48" LED upgrade

[Tom]

Originally Posted by davross

The LEDs are soldered to the stars so shouldnt ever come off.

The optics only cover the LED and not the star or wiring so its a good idea to have some sort of splashguard.

Sweet, cheers mate - thats helped loads when it comes to ordering my own! Think optics + mounted LEDs makes the most sense, good luck with your build its going to look slick!!

[devils_advocate]

I hope your working hard!

[davross]

Woah... busy day.......

Finished wiring all the LEDs today and built a test fixture to play around with spacing etc so got to see all of the LEDs running over the tank for the first time. There was good news and bad news....

The bad news was that with the LEDs layed out as originally planned the dim area in the centre of the tank was worse than expected and didnt look good at all. The good news is that I tried rotating the heatsinks the other way to give a 3 x 16 array instead of 4 x 12 and the coverage is much better so theres no need for more LEDs. Im very happy I went with seperate heatsinks now

I also tested the arduino and it worked perfectly.

Tommorow I will start building the fixture and post some pics.

Off to bed now.

[davross]

Photo of all the LEDs on heatsinks. Finally! I used some molex connectors to make it easier to connect.


I couldnt get any photos of the testing yesterday as I had to hold the temporary fixture to stop it going for a swim so didnt have a hand free for a camera. I will be working on the fixture today and will post some pics later.

[davross]

Knocked this up this morning. Its simple but should do the job perfectly well. Its built from MDF as I couldnt find any ply locally that wasnt bent or warped.




Primed, ready for vinyl wrap.

[devils_advocate]

Coming on nicely!

Cant wait to see more pics

[lenny]

hi dave looking good so far . can you tel me how high do the leds stand with the optics attached to them . what grade of wire is best to wire them together. ??ie from led to led.. also what size are your heatsinks l x w x d please.

[adambrum]

Looking good,

How did you find the light spread and colour, The reason im asking is that im about to start mine for a 60x18x24 tank, i have 36 cree xre r2,24 cree royal blues 24 60deg optics and 36 40 deg optics on order at the moment but still not 100% sure on layout and heatsink size.

As mines the same width do you think the 3 rows gives good enough spread front to back also if both the blue and white are at max hows the colour.

Thanks Adam

[davross]

Originally Posted by lenny

hi dave looking good so far . can you tel me how high do the leds stand with the optics attached to them . what grade of wire is best to wire them together. ??ie from led to led.. also what size are your heatsinks l x w x d please.

Hi Lenny,

The LEDs (on stars) with optics are approx 18mm high.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=6198 is the wire I used between LEDs. I have found it pretty easy to work with and it should be more than beefy enough.

The heatsinks are 200x150x25mm. I would have prefered to use 40mm think heatsinks but weight is an issue because Im planning to use the stock hanging bar the Osaka comes with. I will be using 2 80mm fans on each heatsink to help keep it as cool as possible.

[davross]

Originally Posted by adambrum

Looking good,

How did you find the light spread and colour, The reason im asking is that im about to start mine for a 60x18x24 tank, i have 36 cree xre r2,24 cree royal blues 24 60deg optics and 36 40 deg optics on order at the moment but still not 100% sure on layout and heatsink size.

As mines the same width do you think the 3 rows gives good enough spread front to back also if both the blue and white are at max hows the colour.

Thanks Adam

Hi Adam,

Using 3 rows there was pretty good coverage front to back. It was a little dimmer right at the back and at the sand bed but when finished the fixture will be about 8" above the surface (only 2" when testing) so I think the coverage will be great.

The colour blending was fine and I didnt notice any spotlighting at all. The only issue I did notice was seperate blue and white shimmer lines which is apparently quite common but lifting the array to about 6" off the surface helped a lot with that. I think its important to allow enough space for the colours to bend before they reach the surface.

The overall colour is a diffuclt one as it looks so different to the T5s. I think its going to take a lot of fine tuning until Im happy with it but on first impressions I will probably be running the blues at max with the whites a little lower.