chinese led lights

[jrp1588]

Hmm, well they aren't loud by any means. They are lower pitched so it's actually easier to tune out than the ATI fans. what are your thoughts on the hanging system?

[GroYurOwn]

The pitch has changed on mine since I have gotten them, I don't have them under a hood anymore and they are some what loud, but not annoyingly, just white noise. I am still extremely happy with them.

I agree that the 1 point hanging system can leads to them being off kilter. But again, easily modified. Mine are just sitting on top of my hood for now until I figure out a more permanent solution.

My tank was setup on 2/13, any corals added since then have done well. Everyday I see my blue monti getting bluer, and my orange monti fluoresces more then it did a week ago. I am impressed, for now these are my lights of choice. For the money I don't think they can be beat. I realize these are short term results, but for $159 i think it is worth the risk for the potential reward.

[BigCountry74]

Originally Posted by jrp1588

Positives
1)They look nice, good solid construction
2)Very bright
3)The shimmer effect is interesting, I've always used T5's so it's new to me.
4)Colors are almost on par with my old ATI sunpower, reds aren't quite as strong though
5)Peeking through the cooling grates you can clearly see a good sized heat sink. Combined with the fans the unit stays very cool.
6)When all the blues are on by themselves the fluorescence is unbelievable. WAAY better than all ATI Blue +

Negatives
1)The hanging system is garbage. They are designed to hang from a single point. This allows the fixture to rotate around too easily. Both my fixtures are cocked at about a 20* angle, but all it'll require to hang from 2 points is another caribeaner. (Just wish I had considered this before I drilled into the ceiling. In the future I may modify an ATI hanging kit to work with it.
2)The LEDs are BRIGHT. I don't have a canopy, so if I accidentally look up at them, it's blinding.
3)Fans slightly louder then ATI sunpower, then again there are 3 of them per fixture vs 2 on the sunpower. They look like standard PC case fans though, quieter ones could probably be found for a few bucks each and easily installed.
4)shimmer effect confuses my eyes a little bit sometimes.

Excellent out of box reviews. These were my thoughts exactly on mine. I hung them on adjustable shelving mounted to the wall (for easy up and down movement) and covered everything with a shadow box (light weight "hang on wall" canopy box I made). I used a rubber grommet to sorta level the 1 unit that had the crooked wires like your describing.
<--

The blue fluorescence is simple amazing though you are definitely correct there. I only have 2 small LPS frags, but they glow like the Avatar movie with only the blues on. Heck I have 3 boxes, and it lights up my entire kitchen in fluorescence with just the blues on...we own a small dog and he was playing with a tennis ball that was a good 15 feet from the tank and the ball was even glowing like crazy..lol

Metal halide will still grow the coral faster than these LEDs, but man for color growth, I just cannot see how you can rival LEDs.

[GroYurOwn]

Originally Posted by BigCountry74

Metal halide will still grow the coral faster than these LEDs, but man for color growth, I just cannot see how you can rival LEDs.

I think the intention of this thread is to determine if that statement is actually true. I don't think that is a foregone conclusion at this point.

[TropTrea]

Originally Posted by GroYurOwn

I think the intention of this thread is to determine if that statement is actually true. I don't think that is a foregone conclusion at this point.

I definatly have to agree what you say here.

With LED's there are so many varieties out there and the list is growing almost daily with newer and LED's comming out some brighter and more effecient that what was available last week. With all the variety out there it is impossible to comp-are John's and Jack's LED lights to someone MEtal Hides and say the MEtal hides are better.

For me I went from Metal Hides to Ho-T-5's and think it was a step up. But now that I'm converting to LED's with the versitility of the LED's would no longer consider Metal Hides or T-5's for a new tank. What I'm debating though is the value of converting T-5's completly or patrtialy to LED's.

I see the range of LED fixtures out there from simply garbage to wow but I'd think it can still be improved. For that reason I went with DIY LED's and have changed my set up already 3 times from my initial selection. I mimiced what I liked best initialy on a smaller tank then after few weeks later the ideas to improve it started comming to my head.

