A little trick I use when inserting screws and avoiding cross threading or getting the thread to start, is to turn the screw in the 'remove' direction (counter clockwise for right hand thread) up to one turn while applying very light downward pressure until a light click is felt. Then begin to turn the screw in the 'tighten' direction. This is a 90%+ way to get a sure start to threading a screw into a nut or tapped hole. Nice tip on the spiral wrap! I hadn't thought of that! Great video!
So hard to find thorough tutorials on TH-cam. I just watched two of your videos and got multiple answers to questions I've had about subjects only loosely related to what your videos were about. Some people have a short attention span and some you-tubers cater to it. Thank you for not doing so. My brain appreciates!
Thanks for the inspiration as always, kind and knowledgeable sir. I'm just re-getting into indoor growing (No it is NOT that stuff. Just ornamentals and vegetables.) and I'll be going with a premade LED fixture, but down the road I'll definitely want to get into custom builds for better control over specs. I grew up in the day and age where an LED was this amazing plastic thing about the size of a transistor but it glowed! Wowwwwww. Ask any typical person back then how long it would be before they grew up into all purpose lights so bright they could damage your eyes, and they'd have laughed at you. Now, they're just amazing and getting better all the time. LEDs and laser diodes are simply amazing devices.
The dyes in Shapie black markers will fade to a purple over time. Paint pens available at craft stores provide the convenience your demonstrating but have more stable pigment.
I don't care about aquariums or grow lights, but this video taught me so much about basic wiring (and confirmed a bunch of things I figured out myself).
Nice assembly, gonna look at the co. you mentioned for the diode chip/wafers. I know this is an older episode, but if ya see this it'd be appreciated. Do you remember the total cost of a single completed led assembly? Awesome stuff your put out there and the attention to detail is great too. Leaves very little questions about the projects if you are going to do one yourself. And not sure if it'd be too thick but to possibly secure the wires that are weaved thru the heatsink- put a matching length of heat shrink over each wire. Then they'd be a bit more clamped in between the fins and have an extra layer of insulation. Not sure how hot the heatsink gets after many hours of operation or if they'd just deteriorate too much but might work.
I'm glad to see that the videography has improved so much in just a short time. It shows that someone is on the ball and really paying attention to making it more receptive to viewers. I'd also like to comment on the control circuitry, even though this is nearly 2 years after the fact. I'd move the pots from the fixture to another location closer to the power supply. This would serve 2 purposes at the very least: 1. There is less wire at the fixture, which means less to wrap and hide. 2. The pots are not above a high-humidity environment, which plays havoc with low-voltage devices. Over time, corrosion can lower the ability of the pot to work. Even though it's more circuitry and more money, I'd opt for a PWM controller. It allows the light to turn on at a lower level, making it easier for the user to adjust the lighting level, and is also less likely to scare your fine-feathered fishy friends. It would be up to the circuit designer (you or your son) to decide if they want a single controller for both lights or to be able to control them individually. I have a 6-foot dual-color Beamswork LED light above my 125-gallon aquarium. It has a common (-) and separate (+) to control the lights. I bought a programmable PWM controller with 5 channels, but it uses a common (+) and controls the (-). I used a single MOSFET for each of my 2 channels to be able to use it. It has been working perfectly for almost a year now, so I'm fairly confident that it'll keep on going for the long haul. It was about $30 for the controller and only a few bucks for the MOSFETs and experimenter's box. It can be programmed by buttons on its case or via USB, which is what I did. If all you're interested in is being able to dim them slightly rather than mimic dusk and dawn, then a simple pot is just fine, but I'd still locate it away from the tank itself. While watching, I imagined using something like this to shine on the ceiling as indirect lighting in my home. Thank you for sharing this project and all the details on all the parts that go into the finished product!
"2A @ 250V over an aquarium filled with water is not cool". Heh, someone has clearly never run a large reef aquarium … or kissed the local fish store employee who talked them into buying that titanium grounding probe! I'm surprised any of us survived the early to mid 1990s, when the hobby honestly seemed to be less about fish, corals, and other marine life and more about "How many 400W metal halide lamps can I hang, precariously, a foot or so above a large glass box of salt water? - one that I can't seem to resist shoving my arms into, every 5 minutes, splashing around like an idiot while trying to 'perfectly' arrange hundreds of pounds of rock." Great video! A lot of reef aquarists I know are unaware that LED lighting can now be this easy and affordable. So many of the commercial fixtures have insanely complex control boards and focus on useless programmable features like simulating realistic cloud cover or monthly moon phase cycles. (reef corals prefer consistency, people, so give as much of it to them as you can if you're going to force them to live in that tiny ocean in your house!)
Thank you! A guiding principle behind this channel is to dispel myths and and challenge dogma by presenting the WHY behind technology and let the viewer make educated decisions. One thing you could do for us, if you are willing, is to spread the word. Linking, posting and referring to what we are doing here will help us to grow much larger and much faster.
Its about kidnapping and imprisoning animals that would be much happier in their natural environment...and the greed of the humans who put them through hell.
Bob Johnson You're pretty spot-on there. Under scrutiny, literally every level of the industry is either knowingly and willfully unethical (vendors) or ignorantly/arrogantly negligent (aquarists) … even though solutions have existed for almost every problem for years. A single species example: I once rescued a large carpet anemone (Stichodactyla haddoni) from another aquarist who couldn't care for it. She got it from an aquarium chain store that rhymes with "Big Al's", they had three in one 20gal display tank, two of them were already starting to expel their symbiotic algae, a process commonly called "bleaching" because without that algae (actually an endosymbiotic dinoflagellate, colloquially referred to as "zooxanthellae") the flesh of most anemones and corals is a translucent white. It's also a process that is almost 100% fatal once it starts. I took the anemone but also went to that store to ask them WTF they thought they were doing, and while standing next to the tank with the two bleaching anemones, actually heard a sales rep try to get this young couple to buy one of these "rare albino carpet anemones" (I kid you not) as a companion for their lone clownfish, which I later found out from the couple was in a 10gal tabletop tank! The bleached specimens looked small because they were all shrivelled up, but they looked about the same size as the third specimen, which was now thriving in a 75gal dedicated temporary tank at home, with it's foot dug into 10" of sand right to the bottom of the tank and the top spread out to between 12" and 14" wide … those dimensions do not fit in a 10gal tank, and if you read up on the species you'll learn that they often exceed a metre in width (39") in the wild - I had already planned on moving the one I had into a wider, shallow tank. The sales pitch continued: the couple was told that they'd need to get a 250W metal halide pendant because of the intense light requirements of anemones. I can only put some of the fault on the sales rep for this one, because numerous aquarium books still list this as a fact, even though if you do the math you quickly learn that there is no way these things could ever possibly get the bulk of their nutrition from photosynthesis. They are voracious carnivores. They will even eat clumsy sea birds who stumble on them at low tide. I never had mine under anything brighter than a single Lights of America compact fluorescent bulb from Walmart … "daylight" colour (6500K), and around 27W. The anemone thrived and grew insanely fast with no problems under this "dim" light, and also consumed 2 or 3 full vitamin-soaked silversides (a small feeder fish, like a sardine) every single day. I did get that sales rep fired from that location … which, of course, had no lasting affect on that store's policies or the general "thrive on ignorance" mentality of 95% of aquarium stores. They love it if you kill fish and coral, that translates into sales! Your fish died because we lied to you and you're a cheapskate who also doesn't want to learn anything? NO PROBLEM! We still have 7 of those Blue Tangs in stock! Come on down! They're tiny, and your Nemo should really have a Dori in that lonely 10 gallon tank!" - a blue tang, like Dori from "Finding Nemo", is about the size of an adult Ocellaris clownfish (eg. Nemo) … as newborns, a full grown Blue Tang is about 30cm (12") long and weighs half a kilogram (1.3 lbs) and voraciously eats algae every waking minute of it's life, unless that life is spent in an aquarium, where most will die a year or two of being purchased, usually of some sort of negligence on the part of the aquarium owner. The story for carpet anemones is even worse, according to Dr. Ron Shimek, a noted marine biologist, the typical survival rate for carpet anemones in aquariums still drops to around 0% after about a year, with very few exceptions. He used to maintain a list of those exceptions, and when my rescued anemone celebrated 12 months of thriving, it turned out that this was only the 73rd S. haddoni on Ron's list. I did a quick scan of several archives of reef aquarium store mailing lists where they announce what new stock is available every week. During 2013, just 3 little independent local stores, not big chain/franchise stores, located in Edmonton(Canada), Pittsburgh, and Chicago brought in and (presumably) sold 233 carpet anemones - three little stores did that, there are thousands and thousands of aquarium vendors. My anemone, sadly, also died due to aquarist negligence when I swapped out the heater in it's tank for a cheap heater from Walmart. The cheap heater was smaller, but still adequate wattage for that tank, and I needed the larger one for a different tank. I had planned on buying a better replacement heater the next day… but procrastinated, and three days later I came home to the most wonderful smell of dead marine life that had probably been slow-cooking in that 35°C (95°F) water for probably 4 or 5 hours. The anemone, which was thriving and now nearly 50cm wide during daylight hours, was dead, total captive lifespan: 19 months, give or take a week. This is a far cry from their natural lifespan, which is: until something kills them. These things don't age, they are immortal. In the wild waters off the coast of Sulawesi you can see huge specimens with 15-20 clownfish living in their folds - take that anemone out of the ocean and those clownfish are all dead within an hour, they are seriously the most incompetent swimmers I've ever seen. Big anemones do split every once in a while and thanks to people like Eric Borneman and Anthony Calfo, we've known for over a decade that they can be "fragged" manually with a razor blade to propagate them in captivity and, thus, they could be aquacultured for the aquarium industry instead of yanking them out of the ocean. Is it being done? Nope. Are aquarium books and sites at least being updated to provide more accurate information on how to care for these animals? Very few are, and sales reps still use anemone sales to trick people into buying brighter lights all the time. Ron Shimek stopped collecting and maintaining his depressing anemone longevity data a while ago. Several Indo-Pacific reefs have seen their large anemone populations dwindle over the last 5-7 years, and they are a favourite target for free dive poachers in protected marine areas because of the dollar value they represent to the aquarium trade. We have the knowledge and technology to properly care for these anemones. They could be aquacultured (farmed) while still making money hand over fist for the vendors and suppliers - in 6 months of feeding my carpet anemone, I probably spent more on food and frequent water changes than the price of any metal halide pendant light. It could for just isn't. We know enough that, if properly educated and financially prepared, any aquarist should be able to keep one in captivity with relative ease - and with aquacultured specimens you can simply ask the farmer what it eats, no guesswork involved (they are very evolved to be picky eaters). So there you go, that's the story for Stichodactyla haddoni. It could be 100% aquacultured and 100% properly cared for … but it isn't, and that sucks.
Great content. Always impressed with the production quality and the excellent delivery of information. Tons of valuable content on this channel, seriously always amazed. Thanks so much 😊
Just a hint: its a good practice to short the "unused" side terminal of potentiometer track to the wiper (center). //can handle load better, less noise, doesnt go completely open if the wiper goes bad
wow, I forget where this channel came from. Great job guys increasing your a/v production quality. The content has always been great, keep it up PLEASE!
You make very detailed and informative videos. I like that you explain every step and why you choose how to do them. I've done a lot of soldering in my life and this is the first video that explains how to solder correctly. Well done!
If the aquarium needed tropical temperatures, instead of those massive heatsinks you could use CPU water cooling blocks and circulate tank water, with some sort of bypass regulator system.
Hah! I know you're joking, but for everyone else - the water temperature tropical fish thrive in isn't much warmer than an air conditioned house. The amount of heat from a single 100 watt fixture (in most smaller tanks) would cook the poor things, forget two fixtures.
You are the first person I've seen mention staggering the electrical joints to avoid large bulges/arching. I've been doing that for projects since I was a kid and have had many odd looks when others see me do it.
@29:05 - "The solder goes from a shiny silver to a dull gray when you've got a good bond." :-) Yeah.. no. A good solder joint is shiny and smooth. Dull gray solder joints are called "cold" solder joints, and they aren't what you want. I know this is an older video, but this is pretty important. Cold solder joints are not as strong, they're brittle, and they're more susceptible to chemical and/or galvanic corrosion. The dull color is caused by the metal actually fracturing into tiny crystals as it cools, usually due to movement of the joint. The fracturing of a cold solder joint leaves tiny cracks which weaken it and make it brittle. They can also trap oxidation or chemicals (used to clean a PC board, for example) in the joint, causing it to fail way sooner than anyone wants it to. Ask several major electronics companies from the early 2000's about the time a PCB foundry's solder temperature controls failed. This one foundry produced boards for many different companies (RCA and Mackie are two I know of personally***), and those companies paid a lot in warranty repairs and replacements. *** Disclaimer: Neither RCA nor Mackie are at fault here, and they were far from the only companies affected. RCA promptly replaced our television when it was found to be... "not economically feasible to repair". Sadly, the Mackie mixer was purchased used (_really_ used, as mixers tend to be), and way out of warranty, but one intrepid repair person re-soldered most of the joints (that's a LOT of soldering!), and it worked well for a year or two before we replaced it.
I'm really impressed with Mackie mixers. I installed on is a studio that did sound to picture, record folies and record remote telephone sessions. No matter what crazy configuration I needed (talkback for remote session is a nightmare), there was a button that did just what I needed.
Philips has FINALLY started producing quality LEDs in the past two years or so. I replaced 1700W worth of incandescent lights with Philips lamps in 2014 and all but I think 2 failed within about a year. CREE or bust, baby! Never had a CREE-powered lamp fail on me. Or an OSRAM branded product.
Id like to add led efficiency is not linear. you will receive far better lumans per watt ratio if you under drive leds and a far greater life span. it can be a cost annalisis of buying the next size up and under powering them to meet project lighting requirements if you are expecting to run them often and would benefit from an additional energy savings. with better efficiency comes less heat production so it may also come into a design requirement where you require less heat in an application or do not have the ability to property heat sinc. For me I often only run the LEDs at 70% power unless I actually need everything it has to offer
You are correct. LED's are actually quite linear in their efficiency if they remain at the same temperature, but they do not remain at the same temperature if the heat is removed by an unregulated, bootstrap method such as a heat sink, with or without a fan. If you take a look at some of our laser videos you will see how substantially a diode increases it's efficiency with cooling all the way down to liquid nitrogen temperatures. You are also correct that LED lifetime increases enormously as the driving current decreases. It is logarithmic.
I believe you observed a product of CC supplies it was attempting to push the same amount of current and thus raiseing the voltage across the junction. a few resent study I'v read showed very different conclusions. previously, it was believed that temperature was the cause of LED efficiency however this is no longer the case from my understanding. here is a snip from the artical that will also have a link to the lab report: "as the voltage is halved, the input power is decreased by a factor of 4, while the emitted light power scales linearly with voltage so that it’s also only halved. In other words, an LED’s efficiency increases as its output power decreases. (The inverse of this relationship - that LED efficiency decreases as its output power increases" Read more at: phys.org/news/2012-03-efficiency.html#jCp here is a digikey artical about studies showing that LED efficiency believed to be related to current: www.digikey.com/en/articles/techzone/2011/oct/identifying-the-causes-of-led-efficiency-droop
Got a problem with the first article. The physics is too general and implies an increase in efficiency due to extraction of energy from processes outside the driving current. Achieving greater than 100% efficiency in their experiment grabs one's attention, but would be ludicrous if it wasn't for the mention that this isn't steady state. The Digikey article seems reasonable. Increasing temperature does decrease a diodes efficiency. It is my understanding that this is due to the increased mobility of the charge carriers.
I haven't been able to find an cortical that blatantly says the decrease in efficiency due to the heat. maybe you have one you can recall? but yeah the first article is definitely interesting. I had no idea until recently that they could use thermal energy for photon emission at very low powers. although it makes scene when considering how thermal noise effects fiber optic systems in a similar manner.
"You can actually use a marker" YES ! This is the same thing I "invented" for my own project's edge coloring, it's super inconvenient to get to with a brush and wet paint, but super cool to just mark over.
wow!!! . . . I've been wanting to upgrade my grow-lights to full spectrum LED's but I haven't found anything that i could simulate morning inferred to noon full-spec to evening inferred at an affordable price & was gonna use Arduino this is perfect.
@@TechIngredients If the light source in this video is being used for a planted tank, you may find that you need CO2 injection to help control algae formation. Try some of your champagne yeast in a bottle of sugar water attached to a small plastic air hose with a stone aerator on the end. The result is truly impressive. I was still able to have fish in my tanks, as well.
I had some free time and was looking at some of these older videos. I like these LED lights, though my fish might need some sunglasses for all that light. lol I guess that adjustable resistor switch will come in handy.
Thanks! We just finished an update where I assemble a far smaller lamp with twice the light output and use the waste heat to heat the aquarium. Of course, this is also adjustable and can be mounted higher to light a much larger aquarium.
Another amazing vid. Watching U use those L shaped hex drivers causes me pain though. Recommend some dedicated screwdriver form hex drivers. Cheap as chips and a much more satisfying feeling.
