My First Moonlight Attempt!

[smcnally]

Not bad for my first try. I made two of these. They each have 10 LED's and the brightness is dimmable. I mouted one on each side of the tank and actually found they cover the whole tank evenly when pointed up at my MH reflectors. I'll see if I can get some pics tonight of the tank with them on.

 

[littlep93056]

how did you make them dimmable.

 

[smcnally]

There's different ways you can do it. You can use a potentiometer (sp?) and vary the resistance with a knob on the positive side of the lead. Or what I'm doing is making 4 settings (by using different resistances, and then using relays to select which resistor it feeds through. So in other words, I would have the the nagative as a common ground on my relay board, and depending on which relay I select with my controller, it will give me a different brightness level.

 

[smcnally]

Here's a full shot. It looks a lot brighter than it is but I couldn't get it to show without upping the exposure time bigtime. At least this lets you see how even the light is. I love the way it looks. I can't believe how much some of the corals fluoresce under it. Now I need a pair of those yellow goggles!

 

[nunofs]

Looking good!

There's different ways you can do it.

Another way of doing it is to get a variable-output power adapter/transformer, say from 3 to 12V, and then just select the desired voltage. That's what I have for my DIY moonlights.

Nuno

 

[smcnally]

Looking good!
Nuno

Thanks. I think I'm going to shorten them to 4-6 LEDs per light. It isn't too bright with 10, but I noticed I can have it at the level I want with 1/2 the LEDs.