DIY Homemade LED dimmable light bar

EDIT: This thread was recently changed a lot. Please mail me if you find any typos, questions or other issues. Thanks!


So a lot of members wanted to know how I did this. This will be a guide on how to make a homemade LED light bar for any sized tank.

The advantage of this LED light bar is the cost and there is no limit to how bright it can be. The more LED strips you add the brighter it will be. It will cost about 30 dollars for a 5-80 gallon tank and just a tiny bit more for more LED strips for bigger tanks.

But understand there are many preferences in choice to LED KV color, dimmer type and timer type. Be aware some plants need more advanced multispectral light, as to make 'white light' Light bulbs/LED's must that put out different wavelengths (spectrums) of light to make up that off white color. That off white color is known as KV rating. In light bulbs they use gases and filament to make up the white color. Different gases and filament = different KV. As each gas makes a color. But those bulbs can have more then 10 gases to make this light. For LEDS its way harder to make white light since it uses distance of the nano layers of the semI conductors and materials to make up each color to make up the white, so its more limited to 3-5 wavelengths. Better LED's put out more wavelengths to make up the KV white light.

Essentially the more color wavelengths making up the white light the healthier is it for plants and minds of most animals.
It has been known that some simple LED lighting systems can lead to depression/headaches in humans over long times.

The home made LED lighting I have made is made up of like 7 parts,
Here is a list of parts to make up the system and you can use different types shown.
Most of these products can be bought on Ebay or Amazon.
Please note it takes a basic understanding in soldering and electronics to make one of these. The guide can still walk you through everything if you don't know anything about electronics or soldering. I am not liable to anything you build yourself, I also recommend contacting me to look over your build before powering it up.

These are things you'll need.

-Electric outlet timer, Note Some run off the 60hertz and some 50herts (electrical alternating current waves per second) to make up the time and when the power goes out it stops, great to let you know if the power went out and will tell you how long. They make digital ones with battery backup. Make sure you get the 120v or 240v with the right outlet plug for wherever you live.
This is a 60hertz 120v mechanical based model.
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-12 volt 300mah-2amp DC power supply (those brick things you plug into the wall that have cords on them like a laptop
chargers) Note too little mah may choke the power to the LED's and overheat the power supply.
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Smaller one with less Mah for shorter LED strips.
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-12 volt DC Dimmer, It changes DC voltage from 12 volts down to zero to control light. They make Box dimmers, inline dial dimmers, and wireless control dimmers. Note the wireless dimmers may reset to be off or 100% on after power out, and the outlet timer may also mess it up. They may make 12v powersupply/timers/dimmers all in one units somewhere out there for house lighting... But here's what I know. Note inline dial dimmers and remote dimmers are not shown below, just a bulky box dimmer for 8 amps that I used (way more then you need)
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- 12 volt LED strip of the KV rating of your choice. Note SOME are water proof (not shown) but tend to have issues when soldering wires onto, or using connectors. Note some have more LED's per inch. But cost more. Also note the lines on them to cut them to length
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This one has more LED's per inch.
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I don't recommend using any connectors for any of these LED strips as they tend to be very bulky and don't connect very well and can end up in a dI'm or blinking strip half the time... But if you must use them you'll have to find the right one to connect to the wire plug to the first strip shown below. As there are many adaptors.
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Here is a strip connector, again I recommend direct soldering of the wires to the strips as you'll see below in the guide.


You will also need - If you use connectors, you won't need any of these. You will also skip steps 1-4.
- wire strippers
- lighter
- scissors
- 20-22 guage wire (or 18 for longer setups)
- soldering gun and solder
- Heat shrink for wires
- Optional: Big clear heat shrink and silicon tube

Need help with soldering?

Steps to build

-Step one, Skip this step if you used connectors: Cut all the plugs off and expose the wires and prep them with the wire stripper for soldering. Note some wires might have two stuck together side by side, pull them apart about an inch. Also cut the LED strips to lenth that you want, they have line marks on them to show you where to cut with scissors.

-Step two: Take the power supply wires and slide a one inch piece of heat shrink down each wire. After checking the polarity of the power supply wires with a volt meter or a test LED strip, Solder those wires to the INPUT wires of the dimmer wires of the same polarity. Then slide the heat shrink over the soldered joints after it cools down and shrink the heat shrink with a lighter.

-Step three: Solder and heat shrink a long wire in the way you learned from step 2 to the output end of the dimmer to reach where you want it to reach to the light bar on your tank.

-Step four: Note this is a long step... You can do step 5 and stick the strips on if you know what your doing to make it easier to solder the wires, but you will still need some info from this step. If you need more then one row of LED's Parallel is easier long term on the microchips on the LED strips, but series is more compact typically. If you have a strip longer then 15 feet total from series layout, you'll want to wire some in parallel to prevent stress on the first few feet of the strip since its also powering the rest of the strips. (3 five foot sections wired in series is 15 feet, while 3 five foot sections in parallel allows the load to be more evenly distributed) Here is a diagram showing both methods and a mixed method. Note there are many designs of LED strips, each might have to be powered differently, just read the fine print below and you'll understand. And yes I made these diagrams.
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This last one is custom for Tropical Tanks, it has white and blue strips with separate dimmers. For his all polarities and strip power inputs are shown as exact in the picture. I used off colored wires for the blue strips. The end of the one blue strip is not connected to the red wire of white strip, just tucked under.

