In Two Minds, Led Help?

[Ps3Steveo]

They slot on top of the led bit you may have to glue them, 120 degree is a bit wide, I'm using 45degree the most you want really is 90degree of you use less and want to light more area, with 120 you'll waste loads of your light.

 

[NathanPrince]

Ah I'll get some 45's then, still doesn't help with whether you need 6 or 8 though so sorry for the hijack lol

Cheers though

 

[Ps3Steveo]

It's cool, I'll start with 6 and have 2 spare, might add two yellows for sunrise sunset effect.

 

[NathanPrince]

Should look cool mate, hoping to order my stuff this week once I build a hood to house everything in.

 

[Ps3Steveo]

Cool, I built mine weeks ago, wired up plugged in only to find yellow LEDs wasn't happy. Look forward to pics mate, getting new stock for new scape tomorrow can't wait then hopefully this week the lighting will be done.

 

[NathanPrince]

I got an idea of what I wanna do with mine, my dad's old wallpaper pasting table is being butchered to make my hood lol

Bet that was a gutter mate, all that waiting and they weren't what you ordered What did you decide on in the end for stocking?

 

[Ps3Steveo]

Embers and shrimp, had no choice my other tank that had the shrimp got contaminated with pesticides from plants and lost a load of shrimp esp not happy as lost both my high grade CRS too. So they all went in the new scape today leaving Eden with just Chilli Rasbora and a few un catchable baby cherries. New scape will have 1 Scarlet Badis, Cherry and Crystal Red Shrimp, already in and tomorrow about 30 Embers.

 

[NathanPrince]

Ah mate that sucks about the loss, I was gutted that one of my low grade cherries got stuck in my filter let alone a CRS!

Embers are a good choice, will be my next shoal that I purchase for the main tank,

 

[SuperColey1]

You don't glue the lens. you fit the lens into routed holes on the base of bottom of the unit you make and the LEDs quite simply clip into them. this way you can remove them and clean/have access to things. If you glue them and then need to remove the LED for any reason the LED will brak away from the star. They are pretty fragile in that regard.

With regard to the original question it's pretty easy to answer. Using 3W you aren't wanting to go for 8 because you would need to supply 24W power which means you can use 6 at max power or 7 at slightly reduced power

I don't think it's overkill at all. I think of it more as freedom. Yes I have mine high but I have the option to lower it and blast the growth out at superspeed if required. Also if you use the 7 instead of 6 the LEDs will be slightly underpowered and therefore last longer without being as intense as they are at full strength.

No point in getting 120º lenses. lambertian shaped LEDs (the hemisphere shaped die) is already 120º. The ones LEDworld2007 sell are lambertian Use 60º if they are close enough together or 90º if spaced a little further out.

p.s. hold alt down whilst typing 1 6 7 and you get º instead of the word 'degree'

Andy

 

[mishmash]

It's cool, I'll start with 6 and have 2 spare, might add two yellows for sunrise sunset effect.

Hi mate. Have you found a controller that can do this ? rise and dim over a variable time period ?

 

[SuperColey1]

Theres a company called RapidLED that seems to be the only one making anything decent in this area. However you have to use a specific driver from RapidLED with this PWM unit and it powers up to 3 series of 8 x 3W cree.

With that unit it can be programmed (separately for each of the 3 series) for timings, as well as fading the lights in and out. Its the only one of it's type I have sen and only for sale in the US. Costs about $50 for the PWM and each driver costs $15 or so. That brings you to $95 + shipping and you haven't even bought the LEDs yet. Then they've got to be Crees which are much more expensive than the Luxeon copies LEDWorld sell. lol

This is why I went the route of just using plug in timers and a 12V power lead for each series. The one I am doing in the summer to replace this will be a bit different as it will be 3 series of 6 x 3W (ledworld cheapies) Still on timers but just 3 series and 18 LEDs in total.

Nothing wrong with the current unit. Just a change of decor so I thought I would reduce the number of plugs needed whilst boosting the number of LEDs slightly. All the old electrics are going to be transferred into my 'emersed cupboard'. lol

Andy

 

[Ps3Steveo]

I glued mine as the LEDs wouldn't clip in to the lens's, I'm an electrical engineer by trade and deal with these things a lot but these are cheap luxeom knock offs so I wasn't suprised they didn't fit. Had to swap my 45's for 60 degree's to spread the light better and went for 8 in the end. Mine are glued in on one unit out of my 3 but I can still take them apart if needed, it's only got a tiny dot of glue from the edge of the Star to the edge of the lens backing, had to take them apart yesterday to changes lens's and everything went fine, the thing with using these is you need careful planning so you dint do something stupid that you'll regret. My friend went down the diy led route and epoxyed everything together to find he'd wired it up wrong, ended up replacing every led lol as it ripped the led from the star base lol. Sorry about punctuation I'm lazy this morning

 

[SuperColey1]

Did you get the lense holders from the same place as the LEDs? I got mine from LEd world and they said they would fit the luxeon copies which they did.

If what happened to you had happened to me I would have asked them to replace one or the other to get the 'pushfit' working without glue. LEDworld are pretty good at this. The first time I bought LEDs from them 4 of the 25 that arrives the dies were soft like silicon and smoky rather than clear. They asked for a photo and 4 weeks later 5 new ones arrived Good job I bout 25 to have some spares so it didn't hold the build up.

I'll have to make sure I look at this when the new lot come rather than put em in the storage until I need them. lol

 

[Ps3Steveo]

Couldn't be bothered with the wait mate, did buy from same supplier but it would have held me up, they even sent out yellows to start with (warm White) which I didn't ask for but as it's cheap I just bought more direct and within a week their here now, must be a valued customer lol. Bought so much from them to experiment with I have a lot spare so I'm lighting my workshop with them too and still have some left over. If any fail too I'd have whole stocks of parts for that plus building a few of these for friends so it's all good for extras .