All the fishies now hiding under the tree not to get sun(led)burn ^^ but nice.. probably an incredible disco light too with fragmentation lenses. Thanks for sharing !
Used PCBWay last week to produce 40 RF boards using controlled Rogers RF substrate. The boards were delivered faster than 6 and 5 of the exact same board produced on regular FR4 from OshPark(rush job) and JLCPcb that were all ordered on the same day. OshPark delivered yesterday and JLCPcb is yet to surface. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.
Cool project. Long time ago I had bunch of aquariums including saltwater and made a light fixture using the cheap eBay LED’s... worked very well. Never did get to designing a proper controller for it.
A thicker aluminium substrate does not improve thermal conductivity towards the heatsink. In fact, the thinner the better, until reaching certain mechanical limits.
It might be a cool effect to populate the periphery positions with UV LEDs and muck around with some iridescent ornaments for a night effect. I have seen some fish tank water look milky under UV before but that may have been an issue with filtration.
I was hoping the blue LEDs would extend into the near UV region like Luxeon LEDs tend to, but I forgot to confirm this in the datasheet. These are firmly around 470nm. I do like that idea
I'm no expert at aquarium lighting, but it seems like a soft box like diffuser is a good idea. May be even reflected light. 50-60 deg lense angles do not seem logical in this application. Silicone coated baking paper makes an easiest and cheapest material for that purpose. It shifts the CT a bit to warmer numbers, but it is worth it compared to direct light. You can buy special diffuser sheets made for photography if you want it to be fancier, but it is harder to come by and a lot more expensive.
It depends on the effect you're after. I used to have a much more diffuse lighting source, but the end result is quite dull. With the pendant style you get shadows and ripples in the water, but you obviously then cannot grow high light plants in the dark areas
@@sdgelectronics I noticed light beam effect in your tank, like on a very sunny clear day, looks cool. I was just wondering if it is natural to stay that way all the time, and how living things react.
Steve - any consideration for the amount of heat that will transfer to the water itself or will the lamp assembly be mounted far from the water surface for minimal impact? Thanks for sharing and happy holidays!
Thanks Dino. I'm not too concerned, there's around 180 litres of water overall to keep at 24C. The room is always cooler than that so shouldn't have too much impact. Happy Holidays!
I want to operate a cob 50 watt , 1.75 amp , 36 V led in strobe mode , can I give it 20 - 50 amps and Ton 3ms , Toff 7ms , freq is 100hz. What would be the voltage for a 36 V 50 watt dc cob .
What is the application? If you'll overdrive voltage, current will follow, strobe mode or not. So your LED should degrade faster, proportionally to excessive voltage. Also keep in mind that COB is a LED matrix, where individual LEDs do not match exactly. So overdriving it, could stress some LEDs more than other, introducing another vector of degradation.
I don't see really how the thicker PCB would help with heat conduction here.. quite the opposite. A Thin PCB should have better heat conductivity since the actual heatsink material covers pretty much the entire backside anyways and the PCB is just a barrier between the LED and the heatsink? There should be no need to transport heat "sideways" inside the PCB since there's the actual heatsink material to do that already. Just my initial gut reaction.
Since the board is wider than the heatsink, some heat will transport sideways to the edge and maybe increase conduction slightly. But yeah, since the heatsink and PCB are made of the same material, and size is roughly the same, it won't make too much difference. If you go too thin it won't be rigid enough.
The heatsink and PCB are both aluminium so the thermal resistance of the material is not the issue, however there is greater thermal area before the heatsink-PCB interface and thus should give better heat diffusion. That's the hope anyway, but the fan will likely make any of these differences insignificant
But are you really going to get 4k lumens out of that single XHP70.2? (even if you have the P4 or Q2 bins). I use these quite a bit and if you keep them cool I've never had one pull more than 1750ma (at 12V). And the brightness stayed fairly consistent from about 1300ma and up. So while they are tested at 1050ma (that's from memory so I might be a bit off there), and it's at that current the lumens are measured (call it 2k lumens for round numbers), I don't find them to get that much brighter at higher currents. I've built a 12 V 3A cc driver for them and yet they seem to only sip at it. Is there a way to jam more magic pixies into them? That being said, "the brightest flashlight in the world" uses these, and claims, with 18 of them, to get 100,000 lumens. I just don't get how they do their math. Even at the idealized 4k lumens that's still about 30k short. I'm not trying to be contrary here I really want to know - am I missing the boat on a lot more lumens?
