Michigan Reefers banner
12K views 30 replies 10 participants last post by  sstazman 
#1 ·
Well.. I am relatively a new reefer (around 7 months) with a small simple 14 gallon biocube. Just like every other reefer, I too wanted to get into LED to get better color, lower power consumption, long life and better control. This is the summary of my LED build.

Plan....
  • 3 Cool White Cree XP-G
  • 2 Natural White Cree XP-G
  • 5 Royal Blue XP-E
  • 1000mA dimmable buckpucks with PWM input.
  • 5.75"x9" Heat sink with longitudinal fins
  • Cooled by Stock fans
  • Dawn to dusk light control with Arduino
  • Entire system turned on with a simple wall timer
  • Use power supplies hanging around. Laptop charger for LED, small 9v power supplies to arduino, and 12v power supply to fans.

Basic logic is that timer will turn on arduino and fans simultaneously. Arduino will start internal clock and take control of the lights until until dusk followed by system shut off by the timer. Future plan to replace the timer with RTC module.

Schematic...


Got my LEDs from ledgroupbuy real cheap. Around $5 for whites and $4 for RB. Arduino from eBay. Buckpucks from rapidLED. Thermal paste also from ledgroupbuy. Screws and nylon washers from Ace hardware.



Drilled and tapped the heat sink for #4-40 screws. I wanted to keep the white and blue as pairs to reduce color shadowing. Drilling and tapping is real easy and you dont really need a bench drill. My handheld drill did the job without breaking a single drill bit.


Soldered the LEDs into two circuits. Bought a aluminum strip from LOWES to make two simple brackets to attach the heatsink to the hood. Here is the finished product mounted in the BC14 hood. What you see below the heat sink is a little plastic baffle to force air through the fins instead of taking a short cut.


Sorry couldnt snap photos in between. Next is to program the arduino. I had little trouble getting the driver installed. Everything else is super easy if you have little background in C programming.

Hooked up everything to test the setup.


Worked like a charm.. I can ramp up and down blues and whites independently. Blue light made my clowns go blonkers and finally settled with both white and blue ramp up and down together. Will fine tune later. This is my current schedule.

  • 30 mins lights ramp up to 2%. This happens around 1 pm
  • Next 2 hrs lights ramp up to 50%
  • Continue 50% intensity for 6.5 hrs (day time)
  • Ramp down to 2% over 2 hrs
  • Ramp down to 0% over last 30 mins

And this is the final product..


Now I am ready for SPS. :)
 
See less See more
7
#2 ·
Total cost around $150 which include Arduino controller and shipping. Of course I didnt have to buy power supplies. I might buy 24V x 2A switching power supply for $14 from eBay.

Future plan is to add an LCD display to show the reef clock, light intensity and perhaps tank temperature.

Comments and questions welcome. :)
 
#9 ·
I currently have leds but am intrigued by your use of the arduino. My plans would be different than yours in a few ways, the main one being size. Does the number of leds matter as to which arduino you purchase? If I wanted to run my fuge and DT on opposing cycles would I need two separate units? Since I would be running the leds (at least a percentage of them) 24 hours a day would I need a timer, or could the arduino be used as the timer? Also how detailed can the programing be, could I set it to alter the length of days for the seasons and set the brightness of the lunar lights to simulate the phases of the moon?

Thanks in advance, I might even have to pick your brain when it comes to the programming, I am fairly confident I can work my way through that though.
 
#10 ·
Wuton:

I currently have leds but am intrigued by your use of the arduino.
I wanted to control blues and whites separately. People usually do it with two power supplies and separate timers etc. Instead of investing on additional power supply, I thought of using Arduino micro controller to do the job with one power supply and you get ramping up down feature for free. Arduino gives you multiple PWM outputs which can be fed to buckpucks to control current output on each circuit. That was my logic. I paid around $20 for Arduino (eBay from Hongkong).

Does the number of leds matter as to which arduino you purchase?
Nope. I used Arduino Dueminalove. I believe it has 6 PWM pins which will give you ability to control 6 different circuits. Of course you can use do many other things with Arduino such as turning on equipment via relays etc.

If I wanted to run my fuge and DT on opposing cycles would I need two separate units? Since I would be running the leds (at least a percentage of them) 24 hours a day would I need a timer, or could the arduino be used as the timer? Also how detailed can the programing be, could I set it to alter the length of days for the seasons and set the brightness of the lunar lights to simulate the phases of the moon?
Yes you can use just one Arduino unit for all of that. But, you may have to use a relay to turn on sump lights. I suggest using an RTC (real time clock) module if you use the system continuously. Arduino clock gets reset when there is a power failure.

Thanks in advance, I might even have to pick your brain when it comes to the programming, I am fairly confident I can work my way through that though.
Certainly. I can give you my program if you want. You can see my logic and build on it.
 
#12 ·
pacej:

I used Cree XP-G Natural White and Cool White. XP-E for Royal Blue. I did not use any optics and I am not sure if there are any optics for XP-G due to it's small form factor. I wasnt using any optics anyways. If you have bigger system and if the lights are fairly high above the surface, you have to use optics to direct the light to reduce wastage. Evil is the guru on this subject.
 
#14 ·
ledgroupbuy does offer optics for the xp series leds, they come in 40-60-80 degrees I ordered mine in the 40 degree option because of the depth of my tank.

