DIY LED upgrade in an old PFO MH/VHO fixture led driver suggestions.

[oreo54]

So I was hoping for something a bit simpler so I would only need two drivers mainly cause thats all the room I have in the converter box and I have another one on order. I did already have a bunch of 10W 6.5K COBs but I was thinking of maybe getting some 10W 10-15K COBs to mix up with them so like 16 total of those maybe 8 6.5K and 8 10-15K. I assume that isn't going to work very well. I was also assuming I would have the acnitic blue ones I have already on or at least partially as well.

Oh that was the easy way..
I wasn't implying not to have the royal blues off except as accent coloration (popping that florescence).
Just with them off, at times or time period, you get a "natural" reef with descent power, like really natural. Not every-ones favorite.



Well the drivers are capable of 155w each.

But here is a thought.. If you drop the mA a bit you should be able to squeeze 15 blue cobs on one driver but hard to tell how fast the V(f) drops. Anyways just can't exceed driver wattage.
Ma decrease decreases V(f).
Rule of thumb is not to exceed 90% utilization. Which is 155.4 Watts in what ever combination you choose of V(f) and mA up to the driver limits of course. 1.050mA, 150V, 155.4W (-10%=139.86 IF you so choose(recommended to me by much smarter people than myself))

Advantage goes to having real numbers though.

So say 14 so you have room for 2 more.
Your choice would be either reg blue or more royals. Reg blue will spread out the blue spectrum ( wee bit) and looks to be not "windex" the tone . Matter of fact doesn't do much but it still is an important wavelength.
Mix them into the center bar.
93 watts total, 131V approx sooo if the heat sink can take it..you can tweak up to 1000 mA's. Check voltage so as to see it doesn't bottom out..
139.86 watts max actually Sorry playing a bit fast and loose with the numbers here
Not sure why windex got a bad name but I'm sure it is partially due to poor white LED coupled with them.
Anyways all that work on a channel that is already built..

Anyways best bet is to then just run a large string of 3W star leds.
Catch here is not all can take the same current well.
Violets/UV in particular.
Soo 139.86 watts/ average 3.4V V(f) = 41 diodes in any shade you like. +/-
Buy choosing quality diodes after you build it you should be able to tweak the mA up.
don't get too good of diodes though if you mix colors. Some CREES can take like 1.5A easily but most of the rest may have issues.


I do not recommend any high k white leds for anything really. Mostly a look thing though.
Go more RGB =White or warm white for your "white".
See Lasse for a "primer" on RGB arrays

Part of building it yourself is to avoid manuf. short cuts and/or OP's idea of "right".
If I spend any more time on this I'd need to know what you think is right. Colorwise.
These are not "that different"

 

[oreo54]

Lost my edit window..
"My" led is arguably better.. A wider blue band.
Radium 20000K
It will look different. MH's are more of a RGB "white' than leds.
Assuming the calculations are right.
Ask any spectrum guru..
Well ignoring outliers of UV/IR which is fixable at added cost/complexity.

 

[geekengineer]

Well I appreciate the help you apparently know your spectrum's and are much more familiar with this than I am. lol I had a couple of I ideas I want to run by you, but I need some time to put some pictures of them together. One though (which I don't know if it would buy anything) is to put a relay on one of the drivers so you could power one or the other string of LEDs for example. So one string for day and one for night. The other was would it help any if I bought more BLUE 10W COBs and make my actinic bars I just built half and half 6 R-Blue and 6 Blue?

I wasn't sure if I followed your second suggestion 15 COB of what size and wattage? Were they all blue? What about 6K white light?

I guess I could use different connectors and put the drivers in a different box. It was just nice to be able to reuse the one I already had. The other thing does it have to be a ton of small ones? I guess the other part of it was its a lot easier to do like what I did using low wattage COBs. I just imaging wiring up 60 1W LEDs not being a lot of fun. lol Could I use 10W COBs for example instead or maybe 3W if its not too crazy? I guess I am looking for reasonable good enough it doesn't have to be perfect per say.

 

[oreo54]

Well I appreciate the help you apparently know your spectrum's and are much more familiar with this than I am. lol I had a couple of I ideas I want to run by you, but I need some time to put some pictures of them together. One though (which I don't know if it would buy anything) is to put a relay on one of the drivers so you could power one or the other string of LEDs for example. So one string for day and one for night. The other was would it help any if I bought more BLUE 10W COBs and make my actinic bars I just built half and half 6 R-Blue and 6 Blue?

