Doing it myself LED lighting

987654321

987654321

Member
We have all seen the 4+ thousand dollar LED lighting correct. Well I have a unique knowledge of this lighting form another hobbie of mine. These LED's are crazy bright. At about $7.50 each needing 84 total. ( as per what they use on there 72" fixture ) Thats $630. Plus building a housing and hooking it up. Its alot less than the $4012 for the H4 72" 20K Solaris LED Illumination System.
Granted it will be on/off. I have no idea how to do all the programming for the cloud cover and such but who cares. The lights I have now dont do that.
Now before I drop $700 on LED's im going to start small. Im going to make one for my ten gallon QT just to see how it goes. I will probibly start building the firt of April.
You guys think im crazy or does it sound like an ok idea..............
 
scsinet

scsinet

Active Member
If you can pull this off, I'd be interested to see how it works out, particularly long-term results with your inhabitants.
You might check out Parallax. They make the Basic Stamp, a microcontroller that can be programmed in a basic-like language. They are pretty easy to implement for the electronically able, it - paired with a realtime clock chip - might be a good starting point for a controller.
 
apos

apos

Member
The reason most systems out today are so pricey is because they have these way too complicated computer systems on them. They generally have stuck these together because they figure only high-end users will want these lights (which are still more expensive than other lighting solutions) and so they're targeting the high end.
As the prices come down though, you'll see more systems that just have the lights, with at most an optional port for a separate controller. These will be far more reasonable. In fact, a new line of LED systems should be coming out for nano tanks soon that are much cheaper than previous models.
The key thing though are the reflectors and the heatsinks. These things do generate heat out the back, and to prolong their life they really need to have a good way to dissipate it. Likewise, reflectors aren't as important since LEDs can be mostly directional (unlike other light sources), but not 100%.
 
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