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Author Topic: My winter led project  (Read 2632 times)

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Offline CoralBeauties

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My winter led project
« on: March 23, 2016, 23:02:43 »
I thought that I would share my led project that I just finished. I bought merlin3 old diy led light.  I stripped out the light and reused the leds and ardurino controller.  It has been a night mare trying to rewire it all and figure out the ardurino controller. Im not the best tech junky so my brain was fried several times along with several moments of the magic smoke that comes out of electronics on occasion. :not speak:  My old setup was all cree leds on 3 different 9x14 sinks. I had them all running on nondimmable drivers. I wanted to add more leds but my sinks were already full with 47 leds per sink. I ended up adding 6 2x14 sinks with 11 leds on each sink. I wired them all the new leds in 7 different strings with each color on a different string so I can control it with the controller using ldd drivers. I did royal blues, blues, greens, whites, and reds. I found small 2in muffin fans for each of the new sinks for cooling. I am anxious to get my hands on the clubs par meter to see what kind of par I am getting. I was getting 600 par six inches below the surface with my old lights so really curious to see what they are now. I have a 180 gallon tank that now has 206 3 watt crees. This project  added 66 more leds to the system and allowed for full dimming of all my led strings.
Jeff



Offline soldiers4christ50

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Re: My winter led project
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2016, 02:14:58 »
The par meter should be available. Returned it to lazy yesterday. Looks sweet and confusing lol. 👍🏻

Offline CoralBeauties

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Re: My winter led project
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2016, 06:38:09 »
Yes I had more then one headache over it. I picked up the meter late last night. Took one quick reading on my orange crush and it was at 700 par.  I'll post some better readings later.
Jeff

Offline soldiers4christ50

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Re: My winter led project
« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2016, 06:44:53 »
Good deal👍🏻 your tank looked great before the upgrade. I'm sure  this will only make it look even better. 😀

Offline soldiers4christ50

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Re: My winter led project
« Reply #4 on: March 24, 2016, 06:45:35 »
By the way the purpliciuos is doing good so far. Thanks for the great deal.

Offline CoralBeauties

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Re: My winter led project
« Reply #5 on: March 25, 2016, 16:07:37 »
By the way the purpliciuos is doing good so far. Thanks for the great deal.
Glad to hear the coral is doing well.
  I did some testing with the par meter yesterday.  The par meter shows the bad aspects with leds.  The par readings are very random with different coral placements according to what led is above it.  I can move the meter from one side of a coral to the other and can get 100 to as much as 200 par difference.  If directly under the royal blues the reading is always higher.  My orange crush is reading as high as 800 par on the back side of the colony and 700 at the front.  I have optics on my 2 outside sinks and they have quite a bit higher par readings.  so even though the optics increase the spotlighting of each led it clearly increases the par output.  I will watch how the corals react to the increased light output to judge if I will need to turn down the output.
Jeff

Offline muttley000

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Re: My winter led project
« Reply #6 on: March 25, 2016, 20:09:30 »
Really like the angled arrays on those, great idea I will steal someday!

Offline lnelms2

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Re: My winter led project
« Reply #7 on: April 13, 2016, 22:53:11 »
I wish I knew something about wiring led's. Definitely my weakest DIY skill

Offline CoralBeauties

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Re: My winter led project
« Reply #8 on: April 13, 2016, 23:47:27 »
It isnt all that bad to figure out but takes some soldering skills and alot lot of time.   Honestly with the costs of some of the dimmable lights that are available now a days I am not sure that I would undertake a project from scratch. 
Jeff

 

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