LED, PAR, PUR, DIY, and other home brew lighting acronyms

[RelatedToTheFish]

Okay, so I'm looking at making a LED lighting rig for my tank. We have a lightly planted 55 long, so I don't exactly need reef lighting, but I want the shimmer and the cut down on brown algae. So, how much light do I need?

I've seen Photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and how that is measured in micromols I have even seen some spreadsheets for calculating it. Or one for calculating the amount of lights for a reef tank.

But Val and lotus aren't ocean coral. They're shallow water plants, so do I need to go far the 2:1 Royal Blue to White. Any one have any pointers or good links?

I'm coming up with about 35 LEDs for the whole tank, but I'm trying to be cheap.

[Totenkampf]

i wouldnt think that you would need any royal blue for plants. there should be enough blue peaks in cool white spectrums. i have been talking to steve over at stevesleds.com and he recommends a 3:1 ratio of cool white luxeons (6300k) to warm white luxeons (4000k) for planted tanks and terrariums. i was going to go with Cree but he seems pretty passionate about the luxeons being better and cheaper. he also recommended the BoostLED Typhon controller as a cheap way to automate sunrise / sunset functions. give him a shout and he can hook you up with a recommended bill of material for what you want. his prices are really good, especially if you use his aluminum square tube HS which has more cooling surface area and is lighter (for shipping) than the typical finned HS. you can also hook a blower to cool down the middle of the HS since its closed. i thought about doing this since we have square stock at work but i would have to buy a 20' piece so its cheaper to buy from him, plus hes a neighbor in LA.

[RelatedToTheFish]

The aluminum tubing is a little bit of genius. You can mount some small fans on both sides of it and push down major cooling. I'll have to hit Steve up for his help then. I think I may go hardcore DIY on this one, though, get some constant current drivers, a few N-Channel Mosfets, and an Arduino. Then I can roll my own PWM control to dim the channels. Looks like Steve has some of his own driver/controllers that may be just that, though. I'll have to ask about those. Thanks!

It also looks like Steve's LED prices are on par with Group Buy LED's prices.

I'll try and keep an update log going here of the progress as I make it.

[Totenkampf]

cool, please do...i have had other priorities delay the fixture that i want to build but i have decided to go via steves too so i will be appreciating the feedback for sure

you could mount a fan at either end or use the blower that he sells just on one end. it takes up more room and is slightly noisier but i pushes far more air than a conventional cooling fan. i have used the blowers across overclocked video cards and they are far more effective.

[RelatedToTheFish]

Okay, there's a lot of reading, a LOT of reading.

I'm going t start asking around on some other forums and see what help I can get. The drivers Steve uses are Cat4101 homebrew drivers like the ones O2surplus on The Planted Tank designed. Here's a closer look at a single DIY driver.

Right now I'm seriously considering some China "Bridgelux" from FEDY LED. They have a very precise selection of colors and dirt prices, but are cheap knockoffs with no real warranty. CREE leds have a 10 year warranty.

The main thing I'm trying to work out is driving (powering) them. Usually people have two matched sets with the same number of Cold and Warm LEDs. But I want to do that plus some other colors to fill out the spectrum and highlight the fish (turquoise, royal blue, hyper red, and UV.) That leaves my with uneven numbers to drive with varying voltages and I want to have each color on a different dimmer. I can have six dimmer channels with an Arduino. And the Cat4101 circuit accepts PWM input from an Arduino. I also found plans for a sunset/sunrise timer using a DS1307 timer.

[Totenkampf]

starting to sound pretty ballin