DIY Lights

[Mick]

Oh this is going to be a risky thread for sure - DIY lights don’t seem to be done any more but death scrolling AliExpress has given me the hope that it can be done successfully and cheaply - I can get similar color and nm range to an orphek icon OR4 for a fraction of the price - with fancy dimming. And maybe at decent PAR.

So the journey begins, judgment and piggy bank be damned!

AliExpress hasn’t been the fastest supplier with weeks in some cases between deliveries. I know that few want to be annoyed by a steady stream of minor updates so I’ll keep posts to the majors and DM any specific interest on the topic. Ultimately I’ll have the club par meter and my coral health be the measure of success!

I’ve made a start and I think the key to my success will be this DC dimmer which has done an unbelievable job at managing the power between cheap power supplies (no constant current/voltage here) and a range of LED’s - some with their own power management - sunrise / sunset timers, voice control for up to something like 80w all for about $3 and as cheap as $1.70. Oh and an app that’s intuitive and makes sense - unlike many reef light apps.

I can’t wait to post what I’m currently using for lights! You won’t believe it. Corals are coloring up, mushrooms getting puffy! Time will tell



I have deliveries through Feb and will post again at the end of it

 

[chaples55]

I for one am down for all the nitty gritty details. I run a few DIY lights at home plus a few half-finished projects waiting to be pushed over the finish line.

How many dimmable color channels will you be running? For me, that has been the tricky part with DIY lights. Commercially available dimmers are all geared towards either a single color channel or are RGBWW but don't let you control those channels independently.

By far the coolest controller I've found is this thing: https://www.tindie.com/products/a_lab_technology/wireless-cc-led-driver-12-48v/

I bought one, started building it, works great, but I shelved the project when I couldn't figure out the fan control lol

 

[Hunna]

I’m broke af, and could use a light upgrade badly. If you’re successful, please lmk and I’d be willing to buy one off you for cost + money for your time.

 

[Mick]

You’re in luck. This is what a $1 actinic can do 24” off the bottom. Now it’s far from amazing but that’s a happy mushroom and decent color. Imagine if I lit that with $3 worth of the same actinics? Now keep in mind 10k LEDs are pennys with crazy light output by comparison thanks to the billions produced for backlighting LED monitors.

It’s a shallow budget pool this build thread will be swimming in; barely enough to keep a bristle worm wet, and the most expensive tool I plan for is a soldering iron. Flow soldering in a fry pan if I can make that work.

 

[siege]

Okay, you 100% have my attention here. I'm a dab hand with a soldering iron, but don't have a station, just the iron and misc stuff. I've forgotten some of the misc. details about electronics soldering I might need to refresh myself on, though a lot of what I'm thinking of might be more relevant to repairs (which I did a spate of for a while) than new builds.

A copepod has a better chance in a tank full of wrasses and mandarins than I do of convincing my wife to let me use one of her frying pans for soldering in, however.

You mentioned it, so, I'mma harp on it a second, one of the most important things to me in lighting is a good, programmable sunrise/sunset cycle with as smooth a gradient between settings as possible. I'm good with other tech - I work with computers for a living - so miscellaneous bits of gear don't intimidate me, as long as I don't have to code it from scratch (I know my lane, and stick with scripting languages, where I steal code with the best of them).

So, if I can build something with good controls and around $1.50 per watt or less after construction? That'd be amazing.

 

[siege]

I’m broke af, and could use a light upgrade badly. If you’re successful, please lmk and I’d be willing to buy one off you for cost + money for your time.

If this works out, and Mick doesn't take you up on it - and assuming I feel competent to do it - if you buy the parts for yours, I'll build it for you in trade for a few frags when you have some to spare and my tank is ready for them.

I'm badly in need of improved lighting myself, it seems, and still sticker-shocked by pretty much everything, though the VIPARSPECTRA and Noopsyche stuff is at least close to sanely priced with decent functionality at around $1.50/watt, vs. $5 - $7/watt for stuff like Kessil and Tunze. Plus, if this works out, it would mean I might be able to light this 75 gallon I have in the garage much sooner than later. As expensive as everything else is for a tank that size, no point buying a darn thing for it until I can light it.

