# 6g nano - LED lighting



## Wasserpest (Jun 12, 2003)

Nice, thank you for sharing. LEDs are sexay.

How hot do the LEDs get? Is there a need for the big ol' fan, or would the heatsink distribute the heat sufficiently?


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

Wasserpest said:


> Nice, thank you for sharing. LEDs are sexay.
> 
> How hot do the LEDs get? Is there a need for the big ol' fan, or would the heatsink distribute the heat sufficiently?


Aluminum will store very little heat, because of its low density and relatively low specific heat. It has a good thermal conductivity, though, so that makes it good for a heat exchanger, which is what our "heat sinks" really are. The fan helps move the heat from the aluminum to the air by forced convection. If we were to coat our "heatsinks" with a good, but very thin black paint, they would also radiate more heat away, and work even better.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

More pics..


















Maybe this thread should be moved to the nano forum or something?


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## Craigthor (Sep 9, 2007)

Looks good. Any pics of the build? I've got an ADA Mini M that I would love to switch over to LED lighting.

So tempted to get another Mini Solar so I can disassemble it and turn it over to LEDs.

Craig


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

It looks like you are getting very good, uniform light with the LEDs. Do you have access to a PAR meter? If there is an aquatic plant club there, they might have one you could borrow. One thing still lacking with LED lighting is good data about how much light people get with various configurations of LEDs. That makes it hard to design an effective light for a given size tank.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

*Craigthor:*
I don't have any detailed build pics, but this is quite simple actually. I used a 6mm thick aluminum plate for the heatsink, and attached 2 L brackets onto it with screws and thermal paste. I intend to add a couple more L brackets for better passive cooling, but as long as the fan is running this design is keeping the LEDs quite cool.

Then I just drilled holes to attach the LEDs (no tapping!), with artcic silver thermal paste between the heatsink and LEDs for optimal heat transfer. Then it's just a matter of connecting the LEDs in series (2x 5 LED series), and connecting the terminals to the buckpucks.

Buckpucks I bought from ledsupply.com for $15 each.
LEDs from dealextreme.com

I'm using a 3A 24v power supply I already had, and the fan I got from a local electronics store.

Total cost is $150-200, but keep in mind I live in Iceland so I had to pay import duties and all sort of extra cost which americans don't have to.

*Hoppy:*
I am really happy about the light coverage. I am not using any optics on the LEDs, so it's spread out pretty much all over the place. I do get a shimmer effect as the water ripples, which I like very much 

I have no idea about PAR readings, and there's no aquatic plants club in Iceland so no help there. The plants have been in the tank for about 40hrs now, and ca. 3 hours ago I added co2 to the tank and the HC is already starting to pearl. Judging by that I'd assume the light is sufficient, but I'm not planted tank expert so I could be wrong.


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## Craigthor (Sep 9, 2007)

*kev82* What made you choose the 3W over the 1W? I've though about a similar pattern but using 14 1W CREEs. 3 Banks 5, 4, 5 without optics. 

How many buck pucks are your running, 2?

Sorry about all the questions but I'm in thought land on setting one up.

Craig


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Because 3w are much more powerful and can penetrate water much more effectively. You'd also need fewer LEDs, which means less wiring and soldering and a neater solution. I'm not sure the 1w crees would be powerful enough, except for a shallow tank. I don't have any hard data on that, just something I've read on a few forums, f.e. nano-reef.com. 

I have personally tried 0.5w LEDs and they were nowhere close to powerful enough.

I'm running 2 buckpucks.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

HC seems to like LEDs...

















Also this plant, whose name I do not know.. There's been a steady stream of bubbles coming from it all day.


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

You obviously do have enough light, since you have pearling of the HC. My question about PAR is to get more data to help us design lighting for other tank sizes, which is a real bear!

You didn't tap the holes, that are used to secure the LEDs. Did you use a tiny bolt and nut to hold them? I enlarged your pic as much as I could and still couldn't see just how they are held on. I think nuts and bolts may be the way I go on my light. Much easier to drill holes and not have to tap them. And, that is as secure a mounting method as I have heard of.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

I just used 3.5x16mm stainless wood screws. Drilled 3mm holes for them and carefully screwed them in, sometimes backing out half a turn so I wouldn't break the screws. It's a tight fit, but the screws handle it nicely. Bolts and nuts work too, but are a little more work, and more expensive.