Love you channel-- and your Brain, Thx so much, and also the Shrink Tubing heat you applied was not enough to shrink it properly. Lower heat and more control will resolve this. It must be sealed all around, for obvious reasons! Great Channel, Great Job and don't take this the wrong way, it's my Forte' Keep up the good work, and glad to hear you are going Full Time!
I don't know why, but I keep thinking about the old TV series Home Improvement, while watching this video, it's like a Tim Taylor with Al skillset and craftsmanship.
You can get alumablack from gun tool suppliers such as brownells and midwayusa. It will not exactly match the original anodized finish, but its pretty good. Easy to use also.
If you look at the spectrum that is published with each of these COBs, Cree and Phillips are among the best, you'll see that as the color temperature rises,the blue wavelength output increases a lot. You can pick a choose whichever one works and just substitute it.
every word is so valuable and so absolute and complete, i would have hurt feelings if you were to stop doing one long real time filming session. dont ever ever cut out footage.. please. i will be left with ptsd. hahahaha
Hey man! I've been experimenting with these COB lights recently and am working on a submersible setup for underwater fishing. So far, I've tried silicone and different types of epoxy but haven't had great results keeping the lights running, even before submersion. I'm wondering if there is some sort of issue with materials overlaying on the phosphorus. Any advice? Thanks.
Great video once again. Please keep them coming! First and foremost, check all relevant local regulations for before embarking on any electrical project, particulary when in close proximity to water. I would use GFCI or similar protected outlet as required. There are some ultra-high performance LEDs coming from some specialty firms including: Yuji, Xicato, and Soraa. I would use good quality non-conductive paste optimized for low pressure fitting to improve cooling instead of the thermal pads. I might use LockTite on the frame screws. I might improve splash protection (e.g. cover wire fully rather than use spiral wrap, move pot away from water, put a spash guard between lamp and water, etc.)
Thanks. The tank in the video is 35 L. But, I have one exception to your rule. Have you ever seen a shallow, "edge-less" or "frame-less" invertebrate or a similar planted aquarium? Seen from above, these things are fascinating and are often lit by a central, unobtrusive pendulum light. Hope you subscribed.
I'm guessing you're going to have a lot of 4/20 viewers now ;-) I built one myself couple of years back for a propagation box (Sequoia and peppers :-), however using a single driver with 280v and many LEDs in series. Heatsink is an old PV inverter sink rated for a couple of kW😜
Using standard male to female 3 prong plugs, (similar to what you would find on an extension cord), is also a clean way to make a removable connection.
Algae problems are caused by excessive nutrients in the water, not the quality or quantity of the lighting. In an aquarium the common culprits are nitrate(s), excess food, and other dissolved organic compounds. In the wild that list also includes agricultural bio/chemical runoff and other industrial pollutants.
I was surprised that for a grow light application you didn't say anything about the spectrum of the light. Presumably not all light that is white to our eyes is ideal?
You're right. We selected the 3,500K COB because the general consensus on the Rapid LED forum and some hydroponics forums on Google recommended this spectral blend as the most favorable for plant growth. It does have a pleasant appearance that;s close to, if slightly less harsh (blue) than natural sunlight.
I had great results with green plants at 6500K but warmer temps in the 3-4K range are supposed to provide better results with colored plants, especially reds. I would sure love to experiment with this light!
One major problem off the bat is plants do not care about lumens at all they care about par. Our eyes care about lumen output. You guys should check out chilled led much better spectrums and canopy coverage.
Actually, plants care about both. Obviously, a PAR with an optimal mixture of wavelengths for plant growth vs for flowering (I do know a bit about this) is meaningless if there is virtually no light output. Light output is specified by lumens. Cooling LEDs improves white, phosphor based efficiency, but not nearly as much as non phosphor based LEDs that do not rely on GaN junctions.
Id like to see a dissection and analyzation of the domestic LED screw in light bulb, even though they dissipate only 13W typical, they seem to get very hot at the base. Im wondering what kind of crude driver or, perhaps its just a ballast resistor/rectifier. is inside them for matching to 120vac. They are not really much more efficient than the compact fluorescent when compared to incandescent. Thanks for creating this great content.
They will typically have a capacitive dropper to drop your main voltage to the lamp's requirements. bigclivedotcom has a lot of those tear downs if you are interested.
I just noted something you said that perked up the ears of this electronics guy... a dull grey solder connection is a 'cold solder joint' and is not a good electrical connection (nor mechanical for that matter). Heat the bullet, add solder to the cavity, keep the heat present, insert the wire and continue to heat until the solder on your tinned wire flows into the strands (this is quite quick, 1-3 seconds depending on the temperature and mass of your iron tip), remove heat and keep everything stationary while the solder solidifies. The finish joint must be shiny, not dull!
I should have explained in more detail. The solder will change it's reflectivity when it goes from liquid to solid. It isn't a large change and maybe saying it goes from shinny to dull is exaggerating, but if you're experienced with this you know what I mean.
@@TechIngredients Several thousand solder joints later and failure analysis made hearing 'dull gray' set off alarm bells. I figured you'd done plenty of soldering, but for those that hadn't, a cold solder joint is no Bueno! I didn't mean to harp... I've also found 2 other tips on solder joints of use. Cleanliness is paramount (a wet sponge for your tip) and when you remove heat and the phase change to solid is immanent, don't let the joint shift or move. Oh and flux at the joint. If your solder is rosin core (flux), add solder to a heated joint. Re-heating solder means the cleaning action of the flux is greatly reduced.
@@TechIngredients wow, didn't expect a response from anyone, let alone the content creator. I'm rewatching cause I'm looking to build one for my aquarium. Love your content, you remind me of Don Herbert.
Hey, :) Thx. For me, your build is inspiring. Preface: I know that my request is going to be an butt-ache for you, but WTH? Right. And if it's too much of such, I can certainly understand. Could you pls provide me with a description list of the LED components used whenever you get time? I'd like to see if I could build this (on a smaller scale) for a 10-, 20-, and 29- gallon freshwater planted aquarium(s). Thx.
Ouch, I would highly recommend that you do not rely on just the frictional force of those crimp connectors without any other retention on a live pigtail like that. I don't know how heavy that LED Driver is, but if it is potted it is probably quite heavy, and id if falls it can likely pull apart those crimps, leaving live wire exposed. Another concern i would have with this, is that those quite heavy (?) lights are supported by the glass only, which is likely causing more stress on the glass itself, and if it cracks, it drops straight into the fish soup. Most of the Mean Well drivers have all kinds of protection built in, but i suspect all the fishes would be fried anyway.
Your point regarding the electrical interconnects is valid. A more permanent connection would also have a lower profile and more attractive appearance. Thanks. The weight of the lights is trivial compared to the loads the glass opposes in bending under water pressure. This type of tank routinely supports lights directly resting on the plastic lip that covers the glass walls. Larger tanks with larger lighting systems could also support substantial vertical loads, but access to the fish and optimal light distribution usual means that the lighting fixtures are suspended from above.
It could be used, but it wouldn't be that useful. They are very inefficient and a simple water cooling system works well as I demonstrated in our follow up video.
It is indeed, even too much for a marine aquarium housing XPS corals and this is about the highest lighting intensity used for any aquarium. But, its like being to rich, too thin or having a 200 MPH automobile...Seriously though, the pot lets you adjust the lighting down and if you wanted to outfit a larger aquarium, you could simply extend the arms.
I thought about building one of these, but then I ended up just using a pair of readily available lamps instead. One growth lamp for the plants, and one LED strip for the visual.
Long Plays I recomend a good cri of like 90-98+ if you want the tank to look its best. Yuji led makes some nice 20 watt cobs with 90 cri someone should make a light with those, i might use those in the future.
lumens is a terrible measure of LED output. lumens is green light, which humans see the best. LED should be measured in PAR Watts, lumens is almost a useless term here.
Tech is that cob led you are using ..have the rite spectrum and correct wave length .. It sounds like you have been keeping "fish" for a long time :-) :-)
Are you going to do a video on how to get the dust out of a heat sink? You could fabricate an attachment for your shop vac that's narrow enough to get in between those tines..LOL
No. The best way to get dust out of a heatsink in an assembly is to blast it with compressed air. If you can isolate it then a dishwasher works pretty well and if you've got one, the best is an ultrasonic cleaner. We'll show how we built ours in an upcoming video.
Next video, cleaning aquarium glass. Only kind of kidding, I've tried a few things but always end up with mineral stains or streaks like yours has. They don't show when water is in them but just knowing they are there haunts me.
A diode simply means a function of two electronically dissimilar materials. In light emiting diodes and diode lasers, if the reverse polarity is applied the junction will almost instantly overheat and the chare carriers will be driven out of their proper location, permanently.
