DIY 240Watt LED Reef Lighting System

[Glasswalker]

Hey, so in my search for a lighting solution for my first Reef Tank, I've been evaluating plenty of LED based systems... And I'm unfortunately coming up short on exactly what I want.

Being a VERY DIY kind of guy, not to mention an Electronics Engineer, I've decided I can probably build something superior myself lol...

So I started with a couple of "well respected" lighting solutions, and found a happy medium of light spectrums that were needed. And came up with the following plan (still being refined, but this should be fairly close to what ultimately gets built):

• 80 total 3W LED elements, using high-end Epistar light chips
• 60 degree high transmission focus lenses (one per element)
• Total maximum output 240watt (all channels 100%)
• 7 100% independent channels
• Full digital control of each channel (1024 levels per channel)
• Multiple timer programming, supporting many different phases per day, and slow fade transition between states.
• USB Direct control potential from controller or Raspberry Pi for example, supporting direct control of any channel to any level at any time.
• Passive cooled aluminium chassis with aluminium heat spreaders on each element, to effectively pull heat from the LEDs and control temperatures without noisy (and high maintenance) fans.
• Possible to be in multiple configurations, my planned configuration is 2 Meter x 5" hanging panel

Here are the lighting channels I have planned right now:

1. 10x Blue (460nm - 470nm)
   
2. 20x Royal Blue (440nm - 450nm)
   
3. 5x Violet (410nm - 415nm) & 5x UV (400nm - 405nm)
   
4. 10x Cool White (10000k - 15000k)
5. 10x Neutral White (6000k - 6500k)
6. 10x Warm White (3000k - 3500k)
7. 5x Deep Red (660nm) & 5x Green (520nm - 525nm)

My hope is this will provide a very flexible spectrum, with plenty of actinic spectrum as well as the deep red to support good growth of all plants/coral types. As well as a strong robust white spectrum and nice flexibility for moon lighting. (and the stretch into the UV spectrum helps with actinic as well as glow on the corals and such)

So far this is coming out much cheaper than any competing solution for me. Though I've actually got to do the build lol.


Anyway I'm very interested to hear feedback from any others who may have experience with doing DIY lighting, or just experience with LED lighting in general. Would love to know if I've overlooked something, or there is something out of whack, or if there is a feature that would be handy.

I'm going to hold off posting any detailed plans until it's more solidified... And until I decide if I want to sell them or not. At the least I'll opensource the controller firmware and USB protocol, and most likely the full build plans.

 

[peterj66]

Interesting build. I'm building a slightly lower wattage lighting for my reef tank. Based on advise found around the web I opted for a ratio of 2RB:1NW. I dont have any warm white or cool white at all, just some high CRI neutral white from Bridgelux. Based on a testrun without controller I feel that that ratio gives more flourecense when both white and blue are on full blast. Otherwise I have basically the same colors.
Consider dropping some whites and replacing them with more royal blues.
Good luck with your build.

 

[Glasswalker]

Hey, thanks for the input! Yeah I know the ratios are a bit off, but the strategy is basically that the LEDs themselves are cheap... So more LEDs doesn't affect cost much... So strategy is over watt the system and keep the ratio a bit more balanced, and combine that with direct dimmable control of each individual light type. As a result you should be able to emulate dang near any spectrum blend of a system at say 150 Watts bare minimum (more the closer your desired blend is to the physical array)

Also running it below max should significantly improve longevity of the LEDs.

Adding any more Royal blue requires another driver circuit (I have a fully modular design for easy build and easy maintenance. But it means I get 10 3w LEDs per driver while maintaining diable control, as a result I keep all "like" LEDs on a channel together... So more RB LEDs means more drivers which ramps up price much more than the LEDs themselves lol)

Also, I've added more in violet and into the near UV spectrum which adds a lot more actinic, offsetting some of the need for the additional RB you see in other systems.

At least that's the theory lol.

 

[bobman]

Sounds like an awesome build cant wait to see it progress

 

[Glasswalker]

Unfortunately will be about a month until parts arrive from China... Once all the parts are in I'll begin sharing lots of info and pics on the build.

So at this stage any other suggestions or discussion are welcome as no concrete building has occurred yet (and it will keep things alive until the real build can begin lol)

 

[trido]

Looks good, I have to agree though that there will too much white. I've built 2 different fixtures with multi channels and mod my black boxes often. A 2 to 1.5 ratio (4 blue to 3 white) is what I've seen and found to be a pretty good combination to get a 12-14K look. At 2 to 1 ratio gives a 14-20 K look at full blast.

Take a look at TJ's Reef and he has a pretty good DIY close to what you're talking about.

 

[peterj66]

The good part of DIY is that if you decide at after testing it over your tank that you want to change the composition of LEDs you have no problem doing so.
My build was initially going to be a no whites at all build, but I changed my mind along the way and now have nine channels. I probably will decide that one or more of the colors are superfluos once I have it over my tank,but then it should be fairly easy to swap that color out for another chip. One idea is to make smaller test setups of LEDs to see how you like different combos of whites and blues.

 

[Glasswalker]

Ok, so after some thinking on this, I'm re-imagining this project a little bit... I've just picked up a Coralife kit that is pretty decent, but I suspect it will need to be augmented... And I have a really neat idea on how I can actually build single small light strips of 3W bulbs (re-using much of the design in the OP) and tie it directly into the Coralife controller, allowing it to seamlessly augment the existing system...

Anyway, so there will be a slight delay to start on this, but I think the modular augmentation approach will be lower barrier to entry, lower cost, and equally as flexible (could still combine several together with external control module, but if you had an existing LED with controller, you could tie it into the existing system easily as well).