I wasn't sure if I followed your second suggestion 15 COB of what size and wattage? Were they all blue? What about 6K white light?

I guess I could use different connectors and put the drivers in a different box. It was just nice to be able to reuse the one I already had. The other thing does it have to be a ton of small ones? I guess the other part of it was its a lot easier to do like what I did using low wattage COBs. I just imaging wiring up 60 1W LEDs not being a lot of fun. lol Could I use 10W COBs for example instead or maybe 3W if its not too crazy? I guess I am looking for reasonable good enough it doesn't have to be perfect per say.

Wiring large arrays can be done faily easily. Years ago I designed this for someone. Assembly didn't take that long.
200gal tank.
Because of the size of the string it's the if you screw up troubleshooting part that gets difficult as some have found out.
The ww/cw bars on the outside were also separately wired making it even more complicated.
Longest string was only 15 diodes though
You already did 12 just do that 4 more times.. I know isn't as easy as it sounds.

After a few years he tore it down, raised the lights (had tons of fw par) and had only replaced the fan on the power supply. No lenses but reflectors. Hard to find nowadays at a decent price.

4 drivers just for the 2 outside bars (Meanwell LDD-h's) but those had a voltage limit below 60V and a realistic limit of 48(-3 for "overhead", its in the nature of the driver ic) 45v due to availability and cost of any larger voltage switching power supplies. Anyways 56v was max on the driver itself. 56V decent power supplies get expensive in higher aperages.

INPUT VOLTAGE: 9 ~ 56VDC

As to the relay, well all I can say is Meanwell never recommended "hot swapping" Led strings with their (maybe certain) ac/dc drivers which is what you would effectively be doing.

My understanding is the driver goes full dc limit with no load. Hooking the load to an "on" driver put the full voltage potential into the strings. Like putting 155 volts across a 90V string. There is a lag as to the driver getting the regulation under control.
At least as I remember it. There may be other reasons that Meanwell didn't recommend it.
Early reefers at Reefcentral popped a string or 2 doing just that.. hot wiring.

The 15 was referring to add extra cobs to your original 12 cob string. You have extra power on your first driver.
So 6:2:6. The next string is just woven in-between the 2 odd cobs that are err..out of place.

Instead of rebuilding to fit the extra cobs just wire them into the middle array.

Oh it wouldn't be 60 1W cobs. You missed my point. That was just for the calculations.
My assumption was to use 3W leds run around 2 watts soooo 60 is 30. You would solder 30 (-ish).
30 x 3.4 102 volts..136W
Voltage is the same between 1w and 3w leds in general (same "brand") you can just pull more current through them.

Unfortunately I do not know what would happen if you misx etremely mismatched voltage like 30v cobs strung with 3.4 volt small emitters.
Believe it is frowned upon, which is too bad. A normal mixed string may have violets and reds in them. Difference in voltage is like 4 and 2V

 

[geekengineer]

I wasn't sure if this was what you were getting at in your second option you mentioned? I'm not sure if you meant all white for 14 of them and then 2 that were blue or royal blue?

This is what I thought about maybe not sure if that is what you meant is more blue/royal blue too.

 

[geekengineer]

Ok I still have to digest what you said here. I just wanted to say I did mean if I had a relay I would have my controller turn it off the power first in between switching the relay. That may be too much of a pain tho anyhow.

 

[geekengineer]

I don't know would it be too much to ask if you could whip up a drawing of what you are thinking I think that would help me understand.

 

[oreo54]

I wasn't sure if this was what you were getting at in your second option you mentioned? I'm not sure if you meant all white for 14 of them and then 2 that were blue or royal blue?

This is what I thought about maybe not sure if that is what you meant is more blue/royal blue too.

I was trying to have you avoid redoing any current work. String on driver 2 undefind. As is with all white you have a very white tank compared to standard.
Opps cut the RB color out of the key but should give you an idea.
Everythings wires so easy to cross over.

 

[oreo54]

 

[oreo54]

Channel 2 with just white and reg blue is a nice real 30000k -ish color.
but that is using proxy diodes.