If I'm going to build one, I might as well build two at the same time - unless it turns out I have to manually align and solder a thousand hair-thin leads under a magnifying glass while praying I don’t short something and turn it into a very expensive paperweight. Or dipping the whole thing in resin and hoping I don’t end up with a $200 brick. Much less individually potting every diode in epoxy to make it fully waterproof, or some other nightmare that turns this into a week-long exercise in patience and regret. Heh.

Why do I get the feeling I'm going to have to conformal-coat every connection and then bake it in a low-temp oven just to keep it from corroding over the tank?

Nope, never done anything like this before, lol.

 

[chaples55]

I'll hijack this thread to drop some links I've found useful in the past. Maybe it can help someone else too. May not be in the spirit of absolute bottom $ tho.

Heatsinks, solderless led boards, etc:

LEDGroupBuy

LEDs Make It Possible

www.ledgroupbuy.com

High quality name-brand LEDs at a discount. I've had AliExpress LEDs burn out on me over time, especially at 430nm and below. These have been running 100% power for 4+ years now no problem:

Welcome to Steves LEDs, LLC

5CH customizable solderless LED modules:

5 Kanal 25LEDs anpassen xpe2 XP-E xte Semileds UV 425nm Mix Farben LED Emitter Glühbirne für DIY Aquarium Aquarium Beleuchtung - AliExpress 39

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

a.aliexpress.com

 

[Mick]

Reliability is definately a consideration here for sure and my approach there is to operate everything well inside the specifications for each component, and offset performance loss with more component at the lower price point. I think I’m likely to get more output from 3x 20c 3w LED’s running at 60% than one CREE at $2.00, and at the same time run cooler and more reliably. The bonus here is if I don’t like the shade of blue it costs me a few cents to swap a diode out to a different nm.

I’m jumping the gun here but this is my starting point:

The internals are from another light of the same type.

I’m now running 2x 54w rated auto spotlights above my 75 gallon. I originally planned to gut the internals and use the casing with in built heat sink and glass to hold a mix of blue and 10k 3w diodes. It was the cheapest most complete solution for the heat sink I could find at around $15 on Temu. The alternative was those pretty ugly box heat sinks with no casing for more $ - and more work! Not a good alternative

The length is perfect at 21” and the spread width ways just as good 24” off the water. The inbuilt reflectors guide the light consistently with acceptable bleed. On cracking them open it seems like they’ve use cool white SMD LED’s - same as they use for TV’s and monitors for which the industry standard is 7,500k. It does not take many actinic LEDs to change that color bluer and add pop.

And my corals are really responding well to that light. The fastest cheapest approach to modifying those lights would be to change some of the 40 surface mount LED’s to actinic LED’s of the same power rating. I have not worked out a way to determine the specs of those LED’s and therefore what to order. If anyone can help me there I will attempt that. The mod would be as cheap as hell!

My plan is to keep those without gutting them and run some actinic blades to complement them, and of course those light controllers to manage the whole thing.

Now to my point above, I have these running at perhaps 40% of their rating, more than that I fear burning a few corals. It’s way more than they ever had before. The power supply is running at about 40% as well, the dimmer controller the same.

Total cost of this setup theoretically capable of around 100w was $15 for the light x2, $8 for a variable power supply and $3 for the dimmer. A non-variable dimmer would be $3 less but I like the control it gives me. And if I just used a 12v power supply we al have lying around less still.

So 40c a watt? And let’s double that to be conservative because I use half the rated capacity - $80c a watt for 7,500 kelvin setup.

Of course that ratio will change when I start adding the actinics which are less efficient and need a few more components. I am really happy with the first step of the journey though. So I’m encouraged to take the next step.