Dewey I would love to take a gander at your programming that would at least give me an idea of the thought process needed. I was looking at ordering the real time clock and maybe even the expanded memory depending on the size of the programming needed for what I would like it to do.

If I can get it to mimic the day lengths with each day being different, I would imagine it would be rather large and extensive. Not to mention the different phases of the moon.

The reason I am interested is that I currently use a single power supply that I made to run all my DC equipment and the timers for the 24vDC are not cost effective. I was thinking of beginning to build a PLC to control everything but again the cost and the time it would take to acquire the equipment from work would take over a year.
 
#19 ·
I got your email, thanks alot. I am now currently waiting for my arduino to arrive via slow boat from china.

1)I am curious did you also order a lcd shield?
2)What about transistors or resistors?
3)Did you hardwire everything to the arduino or did you use a breadboard?
4)Isn't the arduino's output +5vDC, and doesn't the led driver require 10vDC for full power ramp up and down, or did you just supply the additional 5vDC from a different source?

Sorry for all the questions just trying to make sure I have all the parts before hand.
 
#20 ·
Wuton:

1. I haven't added any LCD shield yet. Plan to do it in the future.
2. I didnt have to use any transistors or resistors.
3. I hardwired and used twist connectors. I haven't cleaned up the project box yet. I ordered toggle switches and pots. Plan to toggle between arduino control and manual with going through the pots.
4. I used buckpucks which use 0-5v control voltage. Didnt have to step up.
 
#21 ·
Yeah reading so many of the threads on RC had me confused, because so many of them are using the meanwell drivers. I am fairly sure I do not need a shield or extra pwms yet, because the output of the Arduino is 5vDC @ 400mA and the buckpuck requires 40mA so in theory I could run 9 buckpucks safely.

I was hoping to use a touchscreen I have laying around from an old plc but I do not think it is applicable.

I have only started to write the programming but I will include my led timing schedule to see if I can get feedback from anyone. Some of the meat of the programming I am borrowing from others, like the lunar cycles and the cloud program.

10:00 refugium leds off

10:00 Lunar pin(9) Lunar phase off

10:00 blueled pins (3,5,6) rampup 0%-100% 90 minutes
11:00 Whiteled pins (10,11) rampup 0%-100% 60 minutes
12:00 all display tank leds on full power

12:00 cloud program starts on random days 8 hours
20:00 cloud program stops

20:00 blueled pins (10,11) rampdown 100%-0% 90 minutes
21:00 whiteled pins (3,5,6) rampdown 100%-0% 60 minutes
22:00 all display tank leds off

22:00 lunar pin (9) Lunar phase program on

22:00 refugium leds on

4 red leds and buckpuck hardwired to powersupply with dimming available due to potentiometer.

I am now looking into setting up a few relays to see if I can make a wavemaker. I guess it depends on how well this experiment goes. I like how expandable this supposedly is.
 
#24 ·
I assume this question is directed towards Dewey, but I will attempt an answer. I believe Dewey to be running two separate circuits with two separate buckpucks. From my understanding of his setup he is running the ten leds 5RB/5W at 50% power by dimming them with the arduino.

I am currently running twenty leds 10RB/10CW at full power. I will be using this present system for my future refugium and will be building a new fixture of 24CW, 40RB and 4Red leds not sure about the amount of power I will be using as it will be dependent on a few different factors. I plan on running 12 separate drivers on five different circuits, two circuits/4 buckpucks for the 40 royal blues and one circuit/2 buckpucks for the 20 cool whites, one/1 buckpuck for the 4 white lunar lights and one/1 buckpuck to drive the 4 red leds for night viewing/predator hunting.

The amount of leds you can chain together is determined by your led’s forward voltage the amount of voltage your led driver is capable of handling and the voltage of the power supply you are using. Since my power supply puts our roughly 26Vdc I can in theory string 7 xp-g leds which have a Vf of 3.5@1A with a 1.5Vdc safety buffer. Presently I am going to run 6 per buckpuck so I have a higher safety buffer and allows for future expansion if wanted. And this is if I run them at full power, which at this point I am unsure of.
 
#26 · (Edited)
The buckpucks are basically a regulator for the current that supplies the led, if you were to connect the led to a powersupply without the driver it would burn out the led in under a second. At least that is my understanding of the driver/buckpuck. It is similar in its function to a ballast for a MH or T-5 lighting system.

Some drivers offer a dimable feature in their drivers. my understanding of this is the PWM/PDM or pulse-width modulation/ pulse-duration modulation is a technique of switching the current, that is being fed to the led, on and off at such a high rate that it is seen as a dimming effect not a flashing one. The beauty of using PWM is that there is very little power loss across the switch, when the switch is off there is almost no current, and when it is on there is almost no voltage drop across the switch. The drivers for leds that offer dimming make it easy for the average user to manually adjust the duty cycle or the rate the led is on to how long it is off. Adjusting the duty cycle is normally done with a potentiometer which is a dial type of swich similar to a volume knob in a radio, the Arduino is a small open source computer board that can do this itself based on a program stored in its memory.

I am by no means an expert in these systems, but learning them as I trundle along. Evil66 will be able to correct anything I have mis-stated.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top