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Here we go again...LED lighting again :-D

19K views 41 replies 17 participants last post by  Gomer 
#1 · (Edited)
Ignore the barrel distortion of the craptacular camera

(I offset it because of where the plants are in the tank)




Comparison
12x700mA K2 (top) 1x13watt AH Delux (bottom)


2weeks


3.5 weeks


Little shimmer video. While it doesn't shimmer quite as well as a single point source (MH), it does shimmer (multiple point sources). Later I may try using less emmitters at a higher current.
http://webfiles.uci.edu/algomez/K2/P1010001.avi

NOTE: while testing out the lights, I only run them at work to make sure there is no electrical/thermal issues (which there isn't thus far). ..so this tank has no light on the weekends!!!
 
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#29 ·
Exellent work!

I going to have to try these out. I like the high intensity from a small emiter. Great lighting effects.

Yep, LED's put out lots of heat. For the folks that don't know how to figure out the heat load the calculaton is a simple Ohm's law calculation. Per LED the waste heat is voltage across the LED times the current through the LED. Voltage in volts, current in Amps.

As an example, say that Gomer cranks up the LED's to 1amp. The power disapated using the typical voltage numbers from Phillips goes like this...

3.72 volts time 1 amp for a power of 3.72 watts for each LED. As there 12 LED's in use the total power disapation is 3.72*12 or 44.6 watts. This is a lot of heat to get rid of. If the LED's are at the max voltage that Phillips specs, the total watts would be 1*4.95*12=59.4 watts.

Another angle to keep in mind is solid state devices need to be kept quite cool compared to other variations of light generators. The lower the maximum temp, the larger the thermal emiter (heat sink) needs to be to get rid of the heat.

This much heat just about guarantees that a fan cooled hood will be nessasary.

Enough rambling for now.

Gary
 
#35 ·
hi I'm glad to see someone else who knows about Luxeon LED's. :) I wanted to do this as well but going PC was so much easier/cheaper lol...

Just 2 things, though lots of testing and proven results, the K2's appear to not be as good as the origional Lux III's, they were over hyped and fell short...Since they are cheaper than Lux III though they would still work great for this project, they just take mroe power to reach equivilant brightness and Lux III (I don't care what the spec sheets say)... They definately consume more power to get the same light levels of a decent Bin Lux III, but yea you can drive them up to 1500ma. They were a big dissapointment on candlepowerforums.com...

That said I hope you isolated the slugs if running in parallel, since no Luxeons slugs are actualy Neutral. (-) yes, but not neutral and it can cause problems in the long run if they share teh same heatsink.

Finaly, I would suggest, if you find the time to play around with the New Cree's they are much better than the previous versions and are Obliverating Luxeons in terms out output and efficiency! here is a link.
CREE | XLamp LEDs, leading the revolution in lighting

Check out Candlepowerfourms.com in the LED subforum. Crees are near low powered HID in terms of efficiency! I was thinking about picking some up since there is a group buy but I doubt I will put them in an aquarium light fixture.
 
#37 ·
Do you think the shimmer effect is worth the cost and effort? I may be able to pickup Cree's for $7.50 each if I act now. The only issue I can see having with them is they have a narrower viewing angle than the Luxeons. So I guess that would just require spreading them out a bit more.

Did you get the driver from future as well? Thats really the only thing holding me back...Driver Housing and reflector, heatsink and fixture lol...I can get the LED's already but could not think of anything to use them in. I wanted to make a Quad Cree LED Mag modded flashlight but the reflector selection is very limiting right now. So maybe this would be a better project? Then again I already have an aquarium light and it's alot easier to change colors with bulbs than LED's...

I was thinking the ultimate light would be a series of colored luxeons that would change color temperature with the light cycle. But the cost would be outrageous!
 
#38 ·
The shimmer is nifty. What I like is that I can pack a lot of light into a small fixture without the direct radiating heat of metal halides.


There is a guy offering the P3's at $6.75 each so I am thinking it over :)

I got my drivers from future for about $15 a pop way back when.
I am thinking of doing a dual driver cree setup where the second driver (50/50 blues) is dimmable.
 
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