To find out which end off the strip is the input side you can use the power supply wires and find which end powers the strip. Don't worry reversing the polarity here won't harm the LED's but they just won't turn on, or if you power the wrong end it will not harm it either. If you want you can do step 5 right now, but if you mess up and have to remove an LED strip because its backwards it will ruin it. Solder the wire to the LED strips making sure its the right polarity. Here is a picture of what it should look like. Note I used a half cut piece of heat shrink and a staple to hold the wire down without the staple cutting into the wire over time. If you wired in parallel you'll have two or more of these connecting on this side.
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If you wired in series you'll have a loop over at the end to the next row.
As shown below, again make sure you don't have the strip backwards or the wrong polarity wired.
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-Step five: Attach the LED strips to a piece of decorative wood or flat material of your choice. You want the light bar to be as long as the tank to light it all up.

-Step six optional: Heat shrink the light bar you made with the clear heat shrink and seal the ends with a silicon tube, or wrap it in tape or leave it uncovered. Be aware doing this can help make the light bar more water resistant, but not water proof.

They have a already together kit on Ebay (doesn't have the LED's attached to anything though) and other sites that can put out any color of light but is limited to 3-4 wavelengths to make up the white light and can be controlled to make ANY color with a remote, which is cool but I wouldn't do it for long times. This kit would skip steps 1-4 But again may not work well on a timer. Also these have defective issues so I avoid them. Keep it simple.

The cost of this project can range from $20 to $35, for bigger tanks this is very cheap to make compared to buying a light.
Please note for me it only cost me a dimmer and a LED light strip so I only payed 14 dollars and had the rest laying around.

Finished product! (soon I will have a one piece lexan lid)
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Here is a video of it!

 

Thanks for posting! I'm excited to see the pictures of your personal one.

 

Opened as requested

 

Fully updated with better guide, own pictures and video.

 

Looks great. Be building my own very soon!

Here are my final results.

 

Very cool! Awesome! Remember what I said, don't leave it on 100% brightness or your tank will turn into the sun! XD

 

Where are you sourcing your LEDs from? I'm having trouble figuring out the pricing because everywhere I'm finding LEDs from are pretty expensive. Any leads or input?

EDIT:

This looks awesome btw and thank you for posting, really impressive work!!

 

Typically Amazon or Ebay.

 

Where are you sourcing your LEDs from? I'm having trouble figuring out the pricing because everywhere I'm finding LEDs from are pretty expensive. Any leads or input?

EDIT:

This looks awesome btw and thank you for posting, really impressive work!!

 

Just a quick question, I'mm planning on using with . It's a very similar set up to yours and I was wondering if noticed any difference in brightness between running the whole strip and running just the light bar. As in are the LEDs on the light bar brighter than when you are running the entire strip since there are fewer LEDs being run. The reason I ask is that I'm going to be using this set up but with about six 24" strips on the same power supply and wasn't sure if I was going to end up needing two different power supplies.

 

Sounds like youd just have to buy something with more mah/amps.
Ben knows how to do all of that math lol.
Smart kid.
He should be able to tell you what size you need.

You should also consider a dimmer because that's going to be really bright.

 

My major concern with the eBay link above is that I don't believe that the k rating is good on any of these LEDs. For a planted tank you want an ideal range around 6500k and high lumens output. Does the supplier have info on the k ratings?

 

Sounds like youd just have to buy something with more mah/amps.
Ben knows how to do all of that math lol.
Smart kid.
He should be able to tell you what size you need.

You should also consider a dimmer because that's going to be really bright.

Below is the link to my thread and I did include a dimmer. If anyone has a power supply link then I would greatly appreciate it. I would also love to get some explanation since I don't have much experience with electrical work.

 

That's the same dimmer I originally bought but then I found another with a remote for like $7 and had to get it.

 

Is the one you got? After looking around I did happen to find a bigger power supply with 6A .

 

When I get home I'll post more detail. But there are websites that sell them and have a lot more choices and better products then you'll find on eBay or Amazon. They also give you more info on the strip like how many amps per foot.

One website is "superbrightled" and there are others you can Google and find

 

Yes that's the exact one.
I actually have two. One for the blue lights and one for white.
Ben posted my light diagram above.

He'll have to be the one to tell you what size power supply to get bacause he does allthe math. I have not a clue how to figure that out lol.

 

all the info is there man

the 3528 SMD Flexible LED is the first generation of led and they're rated a 390-450 Lumensare smaller then the 5630 Flexible LED, rated at 1200-1320 Lumens

now if you're using the hole strip which has 300 pieces of led you will need a 12V adapter of at least 80watt and 6.5 Apms.
each of these small led are 0.25Watt and on 12Volt they have a current of 0.0208 amps, so the totall of all of the 300 need an adapter that will hold a current of 0.0208amps x 300pcs = 6amps but like I said its better if you provide a 10-15% more power, safer for the leds.