Lets face it. There is no perfect system that will make everyone happy. Coral A like one thing, Coral B likes something else, Jack likes something different than what John likes.

It would be interesting to see what a poll would look like if we asked for personal preference between?
Max Coral Growth
Max Coral Color
20,000K lighting
14,000K lighting
10,000K lighting

Unfortunatly it is impossible to have them all? But to an extent it what Im trying to achieve with my LED's. When they intitialy turn on the lighting scheme is much bluer than a 20,000K bulb, but as it gets to Mid Day it is probably in the 12,000K range. Yes my pre dawn and post dusk looks like an avitar movie, but it slowly steps to reality than back to the Avitar world before it hits darkness.

[BigCountry74]

After band worship practice, I was messing with the stage lights at church last night. They have a monster setup with 60 or so high powered LED cans all tied to a smart board (controller) which you hit and change different sections of the stage with. Was daydreaming how cool it would be to run something small scale like that on a fish tank...you can virtually config and run all kinds of colors/spectrums.....all automated/programmed...heck it might already be available for the fish tank world, just is prob mega expensive...

[TropTrea]

Originally Posted by BigCountry74

After band worship practice, I was messing with the stage lights at church last night. They have a monster setup with 60 or so high powered LED cans all tied to a smart board (controller) which you hit and change different sections of the stage with. Was daydreaming how cool it would be to run something small scale like that on a fish tank...you can virtually config and run all kinds of colors/spectrums.....all automated/programmed...heck it might already be available for the fish tank world, just is prob mega expensive...

Yes and it would be mega expensive but very do-able for the DIY fanatic. While I doubt it there will be a lot of these on the market soon there is the potential for it since there are some people that spend big dollars on there tank just to get what nobody else has first.

I realy should not laugh at this as years ago I did spend a lot to get fresh water fish that no one else had only to find that three years later they were flooding the market at 2% of what I initialy paid for them. Then there was what I paid for show quality Bettas for my breeding program. But then I did my money back plus on those fish after about a year selling there fry for 20% of what I paid for the initial male.

But yes that can be designed in very easy only you need to aproach the lighting with that in mind when you first build your LED fixture. Think of at as a smaller version of the LED bulletin boards out there today. Instead of just white or blue LED's each is a cluster of one blue one green, and one red on each star each controled seperatly. They do make the three LED Stars like this already with 3 watt LED's. We would just be using less of them than in a big bilboard, and adding lenses. But it could be a wiring nightmare.

[jrp1588]

Originally Posted by GroYurOwn

The pitch has changed on mine since I have gotten them, I don't have them under a hood anymore and they are some what loud, but not annoyingly, just white noise. I am still extremely happy with them.

I agree that the 1 point hanging system can leads to them being off kilter. But again, easily modified. Mine are just sitting on top of my hood for now until I figure out a more permanent solution.

My tank was setup on 2/13, any corals added since then have done well. Everyday I see my blue monti getting bluer, and my orange monti fluoresces more then it did a week ago. I am impressed, for now these are my lights of choice. For the money I don't think they can be beat. I realize these are short term results, but for $159 i think it is worth the risk for the potential reward.

Yeah, I got everything to modify it to a 2 point hanging system from lowes today for around $10.

[ccolt1]

Rixhater how are your corals doing so far under the new lights? Anything doing better or worse? What type of lights did you have before? What color do you think the leds put out... 14000k etc? Thanks!! looks great!

[gbru316]

Originally Posted by BigCountry74

After band worship practice, I was messing with the stage lights at church last night. They have a monster setup with 60 or so high powered LED cans all tied to a smart board (controller) which you hit and change different sections of the stage with. Was daydreaming how cool it would be to run something small scale like that on a fish tank...you can virtually config and run all kinds of colors/spectrums.....all automated/programmed...heck it might already be available for the fish tank world, just is prob mega expensive...

It's already doable and not terribly expensive, but requires a good bit of DIY ability.

Multiple PWM controller drivers + arduino board + LED's + homebrewing custom control software.

