Reef Daylight Controller V3

[willp2]

Well my obsession with a simple LED daylight controller continues. My previous efforts at building a simple daylight controller worked well however I wanted better build quality and more options. So I took my earlier designs and combined them into one controller that can be used a number of ways.

This new version is a dimmer, daylight controller and driver for up to 24 X 3W LEDs. Additionally I added the ability to use it with other external drivers that take either a 5V or 10V PWM dimming source. The idea there is that I can build it to drive the LED’s on my nano then use the same controller to be a dimming source on that 100G I want to move into. And in fact I can use the same controller to do both at the same time. So that means I can have two or more tanks with the daylight cycle synchronized!

Once I had the design where I wanted it I wanted something cleaner than my previous wire wrap boards so I had a few PC Boards made. First PC board I’ve ever had produced so I was pleasantly surprised at how well they turned out and that I didn’t make any mistakes in the design so everything works with no modification to the board.

http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee399/reefdiy/WP_000256.jpg

If you’re not familiar with my previous versions, one of my main design concepts was to keep it simple. I wanted versatility but I’m not going after an end all. I tried building a model with a real time clock, LED screen, input buttons etc. But I found that overly complex for what I wanted.

I just want to set the brightness with a knob, give some parameters for how long I want it to run, how it should ramp up and ramp down and what kind of delay should there be between the different colors on the ramp up and ramp down. For that much control I decided to just use pots for the brightness controls and a dip switch to set all the timing parameters.

Here’s the top of the board

http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee399/reefdiy/WP_000210.jpg

Pots mounted to bottom

http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee399/reefdiy/WP_000208.jpg

Here’s my complete unit working right now

http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee399/reefdiy/WP_000259.jpg

And for reference here is an older video I put together showing the kind of control I’m talking about.

Daylight Cycle Test – Previous controller (http://tinypic.com/r/2pzxs9j/7)

Now unrelated to the controller is the LED fixture retro itself which I detailed here (http://www.sdreefs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68813)

I’ve reworked this setup several times doing different things with controllers and driver combos. In the end it got to be a huge mess inside the hood. I had everything stuffed in the hood, drivers, power supplies etc. Every inch of space was used by something.


Here's the before
http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee399/reefdiy/WP_000242.jpg

So now with the new setup everything is in the one controller box so I was able to pull everything out and clean it up a lot. Basically I’m just making wire connections to the various components. I still loose style points for all the mismatched wire on LED’s themselves, but I wasn’t willing to rewire the whole thing to just to make it pretty.

Here's the after
http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee399/reefdiy/WP_000250.jpg

The LED’s have been great. They are the same high output SemiLED’s I used in earlier builds. These are the older versions, more recently I’ve been getting some different color temps, some higher power LEDs (10W, 30W and 50W) and am doing some testing with those units. Most interesting lately is that I can now get these 3W SemiLEDs with a 60 degree viewing angle. That’s with no optics installed. They are getting tons of PAR to the sand and very efficiently.

EDIT ****

Had a few people ask to see more about how this thing worked. So here's a video that shows more about it.

When I show the cycle at the end, thats simulating over 90 seconds what would normally run over a full day. In this case I do the ramp up / down in 30 seconds each. The ramp up / down doesn't show so well on the camera as its trying to compensate for the brightness changes. In practice, I get a nice gradual change where everytime I look at the tank during the ramp up / down it looks a little different.

In regular use I'm currently running a 30 minute ramp up and a 90 minute ramp down on my regular cycle. Click the pic to see the video if interested.

http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee399/reefdiy/th_WP_000280.jpg (http://s1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee399/reefdiy/?action=view&current=WP_000280.mp4)

Daylight controller - link to video (http://s1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee399/reefdiy/?action=view&current=WP_000280.mp4)

[willp2]

A few people have asked, so I'll answer this here. No these won't work with the various fixtures like the ones that Larry sells. I am looking into that but nothing at all firm at the moment.

[laffingcrow]

Eagerly waiting for my first copy :) :) :)

[Brian_reefragr]

Me too, nice job!

[LarryM]

A few people have asked, so I'll answer this here. No these won't work with the various fixtures like the ones that Larry sells. I am looking into that but nothing at all firm at the moment.

Will does have a copy of my power supplies to work with... we'll see what he can do :)

[junkie]

Will does have a copy of my power supplies to work with... we'll see what he can do :)

:bounce::bounce::bounce:

[Dizzle21]

Sick! the controller housing looks pretty rad

[willp2]

Eagerly waiting for my first copy :) :) :)



Soon, sorry have to wrap up some very last minute tax stuff. So hopefully later today or tomorrow. I'll PM you.


Sick! the controller housing looks pretty rad

Thanks. Its really just a simple ABS project box. Still trying to work out how to make the cuts very clean. I actually tried having one laser cut but the ABS melts a bit too much. So in the end this one is just cut with a hack saw. So the cuts are rougher than I would like.

I may revisit the laser cutting at some point as I think it would be cool to etch in some labels for the connectors at the same time.


Will does have a copy of my power supplies to work with... we'll see what he can do :)

I am hopeful that at some point we can come up with something reasonable. I'll try to swing back around to that sometime soon.

[willp2]

Eagerly waiting for my first copy :) :) :)

Good seeing you again laffingcow. Thanks for hanging in there while I figured out this design for the past few months. Looking forward to hear about that build. It sounds nicer than what I'm up to, I'm going to have to up my game!

I have enough parts to build a couple more of these and I'd love to get some feedback. If anyone out there is interested in a controller or controller / driver combo, let me know.

I still have some newer SemiLED's and could get someone pretty much everything you'd need for a nano build except a heatsink. I'd also love to get someone to try one as a controller only.

-Will

[inkredibleg]

Willp2 would your controller / driver combo replace the existing non dimmable driver that I have now ? I mean the only thing that makes them dim is the driver and if you replace my driver with your driver/controller would it work ?

[willp2]

Totally depends on what you have now. How is yours put together? What LEDs and Drivers are you using now?

[inkredibleg]

It's just a led panel with 30 1w white led and 30 blue they have individual drivers and the drivers just got the regular 4 cables power ground and the v- or whatever I am about to order dimmable drivers and see how it goes.

[inkredibleg]

Should be prety easy cause everything is wired you just wire the dimmable driver and you ad a "potentiometer" not sure if I spelled it right.

[willp2]

So do you have a driver in mind yet or are you just starting to look into that?

If you have a dimmable driver you need to give it a PWM source. The potentiometer is just the POT or the knob. You need a PWM circuit to do the full thing. Of course this thing does that along with the daylight cycle business.

[willp2]

Had a few people ask to see more about how this thing worked. So here's a video that shows more about it.

When I show the cycle at the end, thats simulating over 90 seconds what would normally run over a full day. In this case I do the ramp up / down in 30 seconds each. The ramp up / down doesn't show so well on the camera as its trying to compensate for the brightness changes. In practice, I get a nice gradual change where everytime I look at the tank during the ramp up / down it looks a little different.

In regular use I'm currently running a 30 minute ramp up and a 90 minute ramp down on my regular cycle. Click the pic to see the video if interested.

http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee399/reefdiy/th_WP_000280.jpg (http://s1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee399/reefdiy/?action=view&current=WP_000280.mp4)

Daylight controller - link to video (http://s1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee399/reefdiy/?action=view&current=WP_000280.mp4)

[SoCalBoo]

Sorry, not tracking well - have you figured out ramp up/down and dimming for Larry's fixtures? Might be interested....LMK.

Paul

[willp2]

Sorry, nope haven't gotten back to looking at that yet.

[SoCalBoo]

LMK when you do