 

Send me a link to the LED with 1200 lumens.
Is that based on the entire strip?

 

Send me a link to the LED with 1200 lumens.
Is that based on the entire strip?

Here is the link but I can't answer your question.

 

andiok with all due respect that chart still doesn't say the k rating. I get it that a it says rough temperatures but those are vague, I wanted to know if specifically one of these strings is 6500k...

 

K rating is very important to the plants. While LEDs are not as good as a reg bulb for plants they still should put out the same color mix of natural light if possible.

the 3528 SMD Flexible LED is the first generation of led and they're rated a 390-450 Lumensare smaller then the 5630 Flexible LED, rated at 1200-1320 Lumens

now if you're using the hole strip which has 300 pieces of led you will need a 12V adapter of at least 80watt and 6.5 Apms.
each of these small led are 0.25Watt and on 12Volt they have a current of 0.0208 amps, so the totall of all of the 300 need an adapter that will hold a current of 0.0208amps x 300pcs = 6amps but like I said its better if you provide a 10-15% more power, safer for the leds.

Good you got the math right. Also underpowering a system strains the power supply not the led strip. So 15% amps more is good to have.


On a side note guys, you want a dimmer and do not crank up the lighting past natural conditions as you can do harm to the plants and fish. These led strips can get very bright. Sometimes too bright.


PM me if you need help with your personal setup. I'd be glade to help or review your setup before you drop any money.

 

andiok with all due respect that chart still doesn't say the k rating. I get it that a it says rough temperatures but those are vague, I wanted to know if specifically one of these strings is 6500k...

thx for the respect.

One can't just ask questions and settup a tank, especially a planted one...

the lumens is what you need and the understanding of what lumens are needed for the phosyntesis on different colores of plants (green/red/orange)
pls read the whole article as it really is precious info

K rating is very important to the plants. While LEDs are not as good as a reg bulb for plants they still should put out the same color mix of natural light if possible.
Good you got the math right. Also underpowering a system strains the power supply not the led strip. So 15% amps more is good to have.


On a side note guys, you want a dimmer and do not crank up the lighting past natural conditions as you can do harm to the plants and fish. These led strips can get very bright. Sometimes too bright.


PM me if you need help with your personal setup. I'd be glade to help or review your setup before you drop any money.

I don't know how well informed you are and what's your updates on planted tanks but let me tell you, kelvin temperature is useless if you don't choose your lighting by lumens.
Lighting Spectrum and Photosythesis - Lighting - Aquatic Plant Central

 

I've been into farming and gardening for 20+ years. I'm aware of the multitude of variables involved in growing plants of all sorts. From my readings, PAR, lumens, k temp, variety of spectrum and are all important factors for me in my research and opinion.

 

I don't know how well informed you are and what's your updates on planted tanks but let me tell you, kelvin temperature is useless if you don't choose your lighting by lumens.

Sorry but your a bit off on that. I think you misunderstood that article a bit.

Read the OP, I talk about the spectrums that LED lights put out. And how there was spectrums (colors) of light better for plants. And lumens is just how bright it is and has nothing to do with color or Kelvin rating. To be honest Kelvin ratings should not really be giving to LED lighting or most modern lighting. kelvin refers to temp of the element that made a different white color mixup back in the day. BUT people still use it as slang to describe the mix of spectrums that makes up that white light. Lighting used to be measured by how much energy it uses, also known as watts. Ever since LED's were out Lumens were invented for LED's as they can't be compared to Watts as they use a lot less energy.

 

**Mod Note**
Ok guys...take a step back.

Please remember this is Ben's thread about his set up.

Another thread should be started if members have questions about lighting their own tanks or want to discuss what different lighting terms mean in regards to a planed tank.

Pretty much since post #12, this thread has been derailed.

Thanks!

Below is the link to my thread and I did include a dimmer. If anyone has a power supply link then I would greatly appreciate it. I would also love to get some explanation since I don't have much experience with electrical work.

Please ask your questions in your own thread rather than cross posting.
You can always use the mention option in your thread rather than asking your questions in someone else's thread.

 

EDITE
Just know Kelvin ratings for light is very vague for a "whitish mix" and really doesn't tell to much of which spectrums there are in the light. If your very picky about having the best lighting for you tank DO NOT GO LED and get a gas based bulb made for plants, as it has those ideal light spectrums via different types of gas in the bulb.

There is a few high end LED's that do put out SOME of ideal spectrums via different color LED's or high end bulbs but they can't match up with gas based bulbs. And they cost a lot more.



So in a nutshell there's ALOT of science behind it that is arguable, We are not the first or last to bring up the topic of spectrums of LED lighting effects on plants, This thread is not here to prove anyone wrong, It's here to help people select a decent LED strip and help set it up at an affordable cost.


And as Lucy said if you need extra help you can start a thread of your own linking it to this thread and id be happy to help, rather then 4 different builds be splashed here mixed up. Or just message me.


Also I have a feeling some people are completely skipping the OP which was the entire point of this thread as a step by step guide.

 

+1 for ben
Hes right about it all.

 

Tstang429's post and the reply has been moved to a thread of it's own.
Here's the link: