Opinions on wiring a floating LED hood

[Onebaldman]

So I'm in the process of running wires for my future floating hood. This hood will contain two LED heatsinks (this post is not about the LEDs, just telling you what is in the hood). The tank is still going to be either a 36" cube or a 30" cube (height doesn't matter in this case). My hood is going to look like the picture below (not my aquarium):

I'm hanging the hood from the ceiling and was planning on making it smaller than the actual tank (again, much like the picture), so it will be either 30" square of 24" square by 5" tall. My tank will be view-able from all sides, and not up against a wall (unlike the picture). My question is, would you store the electronics in the hood so that I'm not running 6-8 twisted pairs of wire from the hood, up into the ceiling and down to the Meanwells/controller unit or would you run the wires so that everything is stored in the mechanical area?

If I store everything in the hood, then I would put in a disconnect to remove power from the hood and be able to take the whole hood down if need be. I think it would look cleaner, and the engineer in me tells me that it would work as long as I put some quiet fans in to move air out of the hood.

I was planning of mounting the controller box so that it is facing out of the hood on the side where most people would not be looking from.

If you want, I throw together a sketch to show what my plan is for a hood if you can't picture what I'm saying.

Thanks in advanced.

 

[pickupman66]

How many LED strings are you putting in?

If it were me, I'd out all of the drivers down below but given you are having all 4 sides viewable how will you get them from the stand to the hood? Tough call. With the controller in the hood, that means you have to run that wire up and down. Plus the pairs for the lights.

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[H@rry]

For a minute there I thought you were going to float your light fixture in the water! I think in the long run you will be happier with the electronics back away from the water. I'm in the planing stages of mine now and I plan to use CAT5 wiring. That will let me handle 4 strings with one cable plus it will be simple to connect/disconnect when I need to.

 

[Onebaldman]

As I said, the LED part isn't the problem, but it will be a 3-4 string setup with Royal Blue, Warm White, Moonlights with UV (always on) and either Green/Red, Just Green or Just Red. I am working on all of that now and doing test to see how the color combos look since all lines are adjustable.

The tank stand is at the corner of where two walls meet. So if I go with the 36", the corner of it will touch the corner of the wall. If I go with the 30" then it will offset from the wall to the fish tank by 3". Those two walls make up a mechanical closet directly behind my TV/home theater. I built floating cabinets into a wall to hold my TV, audio/video equipment and tower speakers/center channel. The closet allows me to get behind all of that and service it, store movies, games ect.

I currently have holes drilled into the 2nd story floor joist so that I can run the wire/wires from the floating hood, into the ceiling, down into the closet and back through the corner into the aquarium stand. I'm looking at 25' length pairs for each channel I plan on doing if I am talked into running all the wires up instead of just running a power line into the hood.

 

[Onebaldman]

I thought about CAT5 as well, but I didn't think that it would handle the total amperage needed a single strand of LEDs.

Also, as I mentioned in the first post, the other great thing about putting everything in the hood instead of under the stand is...I can have a quick disconnect and take the whole hood down for service.

If Harry is right and CAT5 could handle the load, then I would put ethernet ports on the top and just use them as quick connects...but for some reason my electronics education is telling me it won't work.

 

[Ace25]

This is one of the LED lights I made, it uses 1 power cord to power the entire thing. I bought a connector at a local electronics store to split the power.

 

[Onebaldman]

This is one of the LED lights I made, it uses 1 power cord to power the entire thing. I bought a connector at a local electronics store to split the power.

That is similar to what I'm thinking about doing, except my power cord would run up the inside of a pipe

 

[H@rry]

I thought about CAT5 as well, but I didn't think that it would handle the total amperage needed a single strand of LEDs.

Also, as I mentioned in the first post, the other great thing about putting everything in the hood instead of under the stand is...I can have a quick disconnect and take the whole hood down for service.

If Harry is right and CAT5 could handle the load, then I would put ethernet ports on the top and just use them as quick connects...but for some reason my electronics education is telling me it won't work.

Yeah, I think you're probably right. I just looked up the specs for CAT5 and the current is 500mA. I'm going to run my strings a 1A.

 

[pickupman66]

Yup. Not enough copper to handle it harry.

That said. With 4 strings that's 8 wires. You can easily buy some quick connects for that. My lights have quick connects from the ballasts as I can slide the fixture out of my hood. I'd go this route vs putting all that inside the fixture.

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[dictionaaron]

if it was me id put the drivers in the hood like Ace and limit the wire count out. and like you said it would make it easy to connect and disconnect. lowes sells cheap male/female plug ends you screw the leads to. i used them and they work well for easy disconnecting. The drivers are potted so i wouldnt worry about moisture; i have mine in an enclosed hood but similar setup and i havent had any issues. Just my 2c