digital_gods

I haven't posted any work this week because I've been recovering from the trip to the San Marcus river. The good news is that my leds I ordered directly from the manufacturer has come in to the hub, ready for pickup. It's been a learning experience of all the hidden costs, mainly shipping and wire transfer fees. So far, no duty applied since this is a small value.

niko

Man,

Please do make sure you document how the plants grow under this light.

Virtually all DIY planted tank led light threads are overly excited about the technical part of soldering two wires, how cheap they got everything and so on and never really show the effect of led on freshwater plants in the long run.

Such a thread is desperately needed. Be the first one to write it!

--Nikolay

cturner

I'll be the first one to place my order once we see those lights making your plants grow like weeds! lol

digital_gods

I will keep a log when I put my first tank to test. I've invested a lot of money to ramp up the research. I got my large order of leds from the Hong Kong manufacture. What I'm designing is just more than leds glued to a heatsink. I'm taking this project from the gound up with cost consideration and eco friendly in mind. My end goal is to have a microprocessor controller built into the light that will have the ability to have more realistic light cycle including optional mid day siesta for algae control. I got that circuitry designed out and parts on hand. Ideally for a power supply, I have found that power supplies from computers put out plenty of 12v DC but I run into the issue of my led strings only able to drive 3 leds per circuit and I have to use resisters to ruduce down to the needed voltage. I found that if I run my lights at 24v DC, I can drive 7 x 3w leds without a resister needed. This week, I'm trying to figure out how to double my voltage I need but while using a PC power supply.

I'll keep you posted.

digital_gods

We good news is that I found the plans to double the voltage, bad news, I need to build it to test it. If this works, then cheap computer power supplies will work for us. http://users.silenceisdefeat.net/~lg..._Inverter.html

B76

Keep it up brother!

digital_gods

Over the weekend, I took my previous rats nest design and turned it into a more professional design by etching copper clad, drilling holes and assembling it. I've design it to run 5 sets of 1w leds for my ten gallon as a test tank. I wanted to have 6 cool white, 6 warm white and 3 blue. This controler is using Atmel ATMEGA328-PU microprocessor. I'm planning on loading Arduino bootloader on the chip so I can upload new programs to it easily. What I've done, anyone can easily replicate using Arduino Uno rapid prototyping board from Radio Shack. You would need a uno prototype sheild, 510 mosfet resister and 10k ohm resisters. (Note: Sparkfun.com has good tutorial on using mosfet with arduino) The reason I've chosen to make a custom design is to cut costs because I have so many tanks. If you have a one or two tanks, Arduino Uno would be a better choice. I hope to get a little more development on the controler over the 4th. If anyone is interested, I have a copy of the arduino lightning code used is this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3zi...e_gdata_player Till next time, have a safe and wonderful forth of July.

B76

Rad! Looks promising. Excited to see your test tank.

digital_gods

Sorry I haven't posted up anything lately. I've been gearing up with the ability to produce high quality double sided boards. In addition, I've made some design changes that would allow my controller and drivers to support higher voltages. I think the max is 30v. This way I will have the option of using the board on 12v and 24v circuits. I've started research into creating a nano dimmer controller/driver combo. It will be for small tanks. The control mechanism is one adjustment knob to dimming of the light intensity.

digital_gods

I'm about ready to rock and roll. I have 300 x 3w leds instock, aluminum tubing from a old sliding glass door, all my supplies on hand except for my 24v power supply which is in route. I found a good deal in eBay 24v 120w switching power supply for $23 with free shipping. http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item...d=190690922681 Just a recap of why I'm going with 24v power supply. With my leds voltage requirement being 3.2-3.6v ea, I can run 7 leds in a series connected to 24v which decides out to 3.4ea, exactly what is needed. With the even distribution of voltage, a driver is optional in this case. Otherwise, you could wire them to the power supply and use a basic timer to control the lights. The reason I'm choosing to use my controller/driver combo so I can control my leds output on a regular schedule.

I got 2 builds coming up this weekend. 1st one is redoing the leds in my frog habitat. I am down to 2 functional leds left from using regular epoxy. I will be fully documenting the process. The other light will be for my sons planted marine aquarium. Again I will be documenting the build process. The only difference is additional blue leds and more protection against salt corrosion.

Check back soon.