How Would White Led Lights Work As A Light Source For Planted Tank

Here is the project build write up on my site:
<a href="http://www.greenneedle.co.uk/LED1.html" target="_blank">http://www.greenneedle.co.uk/LED1.html</a>

This picture shows basically one series of 3 from the connector to driver to 3 x LED (red line = 1 x series of 3). The connector on the right goes to the 12V 700ma+ adaptor:
seriesshow.jpg


However remember that if you are testing you need a PAR meter and a 'target'!!!

What I mean is that if you setup an LED unit and a flourescent lamp of equal W next to you of the same K rating then you will only see the human perception and not actual light. We see greens and whites and the other colours don't look as bright.

If you test the Lumens or Lux you will get the 'official' human perception of the output of the light. In this hobby the output is of no consequence. It is where the light is received which is important. It is the PAR mesurement of the relevant Nm range that is 'apparently' important. LEDs produce light in a narrow range within these parameters whereas MH and Flouro produce light outside of this range too like UV and InfraRed. Therefore some of the light from Flouro and MH is unusable by the tank whereas virtually all of the LED light is :)

If you do test then you need a tank of water. Ability to have the flourescent and LEDs at an equal height in the same position and then measure the light 'received' at the same point on the bottom of the tank of water. You also need to experiment with overlapping too as I explained in my previous post. With the LEDs in a line they don't seem to perform as well as a flouro (or at least not any better) in terms of plant growth. With them spread out they work much better than flouro so this shows it is the overlap/spread of light which is key :)

Therefore if I had a PAR meter ;) I would do 2 tests. Firstly I would do a single T5HO versus a line of LEDs of the same total wattage. I think the T5HO will win or draw.

Then I would do 2 x T5HO versus spread out LEDs of the same total wattage. I think the LEDs will win.

You also have to remember that with flourescent lighting they are not as bright at the inch or so near the end caps!!! Therefore the shorter the tube the more light is lost at these ends!!! Longer tubes will have less light lost at the ends.


Good luck

AC

Thanks for that, when i say testing i mean just basic testing for myself. Just wanted to get a rough idea of plant growth between my t8's and these. Ive got a T5 luminaire coming this week as well so id like to see how it stacks up against that as well. Ive hated the lighting on my tank ever since i saw the T5HO's on my dads tank, the t8's just seem...... well rubbish. Also do you think these from deal extreme would be suitable? http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2394

Oh and mixmaster jay, the reason for the fans is these produce a LOT of heat. There not like your average 5mm led, touch one of these when there on and youre getting burnt fingers lol :good:
 
lol i didn't know normally they are nearly cold ive never played with then led's (yet) lol i use 4 t5's for night lights on my 5ft halide unit,t5's seem to be really good ive never had a prob with them nice and bright and good colour even the day tubes.

btw i wasn't trying to be clever or anything i couldn't see the need for fans but you have explained to me now .thankyou :D
 
lol i didn't know normally they are nearly cold ive never played with then led's (yet) lol i use 4 t5's for night lights on my 5ft halide unit,t5's seem to be really good ive never had a prob with them nice and bright and good colour even the day tubes.

btw i wasn't trying to be clever or anything i couldn't see the need for fans but you have explained to me now .thankyou :D

Hehe, sorry if that came across wrong i wasnt thinking you were trying to be clever. I've only looked into them recently, the post on here has now got me itching to get some an make my own luminaire. Im ok with wiring everything up its just knowing exactly what to get i have the problem with.
 
i think if you wire the led's in series it splits the power between them but wont comprimize the light they produce i had to do it to two fans on my halides both fans had collapsed bearings but i couln't find any 50mm 12volt so had to settle for 5volt so by wiring them in series ive split the pwer but get the same out of them if that makes any sense lol

have a look at this it might make more sense and correct me lol


http://www.instructables.com/id/EVSO9B1KO5EV2Z9T0L/
 
i think if you wire the led's in series it splits the power between them but wont comprimize the light they produce i had to do it to two fans on my halides both fans had collapsed bearings but i couln't find any 50mm 12volt so had to settle for 5volt so by wiring them in series ive split the pwer but get the same out of them if that makes any sense lol

have a look at this it might make more sense and correct me lol


[URL="http://www.instructables.com/id/EVSO9B1KO5EV2Z9T0L/"]http://www.instructables.com/id/EVSO9B1KO5EV2Z9T0L/[/URL]

Its more what to get- led's, driver, and the power supply that troubles me. Im confident enough to be able to wire it all up properly, just not to find the right parts which is where i was hoping SuperColey1 could help :unsure: BTW theres lots of places you can get 50mm fans, maplin being 1 of them :good:
 
whats maplin mate ?

ive found well refound an electronics shop here in chesterfield JPG electronics they do everything but 12volt 50mm fans lol only 5/6volt lol

<a href="http://www.jpgelectronics.com/" target="_blank">http://www.jpgelectronics.com/</a> try these for infomation they have olways seemed good to me they might steer you the right way as to what you want and matching it :thumbs:

Maplin

http://www.maplin.co.uk/searchtemplate.asp...eria=50MM%20FAN

and if there to noisy for you you could always switch them over to 7v rather than 5v.