 

[geekengineer]

OK I was about to ask if you wanted them all royal blue. lol OK that makes a lot more sense now. Would you rather second driver string be all 3W modules? so like a mix of white and blue of them? Then I assume I would probably have to use 10W ones for those extra two in the center.

 

[oreo54]

OK I was about to ask if you wanted them all royal blue. lol OK that makes a lot more sense now. Would you rather second driver string be all 3W modules? so like a mix of white and blue of them? Then I assume I would probably have to use 10W ones for those extra two in the center.

Yes 10w. I believe you have some at least saw some 10w chips in the background.
Honestly it can be reg blue as long as specs are close to your 10w chips.

Running 3w would only be an advantage if you wanted to mix in things like cyan or amber or deep red.
If you want just blue/white the high cri whites will help keep it from being a "blah"-ish fest like some blue/white arrays.
Last statement probably won't be soo popular but it is the reason some lights substitute ww for cw's.
There is a scientific reason cool white leds are not very colorful and actually dulls colors.

There are "colored" led 10w cobs

10W High Power LED Chip 9-12V Cool Warm White Yellow RGB Red Green Blue | eBay

Luminous Flux: 90-120LM/W. Low Heating Generation To Reduce Electricity Consumption. Saving Money on Electricity fee. Model Type: High Power Integrated Chip. color-rendering index: 60-85. Color Temperature: Warm White: 3000-3500K.

www.ebay.com

to be honest I've only used the Deep red in fw arrays. Blending gets harder than 3w emitters. blue/white arrays disco isn't as err noticeable and a bit natural.

OK update using the high cri and attempting to balance the outputs
Used 9 1w x 5 for the regular blue in ch2
9 high cri bridgelux cobs

Adding ch 1 just keeps driving the overall color deeper into rb blue territory.
Now your decision (and what I tell everyone) what "color do you prefer most of the time.
Once that is established one can tweak the spectrum.
Unfortunately that sometimes increases the channel count because you are limited.
Like Kessils.. either whiteblue or more blue.
The difference here is you have MUCH better whites..

 

[geekengineer]

OK So you think it would be reasonable to do it all with 10W so I could use my 6500K ones I have already which would be nice? I might have to get a few more blues ones. So when you are talking about the bridgelux or "high cri" (whatever that is?) are you just using those as a reference to simulate the 10W COBs? Maybe that was probably part of what was confusing me in part.

I cleaned my drawing up for my reference and to make sure we are in sync. I am assuming all 10W at this point unless you suggest otherwise. I would guess I would like a color of white/blue over just deep blue. I was thinking if its possible for day mode to run the Royals dimmed some if that helps take out some of the purple hues.

 

[geekengineer]

Anyways. I hope I am not keeping you up to late. lol

 

[oreo54]

OK So you think it would be reasonable to do it all with 10W so I could use my 6500K ones I have already which would be nice? I might have to get a few more blues ones. So when you are talking about the bridgelux or "high cri" (whatever that is?) are you just using those as a reference to simulate the 10W COBs? Maybe that was probably part of what was confusing me in part.

I cleaned my drawing up for my reference and to make sure we are in sync. I am assuming all 10W at this point unless you suggest otherwise. I would guess I would like a color of white/blue over just deep blue. I was thinking if its possible for day mode to run the Royals dimmed some if that helps take out some of the purple hues.

No the bridgelux cobs are crucial. No offense but the chance that your whites are err "worthy" is slim.
You really have to see the difference between high and low cri to appreciate that statement.
Alternates but gets a bit dicey on blending, well with the amber added. Cyan/blue/white isn't as shocking.

There are reasons to add each but some are wants more than needs.
I didn't mock up the non-amber one. Just take the amber out and put in white.

Remember this is with ch 1 off...and dotted green line is real ocean 5M

Actually we are expecting second day of storms. I got one large branch down in my yard and one I won't be able to clean up myself. Sort of has a widowmaker hanging there (see logging jargon).
Our dog freaks so not expecting a lot of sleep again.

 

[oreo54]

If you want 100% output AND want a "radium" look (well close-ish) Running ch 2 with 10 Bridgelux whites and 4 reg blue with your 14 royal is all you need.
BUT due to the high CRI of the whites the overall tone may be more "violet" than deep blue.
To fix that take out 4 whites add 4 reg blue.
Probably went here already..
Problem with infinite spectrums.