The most expensive part of that is the lighting system, (which wouldn't be any more expensive than a standard DIY LED setup), arduino boards are well under $100, and software compilers can be free.

[RDHDDRAGON]

I wanted to show the difference in one of my tanks after about 8 months with LEDs.

Before Leds:



About 8 months after installing LEDs:



There was a little rearranging, but not much. Over all the colors are so different. In the bottom left of the bottom picture, see the neon green yuma rock? It is there in the top picture too, just not neon.

Two days ago i installed some UV-B Led strips to see how it would affect the reds. The only changes so far is the blues. Tips of acros and monti rims are turning to a bright glowing aqua blue. At night after my lights go out anything neon green ( hammers, kryptonite candy canes, etc...) keep glowing. Yes, glow in the dark. Not super bright, but you can still see them flouresence.

Here is what my monti looks like now after about 10 months:


I have no doubt LEDS can grow coral. And make them beautiful. As stated before all my softies that were red and changed to orange, are still orange. Hoping the UV will help, we will see. Hard corals that were red seem to have no change, they are still red.

[jrp1588]

If anyone wants to make a better hanging system for these things like me, I found the pieces that ATI uses to hang their lights. They are called griplock. It looks like the parts needed to hang 2 of these lights would run me $55 shipped. This would cost $85 from reefgeek for the name brand ATI hanging kit (which doesn't include the bit that attaches to the ceiling btw.) This would look a lot nicer and be much easier to adjust than chain.
http://www.usalight.com/griplock-system-s/1927.htm

[ccolt1]

Nice pics! What type of lights did you have before? This makes me want to change now... (:

[RDHDDRAGON]

Three 250 watt 14k Halides and 4 96 watt pc actinics.

[TropTrea]

Originally Posted by gbru316

It's already doable and not terribly expensive, but requires a good bit of DIY ability.

Multiple PWM controller drivers + arduino board + LED's + homebrewing custom control software.

The most expensive part of that is the lighting system, (which wouldn't be any more expensive than a standard DIY LED setup), arduino boards are well under $100, and software compilers can be free.

I looked quickly through the Arduino threads and cannt see how you could do it for close for to $100.00. If it were simply a matter of turning on 3 and off three or 4 drivers yes but we are talking about someting much more complax here. For starters you would need a very stable power supply with a changing load on it. Then depending on the size of the matix of LEDs we are taliking for just an 8 X 8 matrix two 8 bit output modules. And that is per color so you are realy talking about 6 minimum. Sure if the modules are 16 bit they could handle a matix of 256 LED's. Then your also talking about timing sequences and the LED's would only be pulsing at a high enough frequency that you would not be able to detect.

Not a simple tax for a small controler like your refereing to.

[TropTrea]

On a side note we now have CREE LED's that are running up to 24 Watts. Bulk pricing on these are around $9.00 each so stey should be retailing around $27.00 each. Sound high but if you think $27/24W = $3.40/3 Watts.

Unfortunatly they are only available in about a dozen versions of White only. But once these start comming in demand it will not be long before they start making the colored versions.

And for all you PAR fenatics they are now offereing a super high PAR LED for Green House lighting. But it is only available in an Amber color. This is why I dislike PAR for Reefs you get higher PAR number with lights that are rich in the Red end of the spectrum but that lighting is almost useless for Corals.

[BigAirHarper]

Originally Posted by jrp1588

Yeah, I got everything to modify it to a 2 point hanging system from lowes today for around $10.

What style hanging stuff did you get?

My eshine 24x3W lights arrived in perfect form. They're crazy bright. I'll be posting pics soon.

[david pinder]

Originally Posted by ozorowsky

Just to update everyone I found they have a website (go figure) www.eshinesystems.com; look decent.

am running 15 of these, some corals are fantastic some are blah just thinking they have not adjusted at this point

[cbm369]

Originally Posted by GroYurOwn

Being that i had to disassemble mine after dropping it in the tank i can confirm they are indeed computer fans, and would be VERY easy to replace, in fact I immediately thought about doing it once i opened the unit. Now especially since after dropping the one in the tank one of the fans is much louder. If i do it i will post here with results and parts used.

