My 14K LED Build

I'm going to be building an LED fixture for my 90 Gallon tank with a diy driver and I plan on documenting my build progress in this post. I will be using (8) 3-up tri star's with (1) Neutral White 5,000K and (2) Royal Blue 3W Luxeon ES LEDs from Steve's LEDs. I hope this gives me somthing close to 14K but if not I can dim them down to where I like them. I plan on mounting the LED's and the driver on a 12" Makers LED heat sink in a patern of two rows of 4 stars with a driver glued to the center of the heat sink. The driver board will have 3 CAT4101 Drivers that will be setup as two channels. The first driver will control the White and the remaining two will be tied together to drive the blue LED's. I have also added two LTC6992 IC's to drive the PWM input of the CAT4101 so I can provide a 0-10Volt signal for LED dimming.



LED Layout:





Driver Board Layout:

 

Are you only putting 1 of those over a 90 gal? If so that will not be enough light to grow corals. you will need 2 of those fixtures for softies and lps and 3 if you plan on growing sps

 

There will be 2 fixtures and if I need more light I could easaly add 8 more stars + a driver to a 12" heat sink I would think.

 

I am interested in seeing how this turns out. This may be a set up I can duplicate. The price seems right as well.

 

As far as the price goes that is the price not including the 24V Switch mode power supply to power the units and I still need to find a good bulk head connector to add a cable to the fixutres or I might just use a multi conductor cable and a plastic strain releafe... I would like for each fixture to only have one cable coming out of it. I forgot to mention in the first post that I put a 12V regulator on the board to power the fan that comes with the makersled heat sink.

 

Well I have assymboled my Driver boards and placed the LED's on the Heat sinks but I have been quite slow in posting any progress. Here are images of the Driver Boards and Heat sinks with LED's I hope to get these fixtrues completed in next two weeks and get some better pictures posted.

 

The lights are finished so here are some pics! And no the light's aren't red I am just to lazy to figure out how to white balance my camber

 

So how much do you have in each fixture if I may ask.One of the cleaner looking DIY LED builds I have seen. looks nice.

 

I would say they came close to $200 Each after shipping and MISC parts. The fixtures are hanging from T-track and 1/4 20 bolts. The T-track is from Orange Aluminum and after shipping was $24

 

Here are the Eagle Cad files for anyone whom wants to recreate this board or add a fan speed controller to it... that would be cool!
LED_Driver.zip

 

Looks good Nick!