On this pic you can see the ends of the screws pointing out above the LEDs. I used a dremel to remove those so I wouldn't hurt myself handling the heatsink.









Another pic..









I can take more detailed pics for you if you need..


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

Thank you! Now I see how you did it. I think I will use screws and nuts on mine. I would just be far too angry if I were to break off one of the screws while tightening it. It is a little more expensive, but very little. The use of screws with heads made for countersinking is a good idea too, since that means you don't need insulating washers under the heads.


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## Craigthor (Sep 9, 2007)

Great Idea. 

Did you use the prewided Buckpucks? Also I wonder how hte buckpuck that comes with the Potentiometer would be fun to play with.

Craig


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

I just made a buck with a pot myself. I have a decent collection of electronic components and just threw a 10k ohm potentiometer on the bucks. I'm running the LEDs at full blast tho.

I am also going to play around with atmega168 microcontrollers I have, to simulate a sunrise/sundown effect when turning on the lights. Probably going to add a safety circuit in there while I'm at it, turn the lights off if the temperature of the heatsink gets too high. So many possibilities with these things 


Using nuts and bolts is definitely not a bad idea and the cost is so small that it doesn't really matter. I just used screws because I had them in my toolbox, they're quick to use and cheap


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## giga (Dec 7, 2007)

So is everything growing? I'm def going to do this just with 28 LED's and optics if need as my tank is 14" tall


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Yeah, looks like things are growing quite well. The plants are pearling like there's no tomorrow at least.

The tank's been set up for about 6 days now and I had to clean algae from the glass for the first time.. I need to look into ways to control algae it seems 

I used a magfloat to clean the glass, and when switching the magnet from one side to another a little water splashed onto one LED. The optics on the diode shattered (or got loose and fell off). The LED shines as bright as ever.. Just without optics.

*Moral of story*: I need to make myself a _splash protector_.


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## ridingreen03 (Jan 4, 2009)

Looking good, Im jealous now


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## malaybiswas (Nov 2, 2008)

Nice fixture. Do you have any ideas of the sunrise/sunset programming? I was thinking of doing the same but I'm not too comfortable with the circuitry involved to gradually dim over a long (1/2 hr or more) period


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

I'm basically just going to do PWM on a microcontroller to do it for me. I'll be connecting a realtime clock to the microcontroller to keep track of time.

Not really much to it, just a little C programming and a couple of solder joints


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## malaybiswas (Nov 2, 2008)

kev82 said:


> I'm basically just going to do PWM on a microcontroller to do it for me. I'll be connecting a realtime clock to the microcontroller to keep track of time.
> 
> Not really much to it, just a little C programming and a couple of solder joints



Cool. Keep us posted on it. I got a PWM circuit at allaboutcircuits.com that somebody helped me with, but it is pretty complex and I did not want to start with it since this is not my forte. Once I have my light panel ready, I'll probably have to play around with it a bit. Will be good to see how your one comes out.

Quick question. I have technology background but never done microcontroller programming. I first want to try out some simple circuits. Is there anything that you recommend as a good startup kit?

Hopefully I am not hijacking your thread


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Good startup kit... For doing what? What do you need? Are you an absolute newbie or do you have some electronics knowledge? Do you know programming?


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## malaybiswas (Nov 2, 2008)

kev82 said:


> Good startup kit... For doing what? What do you need? Are you an absolute newbie or do you have some electronics knowledge? Do you know programming?


I have electronics and programming knowledge. I am not looking for a pre-packaged startup kit. I meant a component list of what is required for basic PIC programming


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

A programmer and a microcontroller i pretty much all you need to start. Some LEDs, resistors and a breadboard to play with are helpful, too.

I use atmel microcontrollers (atmega168 and attiny13), but the same applies for PICs, afaik.

I bought from this store:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Mini-ATMEL-AVR-...5|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1318|301:1|293:1|294:50
http://cgi.ebay.com/5x-ATMEL-ATMEGA...hash=item160302797273&_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116


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## malaybiswas (Nov 2, 2008)

Thanks a lot for the info. Most of the microcontrollers I have seen are for 12 vdc low current circuits. Do you know of any that can work in a 24v 1A circuit?


