Biocube 29 PC to LED conversion, all done + pics

Wired up the driver when I got home. I still need to hook the potentiometer into it, fortunately the max of the driver wasn't maxing out the LEDs and I was dying to see them all on. So, I hooked up the two strings (they will be separated once I get the 1-10V potentiometers for individual controls) to the one driver.

The color blending is just fine, no banding.

Lights off...

and on...

Fortunately the DSLR was able to increase shutter speed and ISO to make the picture usable.

I'm debating throwing them in the hood tomorrow as all the wiring is external to the tank. Then I can get tank pictures. I did hold it up to the tank, and things look pretty good.

 

looks good, about how much did all this cost?

 

The LEDs (20 of them) were around $100? shipped... the drivers were $75 shipped. Everything else... very cheap. Probably another $20 wrapped up in everything else. I made the aluminum heat sink myself using two different sizes of aluminum U-channel from Lowes. Then used thermal grease and rivets between all the aluminum connections and thermal epoxy on the LED stars. Super easy project. I have a 100/140 watt soldering iron that made the soldering easy as pie... just touch the wire to the pre-tinned pad and you're done. Absolutely no holding it there, just instant soldering. I'd love to build more of them. Had it sitting on for about an hour and it was still chilly to the touch.

I even included little rubber black feet for it to sit on the plastic inside the hood (where the stock PC lighting is). This way I won't have to worry about salt creep or water splashing... and I retain the stock hood fans for cooling the LEDs without having to buy or wire in fans.

 

It's worth noting... one of the things that drove up the cost is that I used XM-L Cree cool whites. But, they are capable of taking 3A (and putting out 900 lumens) if I decide later to crank them up.

 

Looks really nice....great work!

 

Thanks! I need to run into town to pick up the potentiometers and then they'll be on!

 

whats ur thoughts on the quality of the heat sinks. So far all LED heat sinks i have seen have been REALLY thick so the bulb life lasts longer. are you consercned with such a thin heatsink the bulbs wont last as long or burn out?

 

I'm not that concerned. I built a special set up for just one Cree RB, with just an aluminum strip behind it. I let it run for 48 hours straight at 3v and 700mA available to it (in fact, I was testing another hypothesis out that I could directly control where I made my RBTA move with the LED... and it totally worked, I'll have another thread about that), and it was room temp to the touch on the backside after 48 hours running. Now, I'm not sure if I'm just getting NO heat transfer (which is highly unlikely with a thin layer of thermal epoxy between it and the heat sink) or if the aluminum is just that efficient at cooling off. If I had to put money on it, I'd assume the aluminum is just that good. In theory, a thin aluminum should cool off faster, as thick metal would retain heat I'd assume.

This setup seems to run a bit hotter than the individual one. I just checked it and it's warm to the touch, but not hot. Plus, I still have the stock fans in the hood that'll be pulling heat out. I update the post when I went to check it. Guess I found how long it takes to warm up lol. But, they are running at 724 mA and 3.0 Volts.

 

well seems to me the idea with the thick metal is that it can retain a lot of heat, but cools and slow VERY slowly. however the only concern i have with the aluminum is how fast it heats up/coolsdown. But sounds like u had great experience with this! Awesome thread definately interested in buying/doing something like this eventually.

 

I'm putting the lights in the hood tomorrow. I'll update the thread with how they do.