@@TechIngredients If the current is strong enough ,of course. I was thinking more abut diodes in general. Have you ever done tests on a led? Their efficiency increases by lowering current but the voltage drop is smaller. I was thinking about fixing voltage on max and then drop the current. Does that change anything, can it get more efficient that way or is it just in my head?
I like your videos! One thing that would make them more enjoyable for me is if you could refrain from sounding like a teacher in an instructional video. Just explain what you are doing and why instead of telling the viewer what to do. Probably the majority of your viewers are watching for entertainment and not because they are doing the same thing themselves anyway. No big deal at all, just something that would improve the videos for me at least. Thanks for your good work!
I wish my dad was this tech savvy! I enjoyed the vid i just watched the newer 2 cob light .. i would like to try and make a light for my tank(s)! Thanks for the How-to! Sub and a like from me!
Love your videos... however; dull grey = cold solder joint. Cold solder joint = high resistivity, wasted solder, and susceptibility to fatigue failures. In your application, maybe not a big deal, but the information provided is incorrect. Edit: Additional: Nice lights for fresh water. Aluminum, especially raw, unanodized aluminum (yes, there is a tiny amount of Al2O3 on the raw aluminum due to O2 in air) is not a great choice of frame material for a salt water tank. Aluminum will corrode and drip back into the water, killing your corals, reef life, and eventually fish.
Lots of nasty jump cuts -.- however the end justifies it or does it do you know how many minutes did it save Could be a lot if you multiply it times 8000 viewers (minus watch time curve)
Tow other options are available. Add a fan to allow a much smaller heat sink or invest in a larger number of COB LEDs and run them at a reduced output while mounted on a flat, large area, aluminum plate. The savings on the heat sink will offset the cost of the LEDs and the profile will be even flatter.
Its http:RapidLED.com Their $5.00 LED comes in a wide variety of coloured light and they draw 3 amps. The question now is, how focused are these LED's ? Can you put them on the nosewheel for a landing light?, or, auxiliary lights for your car? What kind of protection do they need to the way you see LED lights on late model cars? Theses provide lots of good ideas for projects that will draw subscribers once you venture into the automotive and aviation worlds.
Funny that you mention this. In several of our videos, we are in the large room above the lab and because of the volume of this space and the high ceilings, we have 5 HID, high bay lighting fixtures. For energy savings and instant start and restart, I was considering retrofitting these with an LED array similar to what I showed in this video. The spectral choices are numerous and I agree that a full spectrum with red and blue emphasis is beneficial for plants (fresh and marine) while a warmer 3,000k color makes room lighting more pleasant, for me anyway. Then he showed me what are called, corn cob LED lamps with integrated drivers, mogul base and designed for just this retrofit. The color choices are more limited, the cost/lumen is higher, but it's so... easy.
Anyone doing a planted freshwater tank or a macroalgae refugium should absolutely be using full spectrum COBs but if you're building your own LED fixture I'd like to also strongly recommend using modules with as high a quality as you can afford. It's the one part nobody should skimp on for a DIY fixture. Stick with LEDs made by a reputable LED company - Philips, Cree, Nichia, Osram, etc … there are plenty to choose from. The reason I mention this is that as this technology has advanced a lot of companies have started producing low cost "grow spectrum" or "High PAR" (PAR = Photosynthetically Active Radiation, basically the wavelength range from just above UV, ~400nm, up to around 700nm) modules. These cheap modules, among other oddities, often lack green (~555nm) in their overall spectrum - presumably they reduce costs by reducing the number of different phosphor coatings (??). If you're growing marijuana, or some non-flowering vegetable, or starting next year's mini Christmas tree for your apartment "from scratch" this might not be an issue; but a lot of plants exhibit growth rate and morphology (growth direction & overall shape) differences when they don't get green light - even though most of it is, obviously, reflected. A lot of cheaper "full spectrum" modules also produce almost nothing in the near-UV or far-red, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on what you're growing, and how you're growing it. For coral reef aquariums, this is like the missing green for green plants - some species of photosynthetic corals and corallimorphs will behave and grow differently in the absence light wavelengths below 425nm or so. If you've had success with another type of lighting technology in the past, you can likely look up a spectrum chart for whatever brand bulbs you were using. The big LED companies all provide full spectroscopic charts for their COBs, allowing you to match as closely as possible. If you can't find a close enough match (unlikely these days), you can fill in the spectral gaps on a DIY fixture without too much fuss using smaller narrow spectrum COBs; but I doubt anyone has had to do that for typical aquarium spectrums for at least a few years now - the LED industry advances at an absolutely insane rate. The US EnergyStar guidelines for LEDs are a decent way to quickly rule out LEDs that you probably don't want to bother with for a DIY fixture. If a module isn't EnergyStar compliant, don't force your photosynthetic organisms to rely on it.
LEDs are coming along, but still don't beat HPS. Your 100w COB is rated at 9000-11000 lumens, but a 600w HPS will do 72000 - 95000 lumens and if you do the math the HPS wins... even the less efficient 400w HPS will do 50000 lumens.
I'm not sure how that comparison works. It is true that as the wattage of metal halide bulbs increases, the luminous efficiency increases as well. HPS lamps, based primarily on sodium metal, are more efficient than mixed metal halide bulbs that contain a blend of several metals. This mixture produces a whiter, more balanced illumination with a higher CRI and is much more commonly used for aquariums because it more closely matches sunlight while a HPS lamp looks like a street light. Nevertheless, The COB I demonstrate has a luminous efficiency of 150 lumens/watt at 100 watts input and a CRI of 80 while a HPS lamp has a CRI of 25.
Camera dude, I'm glad you learned to stand still a little over the years.
I miss this camera person. The new one is kinda.... the worst
Damit... now I´m thinking about it....
A little trick I use when inserting screws and avoiding cross threading or getting the thread to start, is to turn the screw in the 'remove' direction (counter clockwise for right hand thread) up to one turn while applying very light downward pressure until a light click is felt. Then begin to turn the screw in the 'tighten' direction. This is a 90%+ way to get a sure start to threading a screw into a nut or tapped hole. Nice tip on the spiral wrap! I hadn't thought of that! Great video!
I may do a short tutorial on tapping, there are a number of tricks that aren't in the books that really help. Thanks for that idea and the nudge.
So hard to find thorough tutorials on TH-cam. I just watched two of your videos and got multiple answers to questions I've had about subjects only loosely related to what your videos were about. Some people have a short attention span and some you-tubers cater to it. Thank you for not doing so. My brain appreciates!
Of all the channels on youtube, I look forward to your videos the most (Applied Science is a very close second, though). Thanks and Cheers!
Thanks for the inspiration as always, kind and knowledgeable sir. I'm just re-getting into indoor growing (No it is NOT that stuff. Just ornamentals and vegetables.) and I'll be going with a premade LED fixture, but down the road I'll definitely want to get into custom builds for better control over specs. I grew up in the day and age where an LED was this amazing plastic thing about the size of a transistor but it glowed! Wowwwwww. Ask any typical person back then how long it would be before they grew up into all purpose lights so bright they could damage your eyes, and they'd have laughed at you. Now, they're just amazing and getting better all the time. LEDs and laser diodes are simply amazing devices.
The dyes in Shapie black markers will fade to a purple over time. Paint pens available at craft stores provide the convenience your demonstrating but have more stable pigment.
that is literally a thought out of his head. straight up! i love you guys!!
the dye in sharpie markers was never black to begin with
When I saw that I thought, for how meticulous this guy is, he can still be a hack at times.
There were so many useful tips here! I clicked on this on a whim and was extremely pleased!
Thanks!
I don't care about aquariums or grow lights, but this video taught me so much about basic wiring (and confirmed a bunch of things I figured out myself).
These will be good lights in a variety of applications. Thanks.
That's right and thanks!
Nice assembly, gonna look at the co. you mentioned for the diode chip/wafers. I know this is an older episode, but if ya see this it'd be appreciated. Do you remember the total cost of a single completed led assembly? Awesome stuff your put out there and the attention to detail is great too. Leaves very little questions about the projects if you are going to do one yourself. And not sure if it'd be too thick but to possibly secure the wires that are weaved thru the heatsink- put a matching length of heat shrink over each wire. Then they'd be a bit more clamped in between the fins and have an extra layer of insulation. Not sure how hot the heatsink gets after many hours of operation or if they'd just deteriorate too much but might work.
I'm glad to see that the videography has improved so much in just a short time. It shows that someone is on the ball and really paying attention to making it more receptive to viewers.
I'd also like to comment on the control circuitry, even though this is nearly 2 years after the fact.