 

[siege]

Great stuff, I definitely encourage you to take that next step as well! Less than $1/watt?? And undervolted, too, so the diodes last longer? If you (or we, if we can help) can get a good sunrise/sunset cycle going with it too, I'm so in it's not funny.

If you didn't live so far away, I'd volunteer to assist in person if you wanted, but it's a LONG drive between here and there.

 

[Hunna]

You’re all using a lot of words that I don’t know what they mean, so ima take it as disrespect.

Seriously though, also count me in. I’d love better lighting for my tanks, but just can’t afford it with how expensive things are these days. If you’ve found a way to be comparable at a fraction of the cost, I’ll gladly buy parts and compensate you for your time and knowledge.

 

[Mick]

Here’s that mushroom today bouncing away all fat and bubbly in the current. Notice how vibrant those cloves are - of course no actinic yet so coloring does not show

 

[PJs_Bucket_List]

You’re all using a lot of words that I don’t know what they mean, so ima take it as disrespect.

Seriously though, also count me in. I’d love better lighting for my tanks, but just can’t afford it with how expensive things are these days. If you’ve found a way to be comparable at a fraction of the cost, I’ll gladly buy parts and compensate you for your time and knowledge.

I second that sentiment, and I understand far less of what y'all are saying lol. All I hear is "we can make good reef lights that don't cost a kidney"...which sounds great to me, because I don't have the budget or the kidney to spare! I'm following this thread, because I'll have to light this 125 gallon glass box somehow, and I'm kinda hoping to do it within this year . @Mick you might have inadvertently started up a little side gig for yourself, if this works out and you're up for it.

 

[Mick]

Oh PJ I started on this adventure because I also have a 125 gallon to light up! 72” is a big space and lets face it - I’m unlikely to shut down a tank just because a new one arrived. And ultimately that’s a lot of lighting and a ton of expense.

I do enough things the hard way (see my cabinet build thread) and this I want to do the easiest way possible so anyone else can do it too and perhaps improve.

I appreciate I’ve used a lot of jargon above and I’ll spend a moment this weekend going into a bit of depth on what I’m talking about. For the most part it is straight forward and useful to know for lighting decisions. I might spend a bit of time on refugium lighting too

I’m in East Cobb by the way not far from our dball.

 

[siege]

I might spend a bit of time on refugium lighting too

This too is of interest to me, but mainly the form factor. I have a 14g "remote display refugium" to light, but it's not going to just be a mass of chaeto - rather it's going to essentially be a nano hooked up to my 50 gallon that will host a lot of decorative macro algae, a few misc. inverts and some sexy shrimp. As a result, rather than just pure vegetative growth lights, I'll want more typical reef lights but the sizes/shapes typical to 'fuge lights is probably still spot on for my needs.

 

[Mick]

The start of me sharing what I (I think) I know

Nm and Kelvin

Nm or ‘newton meters’ is used to measure the wave-length of a single color. UV is in the 300 to low 400nm range, blue around 440 to 500nm, green just above 500nm. There are plenty of charts on-line that will show you the ‘nm’ measurement for each color. Kelvin is used to indicate the ‘color’ of all colors mixed at once – ie ‘white’ and comes from the actual temperature in ‘Kelvin’ of a metal halide filament for that color of white. There are plenty of charts on-line that will show you the difference but for simplicity a kelvin rating of 2,500 Kelvin is more warm and yellow and the higher you go the more blue that light becomes. For a reef tank we tend to like whites above 10,000k and up to 20,000k. And that’s why metal halides were popular.

I’m sure others can comment but this is not an exacting standard and a 20,000k LED and a 20,000k metal halide won’t perform exactly the same.

Actinic wavelengths

We perceive corals and other objects ‘glowing’ under UV and Actinic light because they reflect a different light to what we are shining on them which we perceive as fluorescence. We shine blue, they change that wavelength and reflect back yellow, or green or whatever. Manufactured objects tend to do this more under UV light, corals in my experience do this more under ‘actinic’ light. So what’s that?

