First Post; LED lighting question

[UncleChester]

LED Lighting? Is it proper to discuss this question here in this forum?

Yes this is the right forum for lighting questions, RabidWombat put it in the right place. What is kinda weak imo, is a brand new account popping in attempting to be subtle about the LED lighting they sell with an innocuous question about whether this is the right place to ask about LED lighting. At least make an attempt to add some info here. If you sell LED's and have some experience in their use in terrariums I'm sure everyone would love to tap that know-how.

[DiggenEm]

I dont know how many LEDs you need, but a light guy on the other board told me that its all about the lumens and that 2k lumens per enclosure is optimal. Of course i know this is dependent on enclosure size.

[RabidWombat]

Thanks Brian and Digg!

I've just about completed the light. Being new to this, I made a few mistakes. It's been fun putting it together. I'm out of town right now. Next week, I'll post up some pictures and some things I learned while doing this.

RW

[deranged chipmunk]

Cool. I was going to ask how you made out with that project. Were the 40's good?

[RabidWombat]

Sorry for the late reply. I've been out of town a few days.

Here are some pictures. The 40 degree optics will work great for this particular tank. It's 36l x 18h x 12d. I'm debating going with a 40-gallon breeder instead (while they're still on sale!). If I do that may pose an issue for the 40 degree optics, but I haven't really spent any time on that yet.

This was my first light build, so it's not the prettiest thing ever, buuut I'm mainly going for functionality and a learning experience. A lot of this build was done on-the-cheap. The hood is a plastic rain gutter, fans and power supply from the swap meet, and heatsinks from a local electronics resale shop..


Here's 2 of the 3 sections in the hood. They're spaced equally to give overlap and cover the entire tank. You can see the fans at the end. I picked these up for $3 each at the swap meet... they throw a ton of air but are very loud. I am probably going to go with low-profile fans and mount one directly to each heat sink.


Close up of the one heatsink. There are two 6500k (cool white) leds and one 3000k (warm white) led. I really like this combination. I put a few items in under the light to test and it looks great. They're also close enough together that you can't tell that there are two different colors.

Each heatsink is wired individually. I can easily take things apart as I am working. I am glad I did this. I found a mistake in my volts-to-driver-to-power supply math. The LED driver I got (buckpuck) will support a 32v input and will output whatever is input MINUS 10v, so 22v output. I missed that MINUS 10v part so I can only run 6 LEDs from my one driver. I'll have to order up another one.


Here's what the hood looks like on the tank. I'm going to clean it up a bit. At the least I'll just paint the bolts white so they match. Otherwise I may do something else like make a cover for it.


$5 swap meet special... Gotta love it. Power supplies are expensive! This may not be the best solution, but while trying to figure this stuff out it's great.

[RabidWombat]

Here's two more photos so you can get an idea of light output. There's no light in the room except for that these are giving off.

This is my dive torch. I use this as my primary light when scuba diving at night. It's got an output of 400 lumens:

Shockwave LED | Princeton Tec



Here's one set of the LEDs for the enclosure..



And if you're thinking "Why does he use such a weak-sauce light for diving??" Well, I am planning to build my own dive light... eventually. Gotta blind some fishes!

[deranged chipmunk]

nice job! i've never done a diy led. have read a lot of threads on it from another forum, but never actually dove into it. i like the rain spout idea. i would have gutted a shop light, but i like the plastic idea better.

and i thought i was the only psychopath who worked on electricity around water???LOL