I'd move the pots from the fixture to another location closer to the power supply. This would serve 2 purposes at the very least:
1. There is less wire at the fixture, which means less to wrap and hide.
2. The pots are not above a high-humidity environment, which plays havoc with low-voltage devices. Over time, corrosion can lower the ability of the pot to work.
Even though it's more circuitry and more money, I'd opt for a PWM controller. It allows the light to turn on at a lower level, making it easier for the user to adjust the lighting level, and is also less likely to scare your fine-feathered fishy friends. It would be up to the circuit designer (you or your son) to decide if they want a single controller for both lights or to be able to control them individually.
I have a 6-foot dual-color Beamswork LED light above my 125-gallon aquarium. It has a common (-) and separate (+) to control the lights. I bought a programmable PWM controller with 5 channels, but it uses a common (+) and controls the (-). I used a single MOSFET for each of my 2 channels to be able to use it. It has been working perfectly for almost a year now, so I'm fairly confident that it'll keep on going for the long haul.
It was about $30 for the controller and only a few bucks for the MOSFETs and experimenter's box. It can be programmed by buttons on its case or via USB, which is what I did.
If all you're interested in is being able to dim them slightly rather than mimic dusk and dawn, then a simple pot is just fine, but I'd still locate it away from the tank itself.
While watching, I imagined using something like this to shine on the ceiling as indirect lighting in my home. Thank you for sharing this project and all the details on all the parts that go into the finished product!
"2A @ 250V over an aquarium filled with water is not cool".
Heh, someone has clearly never run a large reef aquarium … or kissed the local fish store employee who talked them into buying that titanium grounding probe!
I'm surprised any of us survived the early to mid 1990s, when the hobby honestly seemed to be less about fish, corals, and other marine life and more about "How many 400W metal halide lamps can I hang, precariously, a foot or so above a large glass box of salt water? - one that I can't seem to resist shoving my arms into, every 5 minutes, splashing around like an idiot while trying to 'perfectly' arrange hundreds of pounds of rock."
Great video! A lot of reef aquarists I know are unaware that LED lighting can now be this easy and affordable. So many of the commercial fixtures have insanely complex control boards and focus on useless programmable features like simulating realistic cloud cover or monthly moon phase cycles. (reef corals prefer consistency, people, so give as much of it to them as you can if you're going to force them to live in that tiny ocean in your house!)
Thank you!
A guiding principle behind this channel is to dispel myths and and challenge dogma by presenting the WHY behind technology and let the viewer make educated decisions.
One thing you could do for us, if you are willing, is to spread the word. Linking, posting and referring to what we are doing here will help us to grow much larger and much faster.
Tech Ingredients more than willing, and already doing! (it was either that or do actual work … and today is Monday)
even the simulation thing can be done inexpensively these days by some simple and cheap electronics.
Its about kidnapping and imprisoning animals that would be much happier in their natural environment...and the greed of the humans who put them through hell.
Bob Johnson You're pretty spot-on there. Under scrutiny, literally every level of the industry is either knowingly and willfully unethical (vendors) or ignorantly/arrogantly negligent (aquarists) … even though solutions have existed for almost every problem for years.
A single species example: I once rescued a large carpet anemone (Stichodactyla haddoni) from another aquarist who couldn't care for it. She got it from an aquarium chain store that rhymes with "Big Al's", they had three in one 20gal display tank, two of them were already starting to expel their symbiotic algae, a process commonly called "bleaching" because without that algae (actually an endosymbiotic dinoflagellate, colloquially referred to as "zooxanthellae") the flesh of most anemones and corals is a translucent white. It's also a process that is almost 100% fatal once it starts. I took the anemone but also went to that store to ask them WTF they thought they were doing, and while standing next to the tank with the two bleaching anemones, actually heard a sales rep try to get this young couple to buy one of these "rare albino carpet anemones" (I kid you not) as a companion for their lone clownfish, which I later found out from the couple was in a 10gal tabletop tank! The bleached specimens looked small because they were all shrivelled up, but they looked about the same size as the third specimen, which was now thriving in a 75gal dedicated temporary tank at home, with it's foot dug into 10" of sand right to the bottom of the tank and the top spread out to between 12" and 14" wide … those dimensions do not fit in a 10gal tank, and if you read up on the species you'll learn that they often exceed a metre in width (39") in the wild - I had already planned on moving the one I had into a wider, shallow tank. The sales pitch continued: the couple was told that they'd need to get a 250W metal halide pendant because of the intense light requirements of anemones. I can only put some of the fault on the sales rep for this one, because numerous aquarium books still list this as a fact, even though if you do the math you quickly learn that there is no way these things could ever possibly get the bulk of their nutrition from photosynthesis. They are voracious carnivores. They will even eat clumsy sea birds who stumble on them at low tide. I never had mine under anything brighter than a single Lights of America compact fluorescent bulb from Walmart … "daylight" colour (6500K), and around 27W. The anemone thrived and grew insanely fast with no problems under this "dim" light, and also consumed 2 or 3 full vitamin-soaked silversides (a small feeder fish, like a sardine) every single day. I did get that sales rep fired from that location … which, of course, had no lasting affect on that store's policies or the general "thrive on ignorance" mentality of 95% of aquarium stores. They love it if you kill fish and coral, that translates into sales! Your fish died because we lied to you and you're a cheapskate who also doesn't want to learn anything? NO PROBLEM! We still have 7 of those Blue Tangs in stock! Come on down! They're tiny, and your Nemo should really have a Dori in that lonely 10 gallon tank!" - a blue tang, like Dori from "Finding Nemo", is about the size of an adult Ocellaris clownfish (eg. Nemo) … as newborns, a full grown Blue Tang is about 30cm (12") long and weighs half a kilogram (1.3 lbs) and voraciously eats algae every waking minute of it's life, unless that life is spent in an aquarium, where most will die a year or two of being purchased, usually of some sort of negligence on the part of the aquarium owner.
The story for carpet anemones is even worse, according to Dr. Ron Shimek, a noted marine biologist, the typical survival rate for carpet anemones in aquariums still drops to around 0% after about a year, with very few exceptions. He used to maintain a list of those exceptions, and when my rescued anemone celebrated 12 months of thriving, it turned out that this was only the 73rd S. haddoni on Ron's list. I did a quick scan of several archives of reef aquarium store mailing lists where they announce what new stock is available every week. During 2013, just 3 little independent local stores, not big chain/franchise stores, located in Edmonton(Canada), Pittsburgh, and Chicago brought in and (presumably) sold 233 carpet anemones - three little stores did that, there are thousands and thousands of aquarium vendors. My anemone, sadly, also died due to aquarist negligence when I swapped out the heater in it's tank for a cheap heater from Walmart. The cheap heater was smaller, but still adequate wattage for that tank, and I needed the larger one for a different tank. I had planned on buying a better replacement heater the next day… but procrastinated, and three days later I came home to the most wonderful smell of dead marine life that had probably been slow-cooking in that 35°C (95°F) water for probably 4 or 5 hours. The anemone, which was thriving and now nearly 50cm wide during daylight hours, was dead, total captive lifespan: 19 months, give or take a week. This is a far cry from their natural lifespan, which is: until something kills them. These things don't age, they are immortal. In the wild waters off the coast of Sulawesi you can see huge specimens with 15-20 clownfish living in their folds - take that anemone out of the ocean and those clownfish are all dead within an hour, they are seriously the most incompetent swimmers I've ever seen. Big anemones do split every once in a while and thanks to people like Eric Borneman and Anthony Calfo, we've known for over a decade that they can be "fragged" manually with a razor blade to propagate them in captivity and, thus, they could be aquacultured for the aquarium industry instead of yanking them out of the ocean. Is it being done? Nope. Are aquarium books and sites at least being updated to provide more accurate information on how to care for these animals? Very few are, and sales reps still use anemone sales to trick people into buying brighter lights all the time. Ron Shimek stopped collecting and maintaining his depressing anemone longevity data a while ago. Several Indo-Pacific reefs have seen their large anemone populations dwindle over the last 5-7 years, and they are a favourite target for free dive poachers in protected marine areas because of the dollar value they represent to the aquarium trade.
We have the knowledge and technology to properly care for these anemones. They could be aquacultured (farmed) while still making money hand over fist for the vendors and suppliers - in 6 months of feeding my carpet anemone, I probably spent more on food and frequent water changes than the price of any metal halide pendant light. It could for just isn't. We know enough that, if properly educated and financially prepared, any aquarist should be able to keep one in captivity with relative ease - and with aquacultured specimens you can simply ask the farmer what it eats, no guesswork involved (they are very evolved to be picky eaters).
So there you go, that's the story for Stichodactyla haddoni. It could be 100% aquacultured and 100% properly cared for … but it isn't, and that sucks.