Just a suggestion on fans. Try Scythe Gentle Typhoons. I use these on the computer I built. They push a good bit of air, but are VERY quiet. My computer has 8 fans in it and the only ones that can be heard are the factory fans mounted on the 2 video cards.

[jeffesaurusrex]

Originally Posted by TropTrea

I looked quickly through the Arduino threads and cannt see how you could do it for close for to $100.00. If it were simply a matter of turning on 3 and off three or 4 drivers yes but we are talking about someting much more complax here. For starters you would need a very stable power supply with a changing load on it. Then depending on the size of the matix of LEDs we are taliking for just an 8 X 8 matrix two 8 bit output modules. And that is per color so you are realy talking about 6 minimum. Sure if the modules are 16 bit they could handle a matix of 256 LED's. Then your also talking about timing sequences and the LED's would only be pulsing at a high enough frequency that you would not be able to detect.

Not a simple tax for a small controler like your refereing to.

Well the Reef Angel is open source. It has a PWM and an Analog dimming version. It's only like $220, if you were able to build your own controller and program it then you would surely be able to program this to control the RGB function. Not to mention all the other stuff you get for your $220 like PH controller, heater failsafe, alarms, wavemaker, auto topoff...

[david pinder]

One thing I like about my cree led systems there is hardly any heat, my t5s were really heating up the room, these are cooler

[jrp1588]

Originally Posted by BigAirHarper

What style hanging stuff did you get?

My eshine 24x3W lights arrived in perfect form. They're crazy bright. I'll be posting pics soon.

I don't know what my fiance did with my camera or I'd take pics. I bought a pack of S hooks to replace the carabiner. Basically I just used 1 S hook per side and attached the 2 cables from each side onto the bottom of the S hook. The top of the S hook hooked onto decorative chain hanging from the ceiling.

This prevents the twisting from the 1 point hanging system, but it's still not especially attractive, and height adjust, while possible, is a little clunky. I'm going to upgrade it to a Griplock hanging system before too long.

[TropTrea]

Originally Posted by jeffesaurusrex

Well the Reef Angel is open source. It has a PWM and an Analog dimming version. It's only like $220, if you were able to build your own controller and program it then you would surely be able to program this to control the RGB function. Not to mention all the other stuff you get for your $220 like PH controller, heater failsafe, alarms, wavemaker, auto topoff...

Yes you might start with #220 but by the time your system is built up you will be way higher.

PWM Controler $219
6 Expansion modules to operate 64 LED's individualy on three sepearte color levels. @ $89 each = $534

That totals up to $753 Then the controler only has 64K of EPROM memory and by the time you finish up writing a program for it you will be needing at least a meg of memory for a three color display.

Next you need 8 driver for each color for a total of 24 drivers eaxh capable which your be in the $35 price rang so it vcould add another $840.00 And finaly your LED's where your talking three color LED's at 3 Watts per color so you probably going to drop close to $15.00 thimes 64 LED's another $960.


So fat that brings you up to $2,800 with out calculating the amount of time it will take you to program something like this and build it up. And yet I see a big bug in it for starters being increasing the memory.

[doakota1]

I'm just about to buy these, http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=150726029374 Will 2 of them be to much for a 36" left to right 24" front to back and 16" tall ?
opinions please
thanks

[TropTrea]

Originally Posted by doakota1

I'm just about to buy these, http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=150726029374 Will 2 of them be to much for a 36" left to right 24" front to back and 16" tall ?
opinions please
thanks

One of these pumping out 120 Watts of light efeciently should be more than enough light. After reading through there listed literature I will say I do like the idea of using 12,000 to 14,000K white LED's. I personaly use neutral whites that are closer to 5,000K in a ratio of 4 Blues to 1 white or more.

Keep in mind that some low quality LED's are oput there producing 120 LUMs at 3 Watts and then are the higher quality ones now exceeding 300 Lums at 3 Watts. They are not disclosing what LED's they are using. Keep in mind that $160 for 55 LEDs averages $2.90 per LED much less than anyone could purchase just the LED's for.