UV is the range of light wavelengths that are difficult for us to see and cause this fluorescence. What we do see looks purple. Actinic is the range of light wavelengths we can see and cause this same fluorescence. Royal Blue has a wavelength of 440nm and for me is the cross over color between UV and actinic. We see it as blue with a little tinge of purple. ‘Dark Blue’ is above that at around 460nm and we gradually get lighter until we hit around 490-500nm – and that is the Windex blue look. All of those blues are actinic and will make our corals pop. We get to mix these UV, Actinic and ‘kelvin whites’ in which ever way we want, for the color we desire. We can hard wire that, or split our LED’s into different channels with dimmers to have something more dynamic. LPS folks will want more blue, SPS folks more white as they have more visible coloration to them. I’ll encourage others to post on what a healthy lighting regime might be – @Tamara Marshall ?

And that is all I’m trying to do here. Get a mix that is right for me. If you would like to see how that works in practice, look at the specs for the lights you have or, go to the Orphek website, they have a great overview of what wavelengths they’ve chosen to mix in and the resultant charts.

I’ll walk through how LEDs work next post

 

[Mick]

How they work

LED’s work by applying DC voltage to the semiconductor material they’re made of so that current can flow through the material to generate light wavelengths, and heat as a by-product. You need a minimum voltage for the semiconductor material to conduct current.

Dimming is then done in a few ways. You can vary the voltage and make the semiconductor material more or less conductive or vary the current travelling through the LED, or you can turn the LED rapidly on and off.

Varying the voltage or current has the side effect of being less reliable as modifying them can impact temperature which changes how conductive an LED is allowing more current to flow and higher than intended brightness. Unchecked by something like a resistor the LED can burn out. Applying a different voltage or current than what an LED is designed for can change the color produced. These are mostly solvable problems with heat sinks and current limiting resistors, but more effort.

Turning them on and off rapidly at the voltage and current they are designed for solves these problems and gives a much more reliable dimming. Because it happens so quickly we only perceive them as being dimmer, not flickering. This is called “Pulse Width Modulation” (PWM) dimming. You change the brightness by controlling the ‘width’ or duration that the LED is on or off.

PWM is great but for the fact that many power supplies use this same process to deliver a fixed constant current or voltage and adding a second PWM device to the circuit can cause a conflict – flickering or not working. LED power supplies with built-in PWM dimming are available but at a much higher price, and a good number don’t come with wifi or apps which we want here.


Watts. What?

Watts is simply Voltage times Amps. A typical ‘3 Watt’ blue LED needs 3.2-3.6volts to work and consumes 0.7amps – or 700milliamps (700ma). If you’re fast at math you’ll see that actually equals closer to 2.5 watts, not 3 - and that overstatement is pretty much true of every LED out there.

To add challenge a blue LED of this ‘wattage’ produces 40-60 lumens of brightness vs. 220-260 lumens for a cool white. Blues are 6x less bright! So watts is not a good descriptor of brightness, what it does do is help us understand how much cooling we need because that extra energy needs to go somewhere. And it’s heat; the blue LED’s we want need a LOT more cooling than white LED’s.


So I need the right combo of power supply, dimmer, LED’s of wavelength between ~390nm and 500nm’s to complement the cool white LED lights I’m keeping, and enough cooling for them.

I’ve shared some of my decisions in this post already, the rest have started arriving in my mailbox. I hope I chose correctly.

Side note —

There’s another member looking for cheep lights and a response for ~$60 18w blue blades on eBay. Not bad but I still think we can do better!

That particular type of light is based on a ‘wash light’ designed for lighting external walls and flat surfaces of buildings. You can find them on AliExpress. Pretty neat of them to use it as a basis for a reef light by modifying the LEDs to blue.

They don’t look dimmable but I imagine if you changed the power supply (which seems to be non-dimmable constant current) and used the dimmer above you could make them dimmable and programmable - maybe a $10 upgrade - tip of the hat to them.