The voltage goes up to about 13.6V at 2.4A. I'll try measuring the light output, but they are considerably brighter at 2.4A than the 1050mA test current
It's also worth adding, that you'll not get the maximum brightness without forced cooling. As the LED die heats up, the light output decreases at any given current. The effect is more significant than you'd think.
@@sdgelectronics (smacks forehead) Thanks for that. (blame Covid brain) I've been so worried about current I wasn't willing to push the voltage to force the current draw up towards my CC driver's max of 2400ma. I'm topping out at 15V and finally drawing 2.4A (on a P4 bin, and outputting about max 3800 lumens - and I have tried lensed/reflectored and not). But in measuring the output I"m still not close to where it would need to be to fulfill the "brightest flash light in the world's claim of 100,000 lumens with 18 of these, unless of of course I run them up in the 18V range and 3.2A. But even with active cooling that can't be good for them. I guess I'll have to do some lifespan testing up in those ranges. I've talked to Cree at length on these and because they are so "new" I don't think they even know what the longevity is. Again, thanks for the thinking reset.
Hi Steve, I used the contact form on the Solder King website to ask if they have distributors in the US - I never got a response. Do you know if they sell over here or if it's carried by a place like RS that can ship to the states for a nominal fee?
Looking forward to part 2...cheers
All the fishies now hiding under the tree not to get sun(led)burn ^^
but nice.. probably an incredible disco light too with fragmentation lenses.
Thanks for sharing !
Used PCBWay last week to produce 40 RF boards using controlled Rogers RF substrate. The boards were delivered faster than 6 and 5 of the exact same board produced on regular FR4 from OshPark(rush job) and JLCPcb that were all ordered on the same day. OshPark delivered yesterday and JLCPcb is yet to surface. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.
Nice project looking forward for the next parts
Great job as always
Cool project. Long time ago I had bunch of aquariums including saltwater and made a light fixture using the cheap eBay LED’s... worked very well. Never did get to designing a proper controller for it.
Wow this is really good well done mate!
A thicker aluminium substrate does not improve thermal conductivity towards the heatsink. In fact, the thinner the better, until reaching certain mechanical limits.
It might be a cool effect to populate the periphery positions with UV LEDs and muck around with some iridescent ornaments for a night effect.
I have seen some fish tank water look milky under UV before but that may have been an issue with filtration.
I was hoping the blue LEDs would extend into the near UV region like Luxeon LEDs tend to, but I forgot to confirm this in the datasheet. These are firmly around 470nm. I do like that idea
I'm no expert at aquarium lighting, but it seems like a soft box like diffuser is a good idea. May be even reflected light. 50-60 deg lense angles do not seem logical in this application.
Silicone coated baking paper makes an easiest and cheapest material for that purpose. It shifts the CT a bit to warmer numbers, but it is worth it compared to direct light.
You can buy special diffuser sheets made for photography if you want it to be fancier, but it is harder to come by and a lot more expensive.
It depends on the effect you're after. I used to have a much more diffuse lighting source, but the end result is quite dull. With the pendant style you get shadows and ripples in the water, but you obviously then cannot grow high light plants in the dark areas
@@sdgelectronics I noticed light beam effect in your tank, like on a very sunny clear day, looks cool. I was just wondering if it is natural to stay that way all the time, and how living things react.
For the love of Jesus, please make the microscope ring light a kit or pre assembled. I'd buy one in a hot second.
I have olight x7 mauruder but the 3 xhp70 emitter is dead in one plate can I put 3 xhp70.2 6v emitter one by one so how can I connect it tnx.?
Can u build a saltwater reef aquarium led light
I love your vids :)
Steve - any consideration for the amount of heat that will transfer to the water itself or will the lamp assembly be mounted far from the water surface for minimal impact? Thanks for sharing and happy holidays!
Thanks Dino. I'm not too concerned, there's around 180 litres of water overall to keep at 24C. The room is always cooler than that so shouldn't have too much impact. Happy Holidays!