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

malaybiswas said:


> Thanks a lot for the info. Most of the microcontrollers I have seen are for 12 vdc low current circuits. Do you know of any that can work in a 24v 1A circuit?



Most of them only work on 3-5v actually. You need to drop down the voltage and use transistors to control higher voltage/current stuff with the microcontroller.
buckpucks use a 0-5v signal to control dimming tho, so controlling that with a microcontroller is easy.


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## Cactus Bastard (Jun 5, 2007)

Hoppy said:


> I think I will use screws and nuts on mine.


You could also use heat conductive adhesive. It's not much more expensive than thermal grease, and would be a lot easier than drilling a bunch of holes and bolting each LED in. If you ever need to replace an LED, this can still be accomplished with a razor blade.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Cactus Bastard said:


> You could also use heat conductive adhesive.  It's not much more expensive than thermal grease, and would be a lot easier than drilling a bunch of holes and bolting each LED in. If you ever need to replace an LED, this can still be accomplished with a razor blade.



I used thermal grease, and removing a LED takes about 20 seconds. Loosen one screw and remove the other, in about 6 turns or so. Thermal adhesive is pretty damn strong and hard to remove, probably takes alot more work to get LEDs loose that have been fastened using that, and the heatsink surface is worse off afterwards, making proper thermal contact with the new LED hard.


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

By not threading the holes in the heat sink you reduce the work required to bolt or screw then on by over 50%, and thermal greases are both cheaper and have a higher conductivity than thermal adhesives.

If you could find one of these, shown below, in #4-40 size, threading doesn't take any time at all, but I'm not sure they are made that small.


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## Sixwing (Jan 30, 2009)

So, out of sheer curiosity, something like Wire Glue might work?
Not having access to soldering in my own home, this looks interesting to me.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Sixwing said:


> So, out of sheer curiosity, something like Wire Glue might work?
> Not having access to soldering in my own home, this looks interesting to me.


Yes, it might.. But a cheap soldering iron shouldn't set you back more than $10-30 at your local radioshack (or whatever electronics store is close to you).

I don't know wire glue, but properly soldering the LEDs is probably much better in the long run. It's really easy too, the pads you solder to are huge, so even if you're a total soldering newbie, you'll have no problems with it whatsoever.



P.S.
*A tank update*: I have algae! Lots and lots of green hair algae. I've removed the big clumps with a toothbrush, added 6 amano shrimp and reduced the lighting time in the tank. Looks alot better already. Might add a few more shrimp tomorrow to be safe tho.
The plants are growing like crazy, I'll probably have to prune the "big" plant whose name I do not know pretty soon, because it's sending runners all over the place. HC seems to be growing damn well too.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Update:
Still battling algae, but plants are growing quite well. I have 14 amano shrimp in the tank now to help control algae.

April 4th:









April 11th (today):


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

Congratulations! Having algae problems is a sure sign that you have very good light intensity. (This is called looking at the bright side of things!)


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Yeah looks like it. The 2 pics above show the progress nicely. Taken 1 week apart and no new plants or anything in the plant. HC is filling out nicely and if it continues like this it might cover the whole substrate in just 1-3 weeks.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

I'm still battling algae, but the plants don't seem to be affected much.

Here's a Sagittaria Teres flower from the tank:


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## malaybiswas (Nov 2, 2008)

Quite a bit of progress in 7 days. Do you have any algae eaters other than cardina japonicas? If possible try some SAE.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Shrimp are (and will be) the only inhabitants. SAE get too large for the tank, and will eat the shrimplets. I intend to add a few berried CRS I have in another tank.

The japonicas are doing an impressive job with the algae, I'm hoping that and regular glass cleaning will be sufficient to keep the tank relatively clean.

I'll post new pics of the tank soon. Probably not as much growth as last time because of the algae, but the pics will tell


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

kev82 said:


> Update:
> Still battling algae, but plants are growing quite well. I have 14 amano shrimp in the tank now to help control algae.
> 
> April 4th:
> ...


April 24th: 









Plenty of algae in the center as you can see, but the amanos are working through it pretty darn fast. You should have seen the tank a week ago


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## Wicket_lfe (Aug 21, 2008)

How much did this run you? Thanks! Looks great!


