baker.shawn

Check these kits out should give you a better idea of what you need. http://reefledlights.com/aquarium-lighting/led-kits/ .You only need a resistor if you need to drop the incoming voltage to the led. As far as a fuse i just wouldnt use a driver that can over drive the led's. If you what to put a fuse in to protect from spikes for example the led is 700ma and 1200ma short pulse you put a 1000ma fuse inline.

i just placed my order, here is what i got
18 cree XP-G cool white
18 cree XP-E royal blue
4 meanwell 60-48D Drivers
Thermal grease
18 65degree lenses
18 55degree lenses
4 powercords
pre-cut wire (garbage)

my total came to $430 after shipping and taxes which isnt too horrible. next i will be ordering my heatsinks which will run me about $60 bringing the total to $500. the sad part is im going to be paying more to ship the heatsinks then they actually cost... i estimate about $50 of additional costs, plus whatever its costs for the acrylic cover which i expect to be expensive

I am rather excited to see this come together. I hope you make me feel foolish for paying what I did for my AI Sols (that will be no small feat as I really do like my lights)!

im going to try my best!!
i know it may never look as pretty as a SOL so plan on keeping it inside my wooden hanging hood that i keep my current lighing in.
Once the light is built im going to attempt to locate a PAR meter for readings, aslong as what i make is putting out more PAR then what i have now ill be happy.

i went to my local electronic supply store today, what a fail that was. i dont even think the guy i was talking to knew what a cree was. he also has no suggestions on which connectors to use between my drivers and my units. but he is looking in to getting me a heatsinks. im hoping they will we cheaper then heatsink usa

where you from shawn, Google mouser and see if there is one close to ya. I can get heatsinks here local, And I getting my 40w rgba leds from mouser. Im going to build my own driver since there isnt any vast amount of them available yet and can get my pc boards made here also. Father-inlaws dad owns a electronics company here and i use to work for him so i still get free run of the shop there. But anyhow Mouser carries heatsinks in stock at most locations if you find on close. BTW how did the reactor turn out or did you scrap it. oh and if your in school hit up some the engineering students you may be able to cabbage some connectors from there or tell the guy at the electronic shop you need molex connectors

Oh and from everything ive read 70 degree optics give the best par ratings if you can change your order

Hey DJ I’m from London Ontario I googled that company and the closes is in NJ about 800km
im going to see if i can order from their website though, they have allot of cool things!

as for the kalk reactor it has sort of been put on hold, however i had to fill it up with more kalk the other day and i used way too much but the odd thing i found was i could now keep in on all the time and see a clear "separation" between white kalk and clearer kalk water about 2/3rds up so im going to keep it just how it is running on a timer mixing every 6 hours, I will be worrying about the wearing acrylic latter down the road when I make my 2nd prototype

ive also done reading about reflectors, on LED reef they have readings showing 70degrees work best; i believe this is true to some extent but in the end it’s all about how much overlap you have and about distance from LED to the point where the reading is being taken. 55/65 is the closest i could get to 70s for the xps but I admit I didn’t look too hard

I ran in to some bad news today, i was planning on using a DA ALC to control my 4 drivers, apparently the ALC doesn’t send a strong enough signal for 4 meanwells...so i may have to make my own controller....for now I’ll just to 10k pots and a wall wart

You can build or buy a signal amp to go between the rk and the drivers, Glad you said some thing because that was my plan as well, I will dig round today and see if i can find a kit or a schematic for the amp

here is what i found
http://www.forum.digitalaquatics.com...hp?f=21&t=7448
there is quite a bit of info in those 4 pages, however when it comes to those diagrams im LOST i have no idea what anything means

Yea that what i was talking about. Id say rk doesnt answer questions about because they would rather sell more alc units. If your interested in the electronic end of the hobby check out Microsoft visio you can build and test circuits on it virtually it a real cool learning program. But basically what they are saying is that the alc does have enough current to run the drivers. as simple as i can put it voltage and current are like two cups of water connected by a hose if you start out with the cups on a level surface half full (this is the constant) to get more current you have to raise the voltage cup therefor lowering the voltage( amount of water) to get more in the current(amperage) cup and visa versa. In this instants you cantrun the driver becuase the alc doesnt put out enough of either to get the job done so the amp takes the info from the alc(voltage and current ) and puts out a volt and current the driver needs in retro spec. Like a relay that runs your headlight in a car the switch in the blinker handle is low amp low volt but tells the relay to give the headlight the 13.8v and 3.9 amps to run the 55watt low beam. If this is below you or if doesnt make much since I apologize, I had a tbi a few years ago and im not as sharp or as well spoken as I use to be. If you have any specific ? about anything ill try my best to answer them i did 2 years of electronic eng in college but my head isnt what it use to be

it really isnt good customer service on there part, the simply have no comment at all.
it turns out i have that program already installed on my computer so im going to play around with it and draw out that circuit, im going to see if the guys at the electronic store know someone who can build this for me
well i sort of understand what your getting at with the cups, DC circuts was part of my physics classes for the past 4 years...clearly its not something ive retained