WOW what a waste.. I forgot about the voltage mis-match between the Bridgelux and the other cobs. No wonder it was confusing..


Lets see IF I can fix this somehow..
Hmm might need to shorten the ch2 a bit but these are 14-ish volt cobs .

YUJILEDS® CRI 95+ 9W COB LED 6500K - 135L - 10pcs

YUJILEDS® 135L series high CRI COB provides high CRI, high luminous flux in a compact 13.5 mm square footprint solution. Providing 95 CRI (minimum) up to 97, this mid-power LED can be used in a variety of applications demanding high color quality and light output.

store.yujiintl.com

I have mixed feeling about if I can run 36v and 9v cobs in series. Still channel 2 string need rework.
Storms are here...

 

[geekengineer]

Storms like real storms lol? Sorry I got hung up with my wife for a bit I am worried about her. Need to get her checked out for something I was overlooking.

So is this YUJILEDS what we would use in place of 10W COBs?

 

[geekengineer]

whoops I missed your previous message with the picture. I don't know if that makes me more confused tho. lol

I am most offended of what you think of my china 6500Ks. HAHA just kidding.

 

[geekengineer]

Oh and stay safe is it one of the hurricanes?

 

[oreo54]

Storms like real storms lol? Sorry I got hung up with my wife for a bit I am worried about her. Need to get her checked out for something I was overlooking.

So is this YUJILEDS what we would use in place of 10W COBs?

Well what we would use in place of the bridgelux.. V(f) is 14v closer match to the "normal" 10W
Problem is they are 10x the cost of cheap whites and nowhere near the output of the Bridgelux though those were also like $12 each but a better value.

Oh and stay safe is it one of the hurricanes?

No just bad thunderstorms. Shouldn't complain it is just annoying but with all the trees we usually lose power.
I keep thinking why, since they are replacing all our streets, sewer, water mains they don't put the power lines under ground at the same time. Dangly wires and big old trees don't get along.
Best wishes to your wife btw.

Anyways remember your chips had a V(f) of 9.4.The Yujis are 14-15V. The bridgelux were like 33V or so.
Your voltage pool on the driver is 150V.
9 Bridgelux are 297 Volts or so.

1) So the option is to see if running 9v cobs and 33v cobs in the same series string is doable.
So using 3 is 99V leaving 51v for other colors, about 5 cobs worth.
All blue or 3 blue, 2 cyan



2) Or using the expensive Yujis at say 15v, should use about 12 to match the Bridgelux lumen output.
Unfortunately that's not going to work
If necessary the other whites can be used.
If you want different than all white on this variation you can only use about 6
6 x 15V = 90 @ 6000 lumens 11w per cob approx.
Leaves 60 Volts. Room for 6 more cobs. 4 reg blue 2 cyan
Total string wattage is 66 + (6 x .744) 42W = 108W
Lists 900mA as max current you can use.
You should probably tweak the driver to about 800mA
This channel specs to a nice ocean blue (windex, )

ADDING IN CH1:
CH 1 is still all rb.. 14 total cobs now.
That and ch 2 would be a pretty standard design for todays thinking
Though they throw in the green and red that everyone practically turn off.
I ignored violet/UV and will till I get assurance the diodes actually last as long as the others can last.
also seems more of a want than need (till proven otherwise). It does have function though just is it "critical"?

Running both channels at 100% its pretty blue w/ some good color.

AFAICT the one difference between the led array and the mh/vho array is that the vho were weaker than your MH.
In your case 1/2 the wattage and lower efficiency I believe.

This is just the opposite or at least the 2 are equal in output. VHO did have a lower peak @ 420nm so a bit more "violet".


What that means visually is the new one will be a lot bluer.. I think.
Estimates can only go so far.

I checked the few high CRI cobs out there. All had around the same voltage as the Bridgelux.
I believe the "fresh fish" COB by Luxeon had a small version but it is long gone.

Storm update.. Big cell heading for us actually split into 2 and we "shot the gap". Miraculous.
Oddly wasn't the first time this year that it happened this way.

I need to verify the cob thing voltage wise.






.