much that she refused to even look at them now!
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Last but not least, I hooked up the hanging hardware that I bought from RapidLED.com.   It works perfectly for this application and at only $10, I'm glad a tried one out.   I'll definitely be using the same things for my display tank.
Here's the fixture hanging from my temporary setup that I used at Fall Fest...
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Once I get the dimming cables build to hook it to my Apex, I'll get it over my frag tank and get some pictures...
So far I'm VERY happy with the way they turned out!

 

Oh, one other thing...

A decent soldering iron makes this job a WHOLE lot easier. I was using a 40W soldering iron from radio shack and it was a total pain. Home depot sell the good "Weller" brand 40W soldering irons for $18. This was money well spent. The Weller unit (which comes with a very fine tip) made things much, much easier.

 

So I hooked it all up to the Apex last night and after a bit of re-soldering the dimming cables, everything works perfectly. I'm still trying to figure out how to get the Apex to do what I want it to do, but I'm getting there.

I do have one criticism of the DIY route vs the AI units... The ELN-60-48 drivers lack control between 0 and 10% output. In other words, anything less than 10% and they shut off. This means that if you want to use it for moonlights, they are going to either be really bright moonlights, or you have to tune the driver way down...

Another thing that would be really nice is if the DIY setups weren't second class citizens in the Apex. The weather profiles only work for the AI. It would be nice if something similar would be made available for DIY drivers.

 

The fixture is now done and hanging over my frag tank... I'm pretty thrilled with how it turned out. When the royal blues are on by themselves, the colors in the tank just POP. When all 3 series are on and the cool whites are on about 60% power, the tank looks almost exactly like my phoenix 14K bulbs...

Now I just need to make 3 more for the display tank...

 

nice write up! how about a final pic?

 

Nice build. I think that thing looks clean and sleek. Do you mind throwing out the total cost to build it? You need to stop over soon and check things out overhere.

 

Thanks guys,

I tried to take some pictures of the frag tank, but my crappy point and shoot camera didn't really do it justice. I'll give it another try and if they turn out any better, I'll post it.

The total cost for this build was just over $400. I'm planning on a slightly modified versions for my main tank that should be a little over $350 each.

So, for 33% less than the AI fixture, you can build one that has 33% more LED's. The down side is that it's not as controllable as the AI units. It can't do the weather simulation (at least not yet) and it can't be used for moonlights (minimum current from the drivers is too high). For me, this is a better choice than AI, but I definitely see the AI as a fairly priced given it's capabilities.

Over the coarse of 10 years, these units will pay for themselves just from the cost of bulb replacements (assuming replacement every 18 months which is pretty long). When you factor electricity in the mix, the ROI should be around 2 years.

-JB

 

i just put in an order to rapidled for 3 kits of 36 ultra premium. After heatsinks and fans the total bill was about 1200. i thought about going the AI route, but was nervous that 24 were not going to cut it on a 180.

 

Thanks for the writeup. I was/am totally interested in this.

 

Well, I've begun the process of acquiring the parts for my display tank LED fixtures.  I'll be doing things a bit differently this time around...





[list type=decimal]
[*]2 controllable channels instead of 3
[*]24 XP-E Royal Blues (I'm dropping the XP-E whites).
[*]For the cool whites, I'm going with 12 XP-G with optics rather than the XM-L's (The XM-L are great, but more expensive and I think the addition of optics should make up for the difference in performance).
[*]The XP-E's will be run in 2 parallel series of 12.   This allows me to get away with 1 less driver per fixture.
[/list type=decimal]