Stage LED fixture

[Jwalker814]

Curious to know if anyone has research or attempted to use LED stage/show lighting. Such as the elation pro sixpar series.

They lights are R&B which include amber white and uv diodes

Small fixture is running 7 12w LEDS at 15°

a 60° filter is available but I also assume that the lenses are removable like many led fixtures.

The fixtures can be Daisy chained where each fixture and each color of each fixture can be programmed.

The reason I ask is because I can get stage lights cheaper than most aquarium specific fixtures.

Elation athelso offers more powerful fixtures such as the sixpar300ip which has 18 12w rgb,amber,white,uv LEDs.

There are cheaper brands as well.

http://www.elationlighting.com/ProductsListSeries.aspx?Series=Sixpar

 

[dacianb]

You dont have deep / royal blues which are the essence of any reef light. Stage lights are typically very narrow beams too, so will have to place them on a floor above your tank to have some coverage. UVs are also not healthy for a reef - will need violets (400-430 nm)

 

[Synodontis]

I did look at stage/DJ lighting before our build as I had no idea what we were going to do with lighting. As daciand say's, most setups have the wrong nm/wavelength & narrow beams. My work around for this was just to replace the LED's & lens with more suitable diodes. No idea how this would have went tho, sometimes my brain exceeds my ability's If you can sort those 2 issues out your on the right track.

Most of these types of lights are controlled by DMX. There are a number of free programs around that would get you going on the programming side. The amount of flexibility you have have with DMX is so far advanced for a reef tank it's just not funny lol. Think the you tube videos of Christmas lights sync'd to music, that's DMX. Why some aquarium LED manufacture's have not incorporated DMX control into lights is a loss to me. Not only could you control colour channel's, you could control individual diodes.

So now you have the light unit & the control software.

Next you need to "store" lighting program. Company's like Enttec make a 2 universe DMX decoder that is standalone. Meaning you can load up your light schedule at your pc, then plug the decoder into your lights. In DMX terms, 1 universe is 512 channels! You will need to make sure whatever decoder you use has a real time clock built in or you will need to restart the program each day. If you load up a random lightning storm, you could also sync it to a subwoofer for the thunder lol.
Decoders look like this

I also thought about trying to marry DIY build with DMX. I had a 32 channel DMX board modified to DMX input / PWM output so i could hook it up to Meanwell LDD drivers. This is the reason we have a rack mount pc in the cabinet, to control the decoder. It all never eventuated & is sitting in the "good ideas" box out in the garage lol.
The DMX board before being modified. In a universe this would be fixture 1 ch1-32, the DMX ID bottom left is used to assign the light fixture, add another board & that would be fixture 2 with ch33-64, so on up to ch512. So much possibility.

Hope I haven't derailed your thread lol

 

[dacianb]

Raspberry, DMX, Dali and so many ways to control a light. Will you really need it? No, it is not a club, is a tank.
I have a 6 channels pwm controller with a knob and a small screen from which I am using 3 only. I set the level on each channel half year ago, now only use it to ramp up and down the lights and sometimes to lower / increase the power (but always in same percentage, dont alter the color anymore). Most of the time (weeks and months) dont even touch the controller.
Now I am doing another set of lights with LED ratios as I defined in my tests, basically I can use only one channel of my controller. Pitty, you see endless threads of how to control a light but not more essential discussions as ways to cool those super leds, junction temperatures, maximum current vs junction temp and so on.

I am using Deep blue / neutral white (high CRI) / blue / violets in ratio of 2/1/1/0.5 - different LEDs and system that DIYers and manufacturers use, but yeah, I am doing what I know is better. Stay away from fake colors as yellow, green, reds as tank will look like a cartoon (in my opinion as I tried it). And here is a pic how things look under my light/

I wouldn't trade my lights for the market's top brands never.

 

[Jwalker814]

It was really just a thought. I'm working/designing a 7ft DIY fixture at the momens and I saw one of the fixtures laying around the shop my mother works at.

The control and flexibility of these lights intrigued me. Honestly I want to have full control of the lights I have on my tank, if I place a coral in a specific place and it requires more/less of a certain spectrum then I want to give it that. Also want to be able to have a moon phase, sunrise/set style going across the he tank. I want it to seem as natural as possible.

Like I said. It was just a thought, I figured I'd ask the more experienced before I attempted anything. I wasn't worried about the viewing angle as they appear to have removable lenses similar to the Chinese black boxes.

 

[oreo54]

Reviving to see if any DIY-ers attempted something like this.

 

[Stoneybologna]

Reviving to see if any DIY-ers attempted something like this.

I'm working on a 144 channel dmx controlled led bar with 36x 4 channel diodes that have 410nm 430nm 450nm and 460nm diodes 50/50 with another chip 12000k and 5000k with 450nm and 460nm. These bars will utilize dxm for individuals pixel control. You could fine tune par, spectrum to any part of the tank. If you use 6 bars. Simulate cloud patterns is gonna be so awesome. I just like the fact that a can turn up par to any given coral a where in the tank with out effecting other corals just by changing any led pixal. The bars are around 180w. But I could run them lower. Have 144 channels is a task. I'm using so many 30 channel dxm decoders and am currently have a company make me a 150 channel decoder pcb. My demo prototype is made from a 18x10w Led rgbw pixil bar that I desoldered the rgbw and replaced them with my own. Each led is 3w so technically they are 12w leds ran at 10w but my version will likely be 4 to 6w.