Making LED light myself

[arman]

Hi my friends.Im planning to build my own light with my own settings(using micro controllers to control it(ARM series)).There are some kind of led's that are not strong enough for a reef tank.
I wanted to buy LES's.Do you know any brands?And where can i buy them?I searched in amazon but there were full LED light pakkages,i just need the LEDs.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

This might help.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-modified-black-box-thread.283942/

 

[Brew12]

Hi my friends.Im planning to build my own light with my own settings(using micro controllers to control it(ARM series)).There are some kind of led's that are not strong enough for a reef tank.
I wanted to buy LES's.Do you know any brands?And where can i buy them?I searched in amazon but there were full LED light pakkages,i just need the LEDs.

LEDsupply.com seems to be a popular choice.

 

[Blue Meg]

Not to bash you, but I would think an electrical engineer or a programmer would be better suited to make his own led lights. Do you know the lumen output and the spectrum that each led is going to have?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Not to bash you, but I would think an electrical engineer or a programmer would be better suited to make his own led lights. Do you know the lumen output and the spectrum that each led is going to have?

It's actually pretty easy to do and a LOT of people do it. Spectrum, binning , Cri and Nm range is listed on all the leds.

Kinda like a mail order radio kit in the 192o's so you could talk to people on the other side of the world. Pretty popular stuff.

 

[Brew12]

It's actually pretty easy to do and a LOT of people do it. Spectrum, binning , Cri and Nm range is listed on all the leds.

Kinda like a mail order radio kit in the 192o's so you could talk to people on the other side of the world. Pretty popular stuff.

A lot of people do it, but a lot of them do it wrong. I wouldn't say it takes an engineer but if you want to take full advantage of your LED's it does take some math. Easy to make it work, a little challenging to get home made LED's working really well.
You need to run some calculations based on the LED's chosen and the drivers used. Too many LED's on a driver and you won't be able to use full intensity. Too few and you can burn the LED's up prematurely. Proper sizing of both will also allow for a fuller range of dimming.
Fortunately, there are spreadsheets out there that you can just plug the numbers into and they do the math for you.

 

[BCSreef]

I have been building my own for years now. I get most of the parts from here: http://www.ledgroupbuy.com/

I'm using 12 of these over a 180 gallon: http://www.ledgroupbuy.com/cree-lumia-5-2-70w-full-spectrum-5-channel-cree-led/

Much more PAR than I need, but 12 give me great spread, great color too.

Most of the LED sites have good tutorials on how to build out.

Bob