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

LED setup was about $100, excluding the parts I already had. It'll probably be even cheaper for you since I'm in Iceland.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Algae is pretty much gone now:









I'm having trouble photographing the tank tho - the LEDs seem to throw the camera off.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Update... Not much to show, but I'm getting close to getting a decent picture under LED illumination..


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## evilc66 (Feb 28, 2008)

It's tough. It's even harder once you start adding in blue LEDs.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

I really need to clean the background... Also a littlebit of green spot algae developing.. nothing bad tho.


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

This is a great advertisement for LED lights. But, you need to find a really small lawn mower to work on that HC lawn, before it becomes too thick and tall to do anything with.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Yeah I was thinking the same thing  I have no idea how to prune it tho - Can I just clip the top off the thickest bunches?


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

The one time I watched an expert prune a carpet he just used ordinary scissors, reached down with the scissors parallel to the substrate and gave it a "haircut", down to about a centimeter or less, as I recall. Then it took a net to catch all of the trimmings and get them out of the tank. HC is a stem plant, so it grows back easily.

If you have an extra tank, you can put substrate in it, add just enough water to almost reach the top of the substrate, sprinkle the HC trimmings on it, cover the tank with plastic wrap to keep the moist air in, add light, and you will soon have another tank full of HC!


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Good stuff - I'll give that a try soon - Need to trim the other plants too


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## JimmyYahoo (Aug 14, 2005)

Will somebody please start selling DIY LED kits. Inclusive of everything needed to build your own light?

Nice tank duder!


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

There's not much to it - I can give you a shopping list if you like?


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## Register (Apr 15, 2009)

kev82 said:


> There's not much to it - I can give you a shopping list if you like?


Please post shopping list! I have a 5.5 I just set up and would love to build an LED setup for it.


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

If the cost isn't a concern to you everything you need to build a LED light can easily be purchased from internet stores. It is when you try to reduce the cost to a minimum that it becomes a much bigger challenge. Some day I hope we will be able to buy LED light modules, each about 4-6 inches square, with enough of the right LEDs to produce an appropriate PAR over some range of distances. Those modules would contain the complete power supply and driver, and would be plug and play modules. Then someone with a tank with a 12 inch by 30 inch footprint could buy 10 of them, interconnect them and have a good planted tank light. When I look at the details for doing this, the immediate problem is cost, so I doubt we will be able to buy anything like this at a reasonable cost for several more years. But, I'm willing to bet this will happen eventually.


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## JimmyYahoo (Aug 14, 2005)

The issue is not creating a list. It is managing four or five different orders coming from different vendors. I am sure people (myself for sure) would pay a premium to be able to place one consolidated request. That would eliminate the hassle, and leave the fun part – wiring, soldiering, and mildly electrocuting myself repeatedly.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

You can order almost everything at ledsupply.com - Everything but the heatsink.


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## JimmyYahoo (Aug 14, 2005)

^ I did not know that. Thanks… now ill take you up on that shopping list. Could you tailor it to a tank with a 1’x1’ footprint? Another thing.. I don’t see too many people using lenses around here though on another forum with many LED build threads they seem to be pretty popular. I think I understand the idea why.. they focus the light in a tighter pattern for higher PAR… but why are they not used so much around here?


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

Lenses are popular in deeps reef tanks where people have corals and clams with extremely high light requirements *and* are on the sandbed. LEDs in planted tanks are in its infancy - and a bit behind reefs. This is pretty much unexplored territory. I can however recommend stuff that's working (very well) for me. 
How deep is the 1x1 tank you want this for? I'm not using lenses because the depth of my tank is about 1ft.. If it's 1.3-1.6 feet or more you might want to start *thinking* about them. The footprint of my tank is roughly the same as yours, and I'm using 10 LEDs. But the number depends on depth.


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

Lenses that focus the LED light into a smaller cone angle are a disadvantage for most planted tanks. We don't need nearly the light intensity the reef people need. I think it is much better to use the 120 degree or so cone angle you get from the built-in lens on the LEDs, which lets you overlap the light from several LEDs, evening out the intensity at the substrate, and, especially higher up in the tank. I estimated that it would take 4 overlapping LED outputs to get to 100 micromols of intensity, but I think I over estimated. I'm still not sure about that part, and with the problems I'm having with my fixture I'm not sure when I will know that answer. With the 120 degree cone of light you get overlaps from a lot more than 4 LEDs with the 3 inch spacing I used, but I figured the intensity from the farther away LEDs would be low enough to ignore - now I don't think so.