Shawn,

RC block your link to here, but I found it anyway. As for your question on RC I haven't measured the current on the LED's when I was working on this after they were all hooked up. I have 6 XPG, 6 XPE RB's, 6 XPE blue and 2 MCE RGBY LED's. I have the XPG's on one Meanwell and The RB's and blues on another and the 2 MCE's on the third. When they fire at about .9 volts they output 35 on the PAR meter at 2 feet when they are at 100% on the ALC they measure 410 on the meter at the same distance. On the kilowatt meter they are drawing 84 watts total at 100%. I don't think you will loose much if the ALC doesn't get to the full 10 volts. This was built to experiment with before building an LED system for my 100 gallon tank. Hopefully I will get to use it on the 42 gallon tank soon. If i get a chance I will hook it back up and see what the max voltage is on the outputs. I had it running on the ALC for a period of weeks without any issues, but since I don't have the tank setup to use them they have been powered off since. If you have any question about the ALC and Meanwells I hang out on the DA forums frequently so just PM and I will do my best to answer them for you.

The ALC was never intended to drive LED drivers when it was designed and released. At that time 2 outputs to a couple of dimmable ballast was about all that people were using. Most of the 0-10 volt ballast or divers use internal pull up resistors to allow the ballast to run at 100% when there is no control connected. These types of ballast will not have the issues that the ELN Meanwells have.

Danny

hey danny,

so it looks like either way im going to need a ALC, once i have my lighting all put together ill give it a shot, if its not working how id like ill make my opamp or maybe just buy another ALC it will all depend on my time vs money situation i truly see myself just shelling out 70bucks vs spending hours fussing with electrical..... exactly how DA wants it lol but really looking back on the past week ive probabuly spent atleast 5hours reading trying to find a soloution....just not worth it

On a positive note my LED kit is at the boarder going through customs as i type, depending on which boarder it is i expect it here tuesday or wednesday!!! i need to start finding my heatsink!

Are you aware of the Thomas Research drivers sold at Nanotuners? It may be cheaper to replace 1 or 2 with these than buying another ALC. I read another user was getting 7.5 volts max with 4 Meanwells. That is 75% so it should be usable with a new LED system until you can come up will an alternative.

Have you checked Heatsinkusa.com for the heat sink. This is the link to the one I used. http://www.heatsinkusa.com/products/...-Heatsink.html
The shipping was almost as much as the heat sink.

Danny

I’ve seen the Thomas Research drivers I’m not familiar with them but I don’t think it would be cost effective, I’m not sure how many drivers I will need but its safe to say 2 minimum +1 ALC unit ~$220+shipping, on the other hand it will cost me 150 for 2 ALC units but then I might also need a new PC4 which will take me over my 4module limit (ughhhh damN you RKL) I can always use a power strip and a couple timers i guess, If I got with 2 ALC units will be able to control white and blue independent on each unit which is a positive.

I’m still looking in to how exactly to wire a ML324 opamp, I’m going to start talking to people at school to try and get one made for me but I’m not going to worry too much about this till my units are built.

At Heatsinkusa.com it will cost me 34 for the heatsinks and 37 for shipping and taxes,

The good news is about I year ago the deli I was working at went bankrupt, after filling out some forms the government is sending me ~2800 for lost wages...even tho i got everything the company owed me, but I’m not complaining

Not sure that the one you need this is the spec's
ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM RATINGS
Power Supply Voltage (VDD to Vss) .................................................. .................................. -0.5V to +7V
Analog Input Voltage (IN+ or IN-)................................................. ................ (Vss-0.5V) to (VDD+0.5V)
PDB Input Voltage …................................................. .................................................. Vss-0.5V to +7V

running it at 7v for long periods will kill it think you need some that can run above that. Isnt 10v what you need for full out put?