rolexbene
Member
The other day I was asked to create a thread on how I made my DIY LED lighting unit, I have got together a few photos
that will hopeful help demonstrate how it is done, I also have a few LED's for sale over on this thread, so if anyone is
interested get in touch.
Here are the LED's used in this build, they are 3W, 3.6V LED's and have a rating of 200lm and are 6000-6500 kelvins
giving them a cool but not to cold white light.
Here you can see the LED's soldered on to the boards, the great thing about these boards is that they remove the need for
untidy wiring and they are made out of aluminium so they work as a rudimentary heat sink. Apply a small amount of thermal
paste on the back of each LED to ensure a good heat transfer between LED and board, a total of 2 of these boards will be used
in this project for a total of 12 LED's or 2400lm.
The next stage is working out how you would like to mount them, I bought a load of aluminium bar, with the aim of bending it
in to a lighting unit, but for this build I decided that I would like to upgrade a recent purchase of an UP Pro L 36cm lighting
unit, that just wan't cutting it in terms of light output. You can see that in the photo I have made a temporary fix to secure
the led in place using small pieces of a chopped up loyalty card.
Next I connected the driver, this is a simple step and just requires that you buy the correct driver for the amount of LED's you
wish to run. This is a dimmable driver I found a while back from a guy on ebay for about £5. It uses a simple potentiometer
to dim the brighness of the light, wich is handy if you do not wish to run them at full output/heat. This driver is designed to run
7-12 LED's in series at 24-51v 680ma. One side of the driver plugs in to a UK plug, and the other side in to the led boards, simple
And here is the finished result, the light output has doubled from the original UP LED's that were in the unit. This is a 60l optiwhite
tank that I have just planted 2 days ago, and the light sufficiently covers the whole tank with good light. The colour rendition of the
light is not as white as I expected, but I actually like this as I find it more comfortable in my living space.
The purpose of this video is to try and demonstrate the brightness of the LED's and also to show you how the
lights catches the water to cast shadow and shimmer in the tank and it surrounding environment.
Watch in 720p for best viewing.