that looks pretty bright, considering the depth of a 55g. how much did you end up paying for the four modules, if you don't mind my asking?

 

No idea which ones he has but 10w chinese modules are like $6 shipped from dealextreme.. Of course, XML's are $6.80 each from ledgroupbuy, and put out at least as much light, although drivers are hard to find.

I'm curious about 2 things, are those 6500k? And, are these the square emitters, or the round ones? It looks like if you ever need more light, all you'll have to do is put reflectors on.

 

which ones did u get?

the circle or the square?

i have made this bold statement many times on this forum..

when it comes to LED's i dont think anything beats the chinese 10W in our DIY's

Ive been getting excellent growths off them.

 

they are square, 10,000K

were around 7.99 shipped each, and each one has a driver that was around $5 each

 

Can you post a link to the ones you bought?

 

Yes, links or PN's please. So no optics, you just let the LEDs shine?

 

LEDS

DRIVERS

Never seen optics for 10W LEDS, this site wont let me post ebay links

 

you can post the auction id though. so you used a driver per led? can we see the wiring?

 

I actually have the 65ook round ones from deal extreme. They work pretty good and have some nice growth under them. I will be adding a third one over my 29g tank, even though I do pretty well with just 2, I think it could use more light.

This is the one- http://www.dealextreme.com/p/10w-led-emitter-11v-12v-500-lumens-white-6500k-5876

Along with a 4"x4" extruded aluminum heatsink from - http://www.heatsinkusa.com/

Although, you could get one from deal extreme, I have only seen round ones. I like the squareness of the extruded ones due to ease in mounting them.

 

Yes, one driver per LED. Kind of a pain in the ass and a lot of wiring but I wired it all into one heavy gauge power cord.

 

lolz...

ummm just to let u guys know those drivers handle 1 LED.

If you guys are going to do a chain of 2 or more, you can get a more reliable meanwell, and set the driving current to 900mA.

I have 4 tied to a ELN-60-48P, the next thing i want to do is tie that on a dusk / dawn controller next.

Second thing i should note.. the circles have a smaller firing arc vs the squares... the lights intensity from the circle is a bit more focused because of the smaller arc.

Other then that, they are all great LED's.... as i said ive been playing with them for a while, and they are far better then any cree's ive played with with the exception of the XP-L @ 3Amps.

 

Did you really just say they're better than Cree? I would like to inform you that the Cree LED's are also only 3W LED's compared to the 10W. Also, they are XM-L not XP-L.

Other than that, this looks promising as long as they hold up...

 

Did you really just say they're better than Cree? I would like to inform you that the Cree LED's are also only 3W LED's compared to the 10W. Also, they are XM-L not XP-L.

Other than that, this looks promising as long as they hold up...

He's talking about over driving the XM-L's and you're correct XP-L is a typo. I don't think its that hard of one to make, Crees went XP-G, XM-L.

 

The X-LM is rated for 3A, it is a 10W LED. (The XP-G is 3W though, if I remeber right.)
Overdriving XM-Ls up to 4.5A has apparently been tried, but proved pointless. Although it didn't destroy the unit, which gives a good indication as to the build quality and potential longevity.

Personally I underdrive mine at 2.1A on a passive (at the moment, I'll get around to sealing the water leaks one day, I promise!) heatsink.

I would be surprised if the chinese 10W LED's put out anywhere near the same PAR, the efficiency of those larger die units is not as good as the top of the line CREEs, and more surprised if the CRI (colour rendition index) was even in the same league.

I'm happy to read evidence to the contrary as it will make the rest of the conversion of my tank that much cheaper.

 

How many of these LED's do you think you need over a standard 55g tank to acheive high light/PAR? These might look good with a couple low watt 10000k mixed in.

 

I guess the answer would be four.

 

cree makes 1, 3, 5, 10, 20 and 25w emitters. XML are 10w.

 

You can talk about this crap all you want. I'm not worried about PAR numbers. My Cuba likes the new LEDS and results are all I'm worried about.

 

My Cuba likes the new LEDS and results are all I'm worried about.

+1 yup my cuba loves the 10W's too.

so you can talk all the crap about them you guys want... but i still stand behind my statement.
These 10W's i like them much better then the 3W non XM-L Cree's.
And lets not get started on the bridgelux wannabe's.... there great... but... there not 10W.

But when u see growth like this, your sold...

My moss loves it, and so does a anubis that thinks its a sword plant in growth speed:

This is where it started:

 

Good to hear positive comments on these... I was worried. I just bought two warm white and two cool white 10W LEDs (square) and another five 3W red LEDs on eBay. I am probably going to underdrive them... so running the 10W at maybe 5-7W and the 3W at about 2W.