Great content. Always impressed with the production quality and the excellent delivery of information. Tons of valuable content on this channel, seriously always amazed. Thanks so much 😊
You Could Grow Some Really
Sticky
Stinky
Tall....
Fish with that light lol
Ya fucker 😂😂😂😂 I was thinking trees
This light is probably not the right spectrum needed for flower stage of cannabis, blue veg is what he has here
Just a hint: its a good practice to short the "unused" side terminal of potentiometer track to the wiper (center). //can handle load better, less noise, doesnt go completely open if the wiper goes bad
wow, I forget where this channel came from. Great job guys increasing your a/v production quality. The content has always been great, keep it up PLEASE!
Thanks!
You make very detailed and informative videos. I like that you explain every step and why you choose how to do them. I've done a lot of soldering in my life and this is the first video that explains how to solder correctly. Well done!
If the aquarium needed tropical temperatures, instead of those massive heatsinks you could use CPU water cooling blocks and circulate tank water, with some sort of bypass regulator system.
Some fish are quite sensitive to metal poisoning so you need to know what you are doing.
was ganna say same thing as rusle copper and aluminum is a big no no in fish tank hobby
especially if you have inverts. That setup would end a shrimp tank so fast.
Seal the LED chip in silicone and put it inside a sealed glass jar with aquarium tube fittings, while pumping aquarium water through the jar.
Hah! I know you're joking, but for everyone else - the water temperature tropical fish thrive in isn't much warmer than an air conditioned house. The amount of heat from a single 100 watt fixture (in most smaller tanks) would cook the poor things, forget two fixtures.
I always staggered my connections to reduce the odds of a short and as you said looks so much better.
did you just call fish "subjects"?
*Testsubjects, greetings from GLaDOS
HES A SCIENTIST!
yes. hes my hero
You are the first person I've seen mention staggering the electrical joints to avoid large bulges/arching. I've been doing that for projects since I was a kid and have had many odd looks when others see me do it.
Yes, it should be obvious once you've seen it done.
Love this build. Looking forward to making some of these! Thanks!
This is some great stuff. You are covering everything I have I need to know then and now.
I came from your newest video and it's quite impressive how much the sound quality has improved.
@29:05 - "The solder goes from a shiny silver to a dull gray when you've got a good bond." :-) Yeah.. no. A good solder joint is shiny and smooth. Dull gray solder joints are called "cold" solder joints, and they aren't what you want. I know this is an older video, but this is pretty important. Cold solder joints are not as strong, they're brittle, and they're more susceptible to chemical and/or galvanic corrosion. The dull color is caused by the metal actually fracturing into tiny crystals as it cools, usually due to movement of the joint.
The fracturing of a cold solder joint leaves tiny cracks which weaken it and make it brittle. They can also trap oxidation or chemicals (used to clean a PC board, for example) in the joint, causing it to fail way sooner than anyone wants it to. Ask several major electronics companies from the early 2000's about the time a PCB foundry's solder temperature controls failed. This one foundry produced boards for many different companies (RCA and Mackie are two I know of personally***), and those companies paid a lot in warranty repairs and replacements.
*** Disclaimer: Neither RCA nor Mackie are at fault here, and they were far from the only companies affected. RCA promptly replaced our television when it was found to be... "not economically feasible to repair". Sadly, the Mackie mixer was purchased used (_really_ used, as mixers tend to be), and way out of warranty, but one intrepid repair person re-soldered most of the joints (that's a LOT of soldering!), and it worked well for a year or two before we replaced it.
Not if you are using lead free solder.
I'm really impressed with Mackie mixers. I installed on is a studio that did sound to picture, record folies and record remote telephone sessions. No matter what crazy configuration I needed (talkback for remote session is a nightmare), there was a button that did just what I needed.
Philips has FINALLY started producing quality LEDs in the past two years or so. I replaced 1700W worth of incandescent lights with Philips lamps in 2014 and all but I think 2 failed within about a year. CREE or bust, baby! Never had a CREE-powered lamp fail on me. Or an OSRAM branded product.
its not the led that fails, its the driver.
Excellent content and presentation style!! Thank you! Working my way through your catalogue of videos.
I got curious about how to use COBs for grow lights for my indoor fig tree. This was very informative and I appreciate it.
Indoor "fig" tree... ;)
Always great content.
Id like to add led efficiency is not linear. you will receive far better lumans per watt ratio if you under drive leds and a far greater life span. it can be a cost annalisis of buying the next size up and under powering them to meet project lighting requirements if you are expecting to run them often and would benefit from an additional energy savings. with better efficiency comes less heat production so it may also come into a design requirement where you require less heat in an application or do not have the ability to property heat sinc. For me I often only run the LEDs at 70% power unless I actually need everything it has to offer
You are correct. LED's are actually quite linear in their efficiency if they remain at the same temperature, but they do not remain at the same temperature if the heat is removed by an unregulated, bootstrap method such as a heat sink, with or without a fan. If you take a look at some of our laser videos you will see how substantially a diode increases it's efficiency with cooling all the way down to liquid nitrogen temperatures. You are also correct that LED lifetime increases enormously as the driving current decreases. It is logarithmic.
I believe you observed a product of CC supplies it was attempting to push the same amount of current and thus raiseing the voltage across the junction.
a few resent study I'v read showed very different conclusions. previously, it was believed that temperature was the cause of LED efficiency however this is no longer the case from my understanding.
here is a snip from the artical that will also have a link to the lab report: "as the voltage is halved, the input power is decreased by a factor of 4, while the emitted light power scales linearly with voltage so that it’s also only halved. In other words, an LED’s efficiency increases as its output power decreases. (The inverse of this relationship - that LED efficiency decreases as its output power increases"
Read more at: phys.org/news/2012-03-efficiency.html#jCp
here is a digikey artical about studies showing that LED efficiency believed to be related to current:
www.digikey.com/en/articles/techzone/2011/oct/identifying-the-causes-of-led-efficiency-droop
Got a problem with the first article. The physics is too general and implies an increase in efficiency due to extraction of energy from processes outside the driving current. Achieving greater than 100% efficiency in their experiment grabs one's attention, but would be ludicrous if it wasn't for the mention that this isn't steady state. The Digikey article seems reasonable.
Increasing temperature does decrease a diodes efficiency. It is my understanding that this is due to the increased mobility of the charge carriers.
I haven't been able to find an cortical that blatantly says the decrease in efficiency due to the heat. maybe you have one you can recall? but yeah the first article is definitely interesting. I had no idea until recently that they could use thermal energy for photon emission at very low powers. although it makes scene when considering how thermal noise effects fiber optic systems in a similar manner.
I like your videos so much! I just want to start building things again! You inspire me! Thank you
That makes it worthwhile!
Now...get to work. 😉
"You can actually use a marker"
YES ! This is the same thing I "invented" for my own project's edge coloring, it's super inconvenient to get to with a brush and wet paint, but super cool to just mark over.
wow!!! . . . I've been wanting to upgrade my grow-lights to full spectrum LED's but I haven't found anything that i could simulate morning inferred to noon full-spec to evening inferred at an affordable price & was gonna use Arduino this is perfect.
Very cool lighting for a planted tank! Can't wait to see you make an amazing CO2 injection system for it next!
We've had some very impressive marine aquariums over the years, but have never tried the planted tank. It has always intrigued me.
@@TechIngredients If the light source in this video is being used for a planted tank, you may find that you need CO2 injection to help control algae formation. Try some of your champagne yeast in a bottle of sugar water attached to a small plastic air hose with a stone aerator on the end. The result is truly impressive. I was still able to have fish in my tanks, as well.
I had some free time and was looking at some of these older videos. I like these LED lights, though my fish might need some sunglasses for all that light. lol I guess that adjustable resistor switch will come in handy.
Thanks!
We just finished an update where I assemble a far smaller lamp with twice the light output and use the waste heat to heat the aquarium. Of course, this is also adjustable and can be mounted higher to light a much larger aquarium.
that sounds really cool getting double duty from the lights. i cant wait to see the new video.
I think this is my new favorite channel!
: )
Fantastic!
Another amazing vid. Watching U use those L shaped hex drivers causes me pain though. Recommend some dedicated screwdriver form hex drivers. Cheap as chips and a much more satisfying feeling.
Love you channel-- and your Brain, Thx so much, and also the Shrink Tubing heat you applied was not enough to shrink it properly. Lower heat and more control will resolve this.
It must be sealed all around, for obvious reasons!
Great Channel, Great Job and don't take this the wrong way, it's my Forte'
Keep up the good work, and glad to hear you are going Full Time!