@@sdgelectronics Maybe you need a liquid cooling loop into the aquarium instead of a fan :-)
@@lmamakos I think someone already did this!
How you attached lenses? glue?
They have adhesive pads pre-attached to them
I want to operate a cob 50 watt , 1.75 amp , 36 V led in strobe mode , can I give it 20 - 50 amps and Ton 3ms , Toff 7ms , freq is 100hz. What would be the voltage for a 36 V 50 watt dc cob .
What is the application?
If you'll overdrive voltage, current will follow, strobe mode or not. So your LED should degrade faster, proportionally to excessive voltage.
Also keep in mind that COB is a LED matrix, where individual LEDs do not match exactly. So overdriving it, could stress some LEDs more than other, introducing another vector of degradation.
What was the tc1 chip?
It's a temperature sensor. Microchip TC77-3.3
I don't see really how the thicker PCB would help with heat conduction here.. quite the opposite. A Thin PCB should have better heat conductivity since the actual heatsink material covers pretty much the entire backside anyways and the PCB is just a barrier between the LED and the heatsink? There should be no need to transport heat "sideways" inside the PCB since there's the actual heatsink material to do that already. Just my initial gut reaction.
Since the board is wider than the heatsink, some heat will transport sideways to the edge and maybe increase conduction slightly. But yeah, since the heatsink and PCB are made of the same material, and size is roughly the same, it won't make too much difference. If you go too thin it won't be rigid enough.
The heatsink and PCB are both aluminium so the thermal resistance of the material is not the issue, however there is greater thermal area before the heatsink-PCB interface and thus should give better heat diffusion. That's the hope anyway, but the fan will likely make any of these differences insignificant
But are you really going to get 4k lumens out of that single XHP70.2? (even if you have the P4 or Q2 bins). I use these quite a bit and if you keep them cool I've never had one pull more than 1750ma (at 12V). And the brightness stayed fairly consistent from about 1300ma and up. So while they are tested at 1050ma (that's from memory so I might be a bit off there), and it's at that current the lumens are measured (call it 2k lumens for round numbers), I don't find them to get that much brighter at higher currents. I've built a 12 V 3A cc driver for them and yet they seem to only sip at it. Is there a way to jam more magic pixies into them?
That being said, "the brightest flashlight in the world" uses these, and claims, with 18 of them, to get 100,000 lumens. I just don't get how they do their math. Even at the idealized 4k lumens that's still about 30k short.
I'm not trying to be contrary here I really want to know - am I missing the boat on a lot more lumens?
The voltage goes up to about 13.6V at 2.4A. I'll try measuring the light output, but they are considerably brighter at 2.4A than the 1050mA test current
It's also worth adding, that you'll not get the maximum brightness without forced cooling. As the LED die heats up, the light output decreases at any given current. The effect is more significant than you'd think.
@@sdgelectronics (smacks forehead) Thanks for that. (blame Covid brain)
I've been so worried about current I wasn't willing to push the voltage to force the current draw up towards my CC driver's max of 2400ma. I'm topping out at 15V and finally drawing 2.4A (on a P4 bin, and outputting about max 3800 lumens - and I have tried lensed/reflectored and not).
But in measuring the output I"m still not close to where it would need to be to fulfill the "brightest flash light in the world's claim of 100,000 lumens with 18 of these, unless of of course I run them up in the 18V range and 3.2A. But even with active cooling that can't be good for them.
I guess I'll have to do some lifespan testing up in those ranges. I've talked to Cree at length on these and because they are so "new" I don't think they even know what the longevity is.
Again, thanks for the thinking reset.
@@sdgelectronics Exactly! In the race of brightness vs current/heat, the latter pair always wins.
Hi Steve, I used the contact form on the Solder King website to ask if they have distributors in the US - I never got a response. Do you know if they sell over here or if it's carried by a place like RS that can ship to the states for a nominal fee?
They do have an ebay store. I don't think there is a distributor sadly so may not be economical to ship over
@@sdgelectronics Thanks! I'll take a look at their eBay page.
hi sir can i use 12volts charger in 3 pieces 3watts led beads?
If you can current limit the source
@@sdgelectronics if i can ? That is ok?