I got my first one in today (I like to order them from different sellers - although some of them look like the same guy with different seller names). Waiting on the rest...

 

I'm really thinking about trying one of these out for my 11.4 gallon. Do you guys think one of these a foot or so over the water would do well? Its 11.8x18.9x11.8".

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk

 

they have a wide arc.. i believe its somewhere between 160 degree's on the square, and 140 degree's on the circle.

on a 11.4 i dont recommend u using anymore then 2.... 3 and ur asking for it with algae no matter how much co2 you inject.

 

Well I was considering just using a single light if that would cover the spread of my tank.

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk

 

I have, sitting here in my lap, a box with 4 18w Citizen 5000k 85CRI emitters in it.. I'll have a chance to test one later (although not over a tank, as I'm in north dakota right now). They cost me $9.53 each from a USA based vendor, so the price is quite reasonable. The emitters themselves are superb quality. They're rated for 1380 lumens at 18w, but can be driven as high as 29w (no lumen data provided for that, probably like 2000?).

Biggest problem with them is the driving voltage of 38.2v, but that is no problem for an ELN60-48.

 

I'm kind of surprised no one has tested these out yet. I would do it if I had the equipment.

hehe, I guess most people that have the equipment to test these out might also be the same people who are willing to spend the money on brand name LEDs

I'm not really into planted aquariums, but the reason I looked into LEDs was so I could build an algae turf scrubber and/or have supplemental lighting (I have a t5 on a 20G that's having a hard time even growing moss so I was hoping modifying it to use two of these) for my shrimp tank.

 

I'm glad I ran across this post. I have been looking at a 50 Watt LED for my 29 gallon tank and after seeing this I think that might be a bit extreme for that size of tank. The worst part is that two 10 Watts are almost as expensive as the single 50 Watt.

 

If you restrict your eBay search, you can find 10W LEDs for less than $5. I bought four of them for $20 (shipped).

Also, I was looking through some specs, and I think it might make more sense (for me at least) to get the BridgeLux. The test power on some of them are at 7W (which is where I want to run them) and the cost per LED is the same EXCEPT the spec/datasheet is available and you can drive some of them with currents to bring them reliably to a higher current.

Oh, and instead of buying from China and waiting 3-4 weeks, you can get them from an online electronics store within a week.

 

You would think some one would be importing the 10 Watts and selling/shipping them from in the USA. I have not heard much about the bridgelux's got any seller links here in the USA?

 

On eBay, there is one guy selling them for about $10.

You can get the Bridgelux at Digikey.com

if its a constant current driver, you wire them up in a series.

if its a constant voltage driver, you wire them up in paralell.

Just remember though, even with LEDs from the same manufacturer with the same exact specs aren't PEFERCTLY matched. If it's a constant voltage driver and you wire in parallel, each branch can still have different currents. So there's a chance that if you're running 2A through the entire setup and you need 1A to each branch, that it's possible that 1A++ can go through one branch and the rest goes to the other. So one might be slightly overdriven and one slightly underdriven. This probably won't be an issue, but with operational stresses and temperature changes, it could effect it.

Running a series resistor PER branch helps.

The plus side to running them in parallel though is that if one branch breaks, it doesn't kill your entire light.

I'm currently going to run two 10W LEDs in series for my 10G setup, but when I build my 75G setup, I am going to run my white and reds off two different drivers. Each set will use constant current mirrors (basically, it maintains the same current in each LED given a reference - so I can set it for 500 mA and they'll ALL have 500 mA going through them).

 

For someone who is new at this, mind if I ask some stupid questions?

Is this what one would need to buy to get this working:
- LED
- Driver
- Heat sync (required?)

Then you just solder the LED to the driver wires, and run the AC into your nearest wall receptacle? Anything else required?

If doing multiple LED's, instead of running 1 x 10W driver per LED, could you just wire them in series (or parallel) and run them back to a single larger driver. So, say 2 10w LED's to 1 20W driver?

 

depends on the driver...

if its a constant current driver, you wire them up in a series.
if its a constant voltage driver, you wire them up in paralell.

Constant current will tend to have a variable voltage which changes on fly but holds current constant.

Constant voltage psu's, the good regulated ones will hold voltage steady, but can change current on the fly... nature of led's

 

That is correct just pay attention to the driver.

In my case I want to run three 10 watt leds off a single driver. Each led is rated at 10-11v so three in series would be 30-33v. So I need a 30watt driver that outputs 30-33v.

Heatsinks of some sort are required. Keep in mind the cooler you keep them the longer they last.