I am liking these things for the workshop.... should give a nice beam on the lathe or the milling machine...
Paddy
Can you post a link to parts or part numbers please?
Great videos! Love your workshop, inspiring stuff. Thanks!
I don't know why, but I keep thinking about the old TV series Home Improvement, while watching this video, it's like a Tim Taylor with Al skillset and craftsmanship.
I would love to see your rendition of a broad spectrum grow light
You can get alumablack from gun tool suppliers such as brownells and midwayusa. It will not exactly match the original anodized finish, but its pretty good. Easy to use also.
Thanks.
Can you make one with blue light? I've heard it's rather important for growing alot of aquarium plants. Meant specifically as it relates to moonlight.
If you look at the spectrum that is published with each of these COBs, Cree and Phillips are among the best, you'll see that as the color temperature rises,the blue wavelength output increases a lot. You can pick a choose whichever one works and just substitute it.
Can't wait for the new and improved version.
every word is so valuable and so absolute and complete, i would have hurt feelings if you were to stop doing one long real time filming session. dont ever ever cut out footage.. please. i will be left with ptsd. hahahaha
Great video. Where do you get your button connectors? Is there a special name for them? They look more robust than the ones I've used.
McMaster-Carr
What a fascinating channel; love your content!
Hey man! I've been experimenting with these COB lights recently and am working on a submersible setup for underwater fishing. So far, I've tried silicone and different types of epoxy but haven't had great results keeping the lights running, even before submersion. I'm wondering if there is some sort of issue with materials overlaying on the phosphorus. Any advice? Thanks.
Go to candlepowerforums. Lots of high performance flashight mods going on there, including waterproof
I shared this on Facebook!!!
Great video once again. Please keep them coming!
First and foremost, check all relevant local regulations for before embarking on any electrical project, particulary when in close proximity to water. I would use GFCI or similar protected outlet as required.
There are some ultra-high performance LEDs coming from some specialty firms including: Yuji, Xicato, and Soraa. I would use good quality non-conductive paste optimized for low pressure fitting to improve cooling instead of the thermal pads.
I might use LockTite on the frame screws. I might improve splash protection (e.g. cover wire fully rather than use spiral wrap, move pot away from water, put a spash guard between lamp and water, etc.)
Open top tanks are never a good idea fish love to jump:-) :-) by the way what size is the aquarium:-) you are a good builder I do like your videos
Thanks. The tank in the video is 35 L. But, I have one exception to your rule. Have you ever seen a shallow, "edge-less" or "frame-less" invertebrate or a similar planted aquarium? Seen from above, these things are fascinating and are often lit by a central, unobtrusive pendulum light. Hope you subscribed.
I'm guessing you're going to have a lot of 4/20 viewers now ;-)
I built one myself couple of years back for a propagation box (Sequoia and peppers :-), however using a single driver with 280v and many LEDs in series. Heatsink is an old PV inverter sink rated for a couple of kW😜
Wait, you can destroy an LED up by reversing polarity? A diode?
"so I did a bit of research' is music to my curiosity... ... here I go, watching this video...
Using standard male to female 3 prong plugs, (similar to what you would find on an extension cord), is also a clean way to make a removable connection.
I'm curious will you have an algae problem with that much light? The lumens are how high? And the fish must have migraines.
Algae always seems to be a problem, but of course, you could turn it down.
Algae problems are caused by excessive nutrients in the water, not the quality or quantity of the lighting. In an aquarium the common culprits are nitrate(s), excess food, and other dissolved organic compounds. In the wild that list also includes agricultural bio/chemical runoff and other industrial pollutants.
I was surprised that for a grow light application you didn't say anything about the spectrum of the light. Presumably not all light that is white to our eyes is ideal?
You're right. We selected the 3,500K COB because the general consensus on the Rapid LED forum and some hydroponics forums on Google recommended this spectral blend as the most favorable for plant growth. It does have a pleasant appearance that;s close to, if slightly less harsh (blue) than natural sunlight.
I had great results with green plants at 6500K but warmer temps in the 3-4K range are supposed to provide better results with colored plants, especially reds. I would sure love to experiment with this light!
Microwave 🐟 ??
One major problem off the bat is plants do not care about lumens at all they care about par. Our eyes care about lumen output. You guys should check out chilled led much better spectrums and canopy coverage.
Actually, plants care about both. Obviously, a PAR with an optimal mixture of wavelengths for plant growth vs for flowering (I do know a bit about this) is meaningless if there is virtually no light output. Light output is specified by lumens. Cooling LEDs improves white, phosphor based efficiency, but not nearly as much as non phosphor based LEDs that do not rely on GaN junctions.
Id like to see a dissection and analyzation of the domestic LED screw in light bulb, even though they dissipate only 13W typical, they seem to get very hot at the base. Im wondering what kind of crude driver or, perhaps its just a ballast resistor/rectifier. is inside them for matching to 120vac. They are not really much more efficient than the compact fluorescent when compared to incandescent. Thanks for creating this great content.
They will typically have a capacitive dropper to drop your main voltage to the lamp's requirements. bigclivedotcom has a lot of those tear downs if you are interested.
Thanks for the link Long Plays
loved the little smirk when you mentioned large arays of lights........so how much weed are you growing? lol
I just noted something you said that perked up the ears of this electronics guy... a dull grey solder connection is a 'cold solder joint' and is not a good electrical connection (nor mechanical for that matter). Heat the bullet, add solder to the cavity, keep the heat present, insert the wire and continue to heat until the solder on your tinned wire flows into the strands (this is quite quick, 1-3 seconds depending on the temperature and mass of your iron tip), remove heat and keep everything stationary while the solder solidifies. The finish joint must be shiny, not dull!
I should have explained in more detail. The solder will change it's reflectivity when it goes from liquid to solid. It isn't a large change and maybe saying it goes from shinny to dull is exaggerating, but if you're experienced with this you know what I mean.
@@TechIngredients Several thousand solder joints later and failure analysis made hearing 'dull gray' set off alarm bells. I figured you'd done plenty of soldering, but for those that hadn't, a cold solder joint is no Bueno! I didn't mean to harp... I've also found 2 other tips on solder joints of use. Cleanliness is paramount (a wet sponge for your tip) and when you remove heat and the phase change to solid is immanent, don't let the joint shift or move. Oh and flux at the joint. If your solder is rosin core (flux), add solder to a heated joint. Re-heating solder means the cleaning action of the flux is greatly reduced.
Aluminum black by Birchwood and Casey works for touch-ups. I think they even have a pen now.
Thanks.
@@TechIngredients wow, didn't expect a response from anyone, let alone the content creator. I'm rewatching cause I'm looking to build one for my aquarium. Love your content, you remind me of Don Herbert.
As always, Interesting.
Hey, :) Thx. For me, your build is inspiring.
Preface: I know that my request is going to be an butt-ache for you, but WTH? Right. And if it's too much of such, I can certainly understand. Could you pls provide me with a description list of the LED components used whenever you get time? I'd like to see if I could build this (on a smaller scale) for a 10-, 20-, and 29- gallon freshwater planted aquarium(s). Thx.
What's the fin parameter on that heat sink? By the looks of it the fins are way longer than they need to be.
Ouch, I would highly recommend that you do not rely on just the frictional force of those crimp connectors without any other retention on a live pigtail like that. I don't know how heavy that LED Driver is, but if it is potted it is probably quite heavy, and id if falls it can likely pull apart those crimps, leaving live wire exposed.
Another concern i would have with this, is that those quite heavy (?) lights are supported by the glass only, which is likely causing more stress on the glass itself, and if it cracks, it drops straight into the fish soup. Most of the Mean Well drivers have all kinds of protection built in, but i suspect all the fishes would be fried anyway.
Your point regarding the electrical interconnects is valid. A more permanent connection would also have a lower profile and more attractive appearance. Thanks. The weight of the lights is trivial compared to the loads the glass opposes in bending under water pressure. This type of tank routinely supports lights directly resting on the plastic lip that covers the glass walls. Larger tanks with larger lighting systems could also support substantial vertical loads, but access to the fish and optimal light distribution usual means that the lighting fixtures are suspended from above.
Would a Peltier(sp?) cooling system work for that application?
It could be used, but it wouldn't be that useful. They are very inefficient and a simple water cooling system works well as I demonstrated in our follow up video.
14000 lumens is a lot for a fish tank. suitable for maybe a 1000 gallon freshwater tank.
It is indeed, even too much for a marine aquarium housing XPS corals and this is about the highest lighting intensity used for any aquarium. But, its like being to rich, too thin or having a 200 MPH automobile...Seriously though, the pot lets you adjust the lighting down and if you wanted to outfit a larger aquarium, you could simply extend the arms.
