Brian Ward

I went through the datasheet, but I wasn't sure if all those components were necessary. It looks like the Vin MUST be the same power supply as that driving the LEDs? I'm guessing that's what allows the chip to regulate the current? So I'll just need to add up the cost for each fixture to determine if I can set up each fixture to run independently. Is there any problem that you know of with running a 48V power supply into 4 or more of these CAT4101 circuits in order to cut down on the actual number of power supplies I need?

So I read this summary (but didn't go through all 100+ pages of the thread) and it didn't really help. I investigated the CAT4101 chip and using that at $3/ea seems like a no-brainer. So do you just connect the CAT4101 to a power source and the LED string? I see that you need to use a resistor to set the current output and then you can hook the PWM pin to a PWM output on the audrino. Mostly, I was looking for a diagram of fishman's 8-driver board. I'm sorta thinking I'd do a 6-driver board w/ an audrino nano (which has 6 PWM outputs) for each fixture. I can also provide a control line between fixtures to synchronize across them or allow them to function independently. Are there schematics posted somewhere?

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Thanks for being interested in donating to a school. I've PMd the other officers to let them know. We'll need some time to coordinate and determine if there is a school interested in taking the tank. Me or one of the other officers will PM you shortly to begin determining what you'd like to do and what your timeline is.

I have a 1/3hp chiller. Assuming that runs for 40 minutes out of every hour (probably close) for 8 hours a day, that's another 144kW-h/mo which is $21.41 per month in electricity. So that gets me to almost $50/mo off my bill. Since I vent the chiller into the house, I should also save a bit on my house air conditioning.

4 @ $20/ea, so $80

A question on energy savings. I just did a quick calculation and it looks like I'm going to go from 500W to 150W over my main tank and from 500W to 120W over my frag tank (based on 3W/LED and replacing 2 250W MH bulbs on each tank). My calculations show this being a 2.8kW-h per day and 3.04kW-h per day savings (based on running the fixtures for 8 hours/day). Which translates into a savings of about $26/mo or $312/yr on the electric bill. This translates into about 4 years to recover the investment (ignoring time value of money). How much additional savings are people seeing from reducing the amount the chiller runs and the amount of air conditioning needed in the house?

Looks more like a bristleworm to me but I'm no expert.

How big is your tank? You know they get to be fairly large (4" or so) and tend to kill each other off as they get bigger?

To my knowledge, scratches can't be buffed out of glass. That's the trade-off, glass is hard to scratch but can't get rid of them, acrylic is easy to scratch but you can buff them out.

Stay away from the clown gobies if you have SPS. They like to nest in the branches and stress them to no end.

Tomato clowns are by far the most aggressive of all the clown fish. All clowns will be protective of the anemone but tomatoes are definitely the worst. All damsels are different. I have a damsel that is a model citizen. However, most damsels are extremely aggressive and seem to have no fear. dcreefer had to tear apart his 300 to get a damsel out that was picking on fish much larger and faster. You have to get rid of the damsel or the damsel will kill the clown.

Don't forget that Avast makes the Porthole. I'm going with that instead of a lookdown box.

So do these microcontrollers come with simulation software, or are you dropping this setup in pspice to make sure everything works correctly? Or are you just going to breadboard it up and check it out?

Right. So it would basically go back to how many LEDs end up in the string and how much granularity do I want to control them all.

This is basically what I'm thinking. I was looking at this (4-conductor, so 1 plug for both strings) since it's fairly inexpensive: http://www.mcmaster.com/#multipole-connectors/=c4sggq - Weatherproof Low Voltage DC Pin-and-Socket Connectors I can use that to daisy-chain 2 fixtures (maybe) so I just supply power to one end of the fixtures.

But if I design in a current-limiting pot as the ELNs do, then I'd just need to grab an extra couple of power supplies to be able to break up the sets. I think DIY is going to be the way to go, just need to figure out how to go about it. When I get some time, I'll dig into those threads linked above.

If I had an Apex I would go with that. Unfortunately, I don't. I have the Aquacontroller III. I'm not looking to invest another $300-ish in a new controller, so I think building my own controller will be the way to go. I'm thinking about the wiring... looking for connectors to build into the pendants to make things neater.

Dave, This is the feature set Chad is shooting for: 1) 11 PWM LED channels to simulate a Gaussian shaped brightness from a translating point in the fixture throughout the day - basically a fancy sunset, sunrise, and varied "sun position" -> readout of time and status on GLCD 2) Cloud simulation -> on/off control and readout of status on GLCD 3) 1 PWM channel for a lunar cycle -> on/off control and readout of status on GLCD 4) Adjustable color temperature -> control and readout of status on GLCD 5) Adjustable maximum brightness -> control and readout of status on GLCD 6) Manual control of the "sun position" -> control and readout of status on GLCD 7) DT temperature -> display on GLCD (mostly because it will be easy to do and visible)

Chad et al, So I'm planning to have 4 fixtures. Ideally all 4 would function independently of each other so, in the event that I had to sell them off, I could sell 4 separate items rather than something that is pieced together and needs a lot of work to get running in another environment. Alternatively, I'd like to set it up as 2 logical fixtures with 2 pendants in each one. Chad, what's your timeline for getting a microcontroller running? Ideally I'd like to have my LED fixtures installed in July but that may be aggressive. How would the microcontroller interoperate with my neptune controller? Are there any threads or articles on this?

That looks pretty decent. I'm looking at doing 2 fans on each of the lights. Sizes will be: 2 14"x14" 2 10"x14" So total of 8 fans.

These are the ones I've been using. They're decent. http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-120mm-Case-R4-C2R-20AC-GP/dp/B0026ZPFDE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1303994178&sr=8-2

That price is pretty high. I'm looking at $25 for the driver and $7/ea for 120mm fans. Also, I'll probably be able to use this one driver for all of the 120mm fans I have in the system, replacing the computer power supply and hopefully making things a bit neater. My primary concern with that supply is that it says it's for driving LEDs. I'm not clear if that means there is some circuitry that will make it unable to properly drive the fans.

Or actually just go with this which is already 12V: http://www.cdiweb.com/ProductDetail/ELN6012/318776/

I'm looking at using the meanwell drivers for the LEDs, so I'm looking at how to drive the fans for the heatsink. It looks like 1 extra meanwell driver can be used, you can dial the voltage down to 12V and wire all the fans in parallel. Is this accurate?