So will post more updates once this is off the back-burner. For now focusing on getting the tank operational and learning a bit about how the Coralife works, and then I'll use lessons learned to revive this project.

 

[Txdragonslayer]

Hey, so in my search for a lighting solution for my first Reef Tank, I've been evaluating plenty of LED based systems... And I'm unfortunately coming up short on exactly what I want.

Being a VERY DIY kind of guy, not to mention an Electronics Engineer, I've decided I can probably build something superior myself lol...

So I started with a couple of "well respected" lighting solutions, and found a happy medium of light spectrums that were needed. And came up with the following plan (still being refined, but this should be fairly close to what ultimately gets built):

• 80 total 3W LED elements, using high-end Epistar light chips
• 60 degree high transmission focus lenses (one per element)
• Total maximum output 240watt (all channels 100%)
• 7 100% independent channels
• Full digital control of each channel (1024 levels per channel)
• Multiple timer programming, supporting many different phases per day, and slow fade transition between states.
• USB Direct control potential from controller or Raspberry Pi for example, supporting direct control of any channel to any level at any time.
• Passive cooled aluminium chassis with aluminium heat spreaders on each element, to effectively pull heat from the LEDs and control temperatures without noisy (and high maintenance) fans.
• Possible to be in multiple configurations, my planned configuration is 2 Meter x 5" hanging panel

Here are the lighting channels I have planned right now:

1. 10x Blue (460nm - 470nm)
   
2. 20x Royal Blue (440nm - 450nm)
   
3. 5x Violet (410nm - 415nm) & 5x UV (400nm - 405nm)
   
4. 10x Cool White (10000k - 15000k)
5. 10x Neutral White (6000k - 6500k)
6. 10x Warm White (3000k - 3500k)
7. 5x Deep Red (660nm) & 5x Green (520nm - 525nm)

My hope is this will provide a very flexible spectrum, with plenty of actinic spectrum as well as the deep red to support good growth of all plants/coral types. As well as a strong robust white spectrum and nice flexibility for moon lighting. (and the stretch into the UV spectrum helps with actinic as well as glow on the corals and such)

So far this is coming out much cheaper than any competing solution for me. Though I've actually got to do the build lol.


Anyway I'm very interested to hear feedback from any others who may have experience with doing DIY lighting, or just experience with LED lighting in general. Would love to know if I've overlooked something, or there is something out of whack, or if there is a feature that would be handy.

I'm going to hold off posting any detailed plans until it's more solidified... And until I decide if I want to sell them or not. At the least I'll opensource the controller firmware and USB protocol, and most likely the full build plans.

I am considering building my own LED light too, there are so many websites that sell the led's, do you know where you are going to get them from?

 

[Glasswalker]

I am considering building my own LED light too, there are so many websites that sell the led's, do you know where you are going to get them from?

I was just going to order from China directly on AliExpress for example. I have URLs to sources for the LEDs if that would help. I haven't done the build yet, a few other things have kept cash a bit tight meaning my lighting project for the tank has to wait a bit. For now the Coralie led fixture I have seems perfectly fine for what I have in the tank currently. As I get more difficult coral I'll bump up the priority on this build.

 

[peterj66]

I finished mine a few months ago using Cree 3W chips from EBay. The Crees are slightly more expensive but more energy efficient = less heat produced. I had all sorts of colors in my build, but if I ever build another there are two things I would change.
1. I use four groups of LEDs over a 32x32 inch surface. Next time I will use at least nine to get a more even light distribution.
2. I would skip the red and yellow and use warm white with low kelvin rating instead and maybe replace the NW with CW.
That would mean six channels: 420nm,RB,Blue, green or cyan to balance the violets, cold white and warm white.

 

[bblumberg]

I have 3 home-made LED fixtures. The first one is in my 24g nanocube. It was a retrofit kit from RapidLED that uses 12 Cree XT-E Royal Blue LEDs and 12 Cree XP-G2 cool white LEDs. I have since replaced 1/3 of the cool whites with warm white and 1/3 with neutral whites. I run this tank at about 60% power on the blue channel and the lowest sustainable on the white channel with the drivers. If I had it to do over again, I'd use less whites and put more blues and royal blues on that channel with a few violets.

The second fixture is larger, based on a 6 x 20" RapidLED heat sink. This one has 52 LEDs on it (they are fairly closely packed). The channels are as follows, all with 80 degree optics on a 75g corner tank (24" deep).
1. 4 x 400-410 nm, 4 x 410-420, 4 x 430 nm, all from EpiLEDs
2. 9 x Cree XT-E royal blue and 4 x Philips Luxeon ES Royal blue
3. 9 x Cree XT-E royal blue and 4 x Philips Luxeon ES Royal blue
4. 9 x Cree XP-G2 cool white, 2 x Cree XP-E green and 2 x Cree XP-E deep red.

I run channels 2 and 3 at 180/255, channel 1 at 110/255 and channel 4 at 50/255. Corals are doing well and growing visibly.

The 3rd one is in progress using multi-chip lights (Dream chip 5 x 50) from AC-RC hobby. Since this will be a 150G build, I didn't want to deal with wiring a huge number of LEDs which would be required to duplicate the 2nd fixture. Time will tell how it works.

Bruce

 

[bblumberg]

ps. with respect to your build, I would add more royal blue in place of one of the white channels and consider some 430 nm coverage. I cannot hear the fan on my RapidLED heat sink. You could consider a large, low speed fan to ensure that your heat sink stays cool.