I thought about building one of these, but then I ended up just using a pair of readily available lamps instead. One growth lamp for the plants, and one LED strip for the visual.
Long Plays I recomend a good cri of like 90-98+ if you want the tank to look its best. Yuji led makes some nice 20 watt cobs with 90 cri someone should make a light with those, i might use those in the future.
lumens is a terrible measure of LED output. lumens is green light, which humans see the best. LED should be measured in PAR Watts, lumens is almost a useless term here.
Condensation tray? And then I take it his fish don't jump?
You're not using 110V?
The fish love it
Where did you get the heatsink that you are using Sir ??? Thanks
Rapid LED.
Tech is that cob led you are using ..have the rite spectrum and correct wave length .. It sounds like you have been keeping "fish" for a long time :-) :-)
We are using a Cree 3,900 K, 100 watt COB. We have or have had everything from a SPS marine set up to fish-less, planted tanks.
@@TechIngredients you should upload a video of you fish tank i will love to see your planted tank
Are these lamps good for growing weed?
you should look into using a smaller bulb with a lense like kessil lights
Take a look at our new video where we revisit this project.
@@TechIngredients oh yeah i watched the one where you use water cooling.
Are you going to do a video on how to get the dust out of a heat sink? You could fabricate an attachment for your shop vac that's narrow enough to get in between those tines..LOL
No. The best way to get dust out of a heatsink in an assembly is to blast it with compressed air. If you can isolate it then a dishwasher works pretty well and if you've got one, the best is an ultrasonic cleaner. We'll show how we built ours in an upcoming video.
Is the water gonna get hot?
No. The actual heat associated with these effecient lights is low and most of that is radiated upward from the lamp rather than into the tank.
Next video, cleaning aquarium glass. Only kind of kidding, I've tried a few things but always end up with mineral stains or streaks like yours has. They don't show when water is in them but just knowing they are there haunts me.
How can you destroy a diode with reversed polarity? Isn't that the part of the job description of a diode?
A diode simply means a function of two electronically dissimilar materials. In light emiting diodes and diode lasers, if the reverse polarity is applied the junction will almost instantly overheat and the chare carriers will be driven out of their proper location, permanently.
@@TechIngredients If the current is strong enough ,of course. I was thinking more abut diodes in general.
Have you ever done tests on a led? Their efficiency increases by lowering current but the voltage drop is smaller. I was thinking about fixing voltage on max and then drop the current. Does that change anything, can it get more efficient that way or is it just in my head?
I like your videos! One thing that would make them more enjoyable for me is if you could refrain from sounding like a teacher in an instructional video. Just explain what you are doing and why instead of telling the viewer what to do. Probably the majority of your viewers are watching for entertainment and not because they are doing the same thing themselves anyway. No big deal at all, just something that would improve the videos for me at least. Thanks for your good work!
Thanks for the suggestion!
I wish my dad was this tech savvy! I enjoyed the vid i just watched the newer 2 cob light .. i would like to try and make a light for my tank(s)! Thanks for the How-to! Sub and a like from me!
Thanks for the support!
Yes.
Guy looks like a Stephen Colbert who spent more time in the sun.
Funny, my thoughts exactly. Maybe a sibling.
Love your videos... however; dull grey = cold solder joint. Cold solder joint = high resistivity, wasted solder, and susceptibility to fatigue failures. In your application, maybe not a big deal, but the information provided is incorrect.
Edit: Additional: Nice lights for fresh water. Aluminum, especially raw, unanodized aluminum (yes, there is a tiny amount of Al2O3 on the raw aluminum due to O2 in air) is not a great choice of frame material for a salt water tank. Aluminum will corrode and drip back into the water, killing your corals, reef life, and eventually fish.
should have used multi-turn pots instead for much more fine control
Lots of nasty jump cuts -.- however the end justifies it or does it do you know how many minutes did it save
Could be a lot if you multiply it times 8000 viewers (minus watch time curve)
That huge heatsink, takes too much space and need open or ventilated space for proper operation, major back draw for high output LED's.
Tow other options are available. Add a fan to allow a much smaller heat sink or invest in a larger number of COB LEDs and run them at a reduced output while mounted on a flat, large area, aluminum plate. The savings on the heat sink will offset the cost of the LEDs and the profile will be even flatter.
You will have to open the windows too With 4kW lightbulbs except if you want the climate hot (and probably humid) ;-)
Can you please make grow lights to grow veggies
Take a look at our follow up video on this light.
Ok
Its http:RapidLED.com Their $5.00 LED comes in a wide variety of coloured light and they draw 3 amps. The question now is, how focused are these LED's ? Can you put them on the nosewheel for a landing light?, or, auxiliary lights for your car? What kind of protection do they need to the way you see LED lights on late model cars? Theses provide lots of good ideas for projects that will draw subscribers once you venture into the automotive and aviation worlds.
if your son is going with a natural planted tank he should look into full spectrum cob leds
Funny that you mention this. In several of our videos, we are in the large room above the lab and because of the volume of this space and the high ceilings, we have 5 HID, high bay lighting fixtures. For energy savings and instant start and restart, I was considering retrofitting these with an LED array similar to what I showed in this video. The spectral choices are numerous and I agree that a full spectrum with red and blue emphasis is beneficial for plants (fresh and marine) while a warmer 3,000k color makes room lighting more pleasant, for me anyway.
Then he showed me what are called, corn cob LED lamps with integrated drivers, mogul base and designed for just this retrofit. The color choices are more limited, the cost/lumen is higher, but it's so... easy.
Anyone doing a planted freshwater tank or a macroalgae refugium should absolutely be using full spectrum COBs but if you're building your own LED fixture I'd like to also strongly recommend using modules with as high a quality as you can afford. It's the one part nobody should skimp on for a DIY fixture. Stick with LEDs made by a reputable LED company - Philips, Cree, Nichia, Osram, etc … there are plenty to choose from.
The reason I mention this is that as this technology has advanced a lot of companies have started producing low cost "grow spectrum" or "High PAR" (PAR = Photosynthetically Active Radiation, basically the wavelength range from just above UV, ~400nm, up to around 700nm) modules.
These cheap modules, among other oddities, often lack green (~555nm) in their overall spectrum - presumably they reduce costs by reducing the number of different phosphor coatings (??). If you're growing marijuana, or some non-flowering vegetable, or starting next year's mini Christmas tree for your apartment "from scratch" this might not be an issue; but a lot of plants exhibit growth rate and morphology (growth direction & overall shape) differences when they don't get green light - even though most of it is, obviously, reflected.
A lot of cheaper "full spectrum" modules also produce almost nothing in the near-UV or far-red, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on what you're growing, and how you're growing it. For coral reef aquariums, this is like the missing green for green plants - some species of photosynthetic corals and corallimorphs will behave and grow differently in the absence light wavelengths below 425nm or so.
If you've had success with another type of lighting technology in the past, you can likely look up a spectrum chart for whatever brand bulbs you were using. The big LED companies all provide full spectroscopic charts for their COBs, allowing you to match as closely as possible. If you can't find a close enough match (unlikely these days), you can fill in the spectral gaps on a DIY fixture without too much fuss using smaller narrow spectrum COBs; but I doubt anyone has had to do that for typical aquarium spectrums for at least a few years now - the LED industry advances at an absolutely insane rate.
The US EnergyStar guidelines for LEDs are a decent way to quickly rule out LEDs that you probably don't want to bother with for a DIY fixture. If a module isn't EnergyStar compliant, don't force your photosynthetic organisms to rely on it.
"Something I'm going to do in real time". Activate TH-cam 2x playback speed
💕🙏
LEDs are coming along, but still don't beat HPS. Your 100w COB is rated at 9000-11000 lumens, but a 600w HPS will do 72000 - 95000 lumens and if you do the math the HPS wins... even the less efficient 400w HPS will do 50000 lumens.
I'm not sure how that comparison works. It is true that as the wattage of metal halide bulbs increases, the luminous efficiency increases as well. HPS lamps, based primarily on sodium metal, are more efficient than mixed metal halide bulbs that contain a blend of several metals. This mixture produces a whiter, more balanced illumination with a higher CRI and is much more commonly used for aquariums because it more closely matches sunlight while a HPS lamp looks like a street light. Nevertheless, The COB I demonstrate has a luminous efficiency of 150 lumens/watt at 100 watts input and a CRI of 80 while a HPS lamp has a CRI of 25.
i am 56 year old and want you to be my Dad, LOL!
Great content as usual but tell your son to calm down with the camera movements. He's not directing his first documentary.
sunglasses for the fish
"Be careful of the wire. It doesn't require much heating.".... uses torch
14:57 screw it _up,_ you mean?!