Announcement: Revised LED Boards and Drivers

Anyone who follows Turbo's Aquatics on Facebook might have already seen this...

Update! I just got word that my new Metal-Core PCBs (LED boards and custom driver boards) should be done next week, then they're off to Steve's LEDs for component mounting. I've been out of these for over a month now and the waiting list is piling up, but the wait will soon be over...at least for those at the top of the list! The new LED board uses Hyper-Violets instead of Royal Blues, and no more pin-jumpers, this board can run run several different ways:

1) You can use a stock dimmable or non-dimmable driver (like a Meanwell LPC or ELN, etc)

2) You can use my new custom 3-channel driver developed in conjunction with Steve's LEDs, either stand-alone, or in conjunction with a controller with PWM ouput (like the Typhoon, which I will be carrying)

The driver board is another big jump for the world of Algae Scrubbers. I put a lot of time and thought into designing this board so that it truly has the capability to maximize algae growth throughout all stages of growth. This is also one of the reasons why I haven't had any scrubbers available for a while...it took longer than expected to work out all the details, but that also means that this board is designed to be highly flexible.

The custom driver allow you to control 2 red channels and one violet channel on 2 LED boards. The driver has on-board SMD (surface mounted device) potentiometers, a port for an external potentiometer (dimming knob) and ports for PWM dimming input. Both the external dimmer and the controller are powered from the driver board, so you only need one power connection.

The way I designed the driver board, you can do things like this:

- set the SMD to be the "high" current limit, then the manual knob will dim through the range from zero to the SMD setting.

- set the SMD and forget it (essentially the same as using a stock dimmable driver)

- connect a Typhoon Controller (or another Arduino-based controller) and dim each channel separately on as many cycles as your driver can perform (hourly, daily, weekly, growth cycle, etc)

- use Steve's Aquarium Controller Interface harness board to connect to your Apex or another device that has a 0-10V dimming output

Having the ability to control the light cycle like this opens the door to many possibilities - most of them unexplored.

This is just the first major announcement of the year. I'm working on a few more improvements that might just propel Algae Scrubbers to a whole new level. My eye is on making Algae Scrubbers easy for everyone to install, use and maintain. I've received some great feedback from some loyal customers, and I am a digital pac-rat, so I won't forget any of you that made suggestions that I end up incorporating.

 

As an addendum to this, the new LED board was also designed to allow for anyone to test out various combinations of LED.

Each board has 6 Luxeon pads around the perimeter, just like the current board, except they are all in series (no jumpers between pairs).

The 2 center pads are on a separate channel/circuit trace, and are actually now dual-pads: each location can hold either a Luxeon, or a SemiLED (but not both). Each pair of pads is in parallel, but only one site would be populated (because SemiLEDs and Luxeons have different Vforward, so it would not work to populate both). The two pairs are in series with each other. So you could install one SemiLED + one Luxeon, or two Luxeons, or two SemiLEDs.

The board has terminals for wiring the channels up, you can wire as 2 channel or just use a wire jumper between two channels and run the entire board as one channel.

This now opens up the door for anyone who wishes to try out different color combinations. I had proposed doing an experiment to test various bandwidths a while back but never got around to it. Using the custom driver means you could have a reasonable level of control over the LEDs, at least, you can dim 6 together and the other 2 separately.

Custom populated boards will be made as needed and quoted on an individual basis. I have to run a certain quantity of boards at once to get good pricing, so it's not something that can happen fast (unless you want to pay the small-run price)

 

LED Board Version 2.0 has arrived!



Digital Triple-Driver boards too!



I will have the first test-batch in sometime next week!

 

Here are a few videos showing the new drivers and LED boards

Turbo's Aquatics First Look: LED Board V2.0 & Custom Driver


Turbo's Aquatics: Operating new LED boards in 50% and 100% modes

 

What new heat sinks

 

Yes, you have the Rev 1 with the vertical heat sinks, the MakersLED heat sinks came in on Rev 2 and are still used on Rev 3. I don't have a conversion kit for Rev 1 -> Rev 3 at this moment. I have to check if you can add the driver board to the Rev 1 heat sink...just haven't had time to measure that up, will take a look tonight

 

A Rev 2 or Rev 3?

 

It's just the retail price for Makers which was ~$50/ft but that has dropped a bit recently. Then subtract off the cooling fans. But that heat sink made for a Rev2/3 L2 is a different size and doesn't fit the hole exactly. Or are you wanting it for another purpose?

 

Just making sure I was clear there, the Rev 2 / Rev 3 heat sink is not directly compatible with the Rev 1, the opening on the side is a different size. I was asking if you were wanting a price on just the MakersLED heat sink without anything attached to it.

The new LED boards are all that I carry now, the old LED board is out of production. The driver board is optional, you can still run the new LED boards using a Meanwell or for that matter your own driver, any driver that put out 700mA and can supply enough wattage for the entire array.