Finished my DIY LED Moonlights

[mentallylost]

I just completed constructing a DIY LED moonlight for my 125 gallon tank. I bought a ledwerx.com kit off of ebay a couple of months ago and finally got around to building it today. And I have gotta tell y'all that it is a lot easier than I thought. Total time was about an hour and a half, but that included building a box type fixture for the LED's and wires. I can hardly wait til tonite for it to be dark. I will pop back on line in a couple of hours to update everyone.

 

[Jchillin]

That is way cool! I've been thinking about adding "moonlights" to my tank for awhile, even going so far as browsing Radio Shack for the equipment.

Post pics and if no bother, describe your project.

 

[mentallylost]

I will post pics and a run down on the "how-to" tomorrow. I have gotta wait til it gets dark for the pics. Actually though, I still have to make one for my 80 gallon too. That'll probably end up being in a couple of weeks. I think that I will do a full run down on that one. With pics of the procedure, not just the after affect, and a list of materials.

 

[mentallylost]

They look incredible. I was a little concerned of them being too bright. This most certainly is not the case. I have some pictures now. I will edit and post tomorrow. I did move the light setup to the 80 gallon though. It fits better now.

 

[mentallylost]

ok, I got one.

 

[zacdl]

Nice!
Do you have a link to the place you bought it at on ebay?

 

[mentallylost]

Yup,

http://stores.ebay.com/LED-Werx_W0QQssPageNameZl2QQtZkm

I am using the 10 LED for my 80 gallon

I started by taking the LED's and soldered them to the resistors. The instructions said to make sure that the resistors were soldered to Negative side (short wire) of the LED. So I soldered them to the Negative side. This is actually the part that I had expected to be the hardest. It wasn't. I'll get to that part later.

The space in my canopy allotted for a 47 1/2" light strip. So that's how long I made it. I began the fixture by ripping a piece of wood down to 47 1/2" long x 1/2" tall x 1 1/4" wide. Next for the base, I layed out the locations of the holes to be drilled for the LED's to push through. I wanted the lights all equally spaced apart from eachother 4 1/2" apart. And they needed to straddle the center brace of my tank. To do this, I started at the center mark (23 3/4" from either end) measured 2 1/4" (half of 4 1/2) and marked the rest at 4 1/2" from there. Next I drilled 1/4" holes through the bored. 10 in all, for the LED's to sit in.

I next pushed the LED's into the holes and siliconed them in place. Make sure that the tip of the LED is pushed all of the way into the bored but so that the tip does not protrude through.

Once this is completed you have some more soldering to do. Solder all of the Positive leads together, and all of the Negative leads together. Use jumper wires to do this.

The kit came with a 4 volt power supply. But I needed to cut the end of the wire off and splice them to the LED's. Just make sure to keep Positive to Positive, and Negative to Negative. I soldered these together too.

I had to try them now. I pluged them in and they all lit up. It was still light out though, so I still had to wait a couple of hours to tell how well.

I finished the light fixture by ripping the top board also 47 1/2" x 1/2" x 1 1/4" and 2 side pieces 47 1/2" x 1/4" x 2". I staples all 4 pieces together, creating a box with the power cord hanging out. If I had thought about it, I would have screwed them together instead of staples. What if one goes out and needs to be replaced? Next time.

Oh yeah, and the hardest part was actually pushing all the wires into the box as I was stapling the top on. The brightness is perfect. I can see my fish at night without being so bright that my wife complains about seeing the reflection of the tank on the TV.