Help With LED Scrubber Driver and Power supply

Chris155hp · Apr 13, 2015

Hey guy so I'm so close to finishing my DIY up flow algae scrubber but I am stuck at what driver and power supply to use. I have narrowed it down to 3 layouts (see bellow#1-3) all of which use a number of deep reds in series wired to two royal blues that are Parallel to each other but in series with the reds. I know this halves the brightness of the blues which is exactly what I am trying to do as they are much more efficient then the reds. So all will be driven with one driver/power supply similar to pictures below (not my picts)

Driver:
First off the driver needs to be as small and light as possible to fit in the enclosure and not add a lot of extra weight that the magnets I am going to use can't handle. Second it must me dimmable via potentiometer so I can dial in brightness level. Third it must 700ma as thats the most the deep reds can handle. I was thinking of a 700ma dimmable flex block at it seems perfect but I can never figure out how many leds a driver can handle unless its stated and especially with the royal blues being parallel

So im guessing layout/ number of Reds I can use depends on the driver. So lets find a Driver that fits the bill first then go from there. The more reds I can use the better as thats closer to the ideal ratio of 6:1-8:1 and since they are dimmable if they are too bright they can be dimmed down
Power supply:
also needs to be as small and compact as in my stand space is a premium.I don't need a huge one with way more power then the leds can use. So Just powerful enough for what I need

Heres the info for the Deep Reds, Royal Blues and the Flex block I was thinking of using (Idk if it will work)

Thanks in advance!!!

Chris155hp · Apr 13, 2015

DFW · Apr 14, 2015

Ace25 · Apr 14, 2015

How big of a scrubber are you making, because that seems like A LOT of LED light for a scrubber. This is the scrubber/LED light I made for a full sheet double sided on a waterfall scrubber on my overflow. 7 LEDs per side, 14 LEDs total off of 1 meanwell 1050 driver, 2 strings of 7 in parallel so each string gets 525mA. As for a dimmer, I wasn't aware you could dim a non-dimmable driver like you have.

Was playing with different colors and amount of LEDs to see which grew better.

pickupman66 · Apr 14, 2015

SO. the easy way to determine it is to take the Voltage and Amperage out of the driver and multiply this to get the Wattage output. in your case the LuxDrive Flexblock is 33.6 watts. if you have 3 watt LED, you can run 11 of them up to their max loading of 3 watts each but i would do 12 in this case. using a 2 watt LED, gives you 16 at max. using fewer LED and running the driver at its max will give each more available current.

this takes into account that all LED are run in Series.

Chris155hp · Apr 16, 2015

So your saying option 1 is by best bet as it has the fewest LEDs?

And the driver is dimmable.

So what would I need for a power supply if I went with 9 deep reds and 2 royal blue ( in parallel like described above)?