I'll wait to see if i can get help with parts on here first before i go down other avenues
 
ive allready got them fitted now they only cost £175 each + vat so cheap enough and they are silent its just the halide ballast i can hear a bit buzzing away lol.

they are actually 6v fans not 5v my mistake

ive just bookmarked maplin thankyou
 
£175 each for fans? Do you mean £1.75????

The LEDs are from LED World on ebay. £12 for 5 at a time. The current controllers were from a UK seller. Check out the article on my site. On the first page there is a link back to the original thread on here and then you can find in there the links to the parts I used.

They are wired in series so you can use a driver for a few of them. If they were wired in parallel then you would need a driver for each LED. That gets expensive as well as pointless.

Just wiring in series without the driver will not spread the load very well. It will do it sort of but then if there is a surge or one LED blows the others fry from the additional load!!!! The driver controls the current at a level and soaks up the rest much like a resistor.

These do get hot. Not as hot as melting your skin but imagine 3W in a 3mm LED die. how hot does an 18W tube make and that has 1,000,000 times more area to spread the heat!!! Those GU10s wouldn't do what these can I wouldn't have though otherwise the price of these would've gone down to peanuts :)

As for T5HO versus T8. Give me 4 x T8s rather than 2 x T5HO anyday. Spread is key not just brightness or intensity. 4 lights gives much more flexibility for positioning to get the best spread :)

AC
 
£175 each for fans? Do you mean £1.75????

The LEDs are from LED World on ebay. £12 for 5 at a time. The current controllers were from a UK seller. Check out the article on my site. On the first page there is a link back to the original thread on here and then you can find in there the links to the parts I used.

They are wired in series so you can use a driver for a few of them. If they were wired in parallel then you would need a driver for each LED. That gets expensive as well as pointless.

Just wiring in series without the driver will not spread the load very well. It will do it sort of but then if there is a surge or one LED blows the others fry from the additional load!!!! The driver controls the current at a level and soaks up the rest much like a resistor.

These do get hot. Not as hot as melting your skin but imagine 3W in a 3mm LED die. how hot does an 18W tube make and that has 1,000,000 times more area to spread the heat!!! Those GU10s wouldn't do what these can I wouldn't have though otherwise the price of these would've gone down to peanuts :)

As for T5HO versus T8. Give me 4 x T8s rather than 2 x T5HO anyday. Spread is key not just brightness or intensity. 4 lights gives much more flexibility for positioning to get the best spread :)

AC

Brilliant, thanks for you help. Im actually going from 3x 30w T8s to 4x 54w T5HO's so there should be a considerable improvement hopefully. The T8s are inbuilt into a hood and are loacated more towards the back of the hood. So my grass at the front always seems to suffer. With the T5HO's im converting the tank to open top so should be able to place the luminaire somewhere in the middle getting a much better spread of light in the tank. Im thinking now it might be worth making the led setup for a 3ft tank im off to pick up today.
 
£175 each for fans? Do you mean £1.75????

The LEDs are from LED World on ebay. £12 for 5 at a time. The current controllers were from a UK seller. Check out the article on my site. On the first page there is a link back to the original thread on here and then you can find in there the links to the parts I used.

They are wired in series so you can use a driver for a few of them. If they were wired in parallel then you would need a driver for each LED. That gets expensive as well as pointless.

Just wiring in series without the driver will not spread the load very well. It will do it sort of but then if there is a surge or one LED blows the others fry from the additional load!!!! The driver controls the current at a level and soaks up the rest much like a resistor.

These do get hot. Not as hot as melting your skin but imagine 3W in a 3mm LED die. how hot does an 18W tube make and that has 1,000,000 times more area to spread the heat!!! Those GU10s wouldn't do what these can I wouldn't have though otherwise the price of these would've gone down to peanuts :)

As for T5HO versus T8. Give me 4 x T8s rather than 2 x T5HO anyday. Spread is key not just brightness or intensity. 4 lights gives much more flexibility for positioning to get the best spread :)

AC

yeah i mean £1.75 lol :good:
 

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