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## 691175002 (Apr 28, 2009)

If you know where to go for parts you should be able to put together an LED system for nothing more than the price of LEDs.

I'm a minor electronics hobbyist/programmer on the side so I have most of this stuff hanging around, but you can get the parts to build drivers/dimmers/microcontrollers/power etc all free as samples if you know where to go. I have so many current regulators on hand that I am building individual drivers and wiring up various colors of cheap 5mm LEDs as well as 3W ones.

Grab a bunch of low dropout variable voltage regulators and hook them up in current limiting mode, or pick up a bunch of transistors to build switching drivers as free samples.(0$)

Either dig around for a wall wart transformer or pick up something cheap as surplus or from something broken to use as a power supply.(0-15$)

Grab some scrap aluminum channel or any form of extruded aluminum as a heatsink.(0-10$)

On top of that you could pick up some free PIC microcontrollers as samples if you have the experience to program a clock, PWM, dimming etc. Then all you need is wire and perhaps resistors which are as good as free.

The total price even for a very complex system should basically be the LED cost, which is about 4$ per 3W off dealextreme (Shipping included). Of course, you may end up paying the difference in time running around looking for parts.

I'm working on a 36W system over a 10 gallon tank (We will see if this is enough light) for 40$, but I felt that there was no point opening a build log this early when 99% of the time will be spent just waiting for parts to arrive.


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## Ennio (Jan 30, 2010)

kev82 said:


> I'm basically just going to do PWM on a microcontroller to do it for me. I'll be connecting a realtime clock to the microcontroller to keep track of time.


You realize that PWM introduces huge amounts of flicker in the tank? It may be invisible for the human eye, it sure isn't for the animals in your tank..

Plus, you lose the advantage of using DC LED over other light-sources. Which is that your fish will finally see light as it was in nature (i.e. constant, no 60Hz or other strange AC-flickering..).


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

The LED driver is PWM dimmable. It's controlled by PWM, which means you can control the brightness by varying the duty cycle. The output of the leds is constant with no flickering.


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## paronaram (Jun 29, 2009)

Hey Kev,

Any ideas how can it be done ?
I have 10 bit ST microcontroller ST7 Ultralite, was thinking to program that and let it run on the LED fixture. But I'm not that strong in C language.

But if someone can help me, we can put How to together and have revolutionary LED light controller!!! For very cheep.

Thanks.


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

I have no idea how you'd do it with that controller. I just used an attiny13, LM7810 voltage regulator, trimpot, and a couple of transistors.


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## paronaram (Jun 29, 2009)

I don't think you can setup a timer with attiny13, so it will take a programming on the level like from 8:00AM to 11:00AM bring the light to 85% then from 11:00AM till noon 100%. And keep it 100% till 5PM and then slowly bring it down to complete dark :red_mouth


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## kev82 (Feb 6, 2009)

paronaram said:


> I don't think you can setup a timer with attiny13, so it will take a programming on the level like from 8:00AM to 11:00AM bring the light to 85% then from 11:00AM till noon 100%. And keep it 100% till 5PM and then slowly bring it down to complete dark :red_mouth


Bump it up to attiny45 or 85 and you can easily add an i2c RTC for that kind of functionality.


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## madhatter4 (Dec 13, 2007)

Haha awesome :biggrin:

This is exactly what I have done with my LED setup.

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/diy/120879-my-awesome-me-diy-led-setup.html

Programing the Dawn/Dusk cycles was not hard at all but I did run into an issue when dimming to a moonlight level. The dimming worked fine but I would go from light to dark to fast or visa versa. I had to add some code that would allow it to say in the lower light levels for a little longer to keep the dimming a bit more linear. The math involved is easy. Take the difference of the current Duty cycle and the desired duty cycle and divide that by the amount of time left in the transition to get the next duty cycle increment/decrement.

Im using a 16 bit timer with a top of 32000 giving me a 250Hz PWM. No flicker is detectable.


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