I sure wished I knew a lot more about leds and luxeons and collimators
etc etc.....Its where lighting for reef and marine tanks is headed,
due to heat issues and prices involved with power compacts, HO, and
VHO lights and the high end jetal halides......and bulbs for all of
the above are outragesouly expensive when you consider they get
changed every 9 months or so. Right now the rage is led moon lights
(blue 460 nm to simulate the light a reef has on with moon lighting,
and some have played with reds and yellows to simulate sundown and
sunrise, but the main issues is full daylight lighting without the
associated heat the typical lights give off......I bet that ringlight
yu have if its equal to 3x direct tropical sunlight would do super in
a small pico reef tank and would be awesome..Have you thought about
marketing it for such. Most pico tanks are 2 gal or less in size and
rarely over 8" deep....Would be awesome to say the least. Sure would
beat hanging a 75 or 50 watt 15K MH light over it just to grow stonie
corals and keep clams.........So you should check into it, there is
definately a market for it, or for one in kit form........and odds are
it beats the hell out of soldering up an array of 340 leds just to fit
and provide light on a 2 gal tank..

Regards

Roy

On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 18:27:00 -0600, Don Foreman
wrote:
On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 23:27:17 +0000, Mark Rand
wrote:



Just a thought for a future modification...
use a joystick for differential control with a rotary knob, preferably on the
joystick, for overall brightness.

Mark Rand (I'm only jealous really :-)
RTFM

Yup! I thought of that about a month ago, but I'd already redesigned
the thing twice and was determined to finish a project for once!

I can always make another control box. The light ring connects to
the box with a mini-DIN connector so it'd be easy to swap controllers.

BTW, I don't have a way to measure luminous intensity, but according
to the specsheets for Luxeon and Fraen collimators (with a range
correction from 1 meter to 6.5 inches) the luminous intensity on the
work surface is about 30,000 lux at WOT. That's about 3X direct
tropical sunlight. With no noticable heat. The lights run cooler
than a fluorescent tube, and only about 1.5 watts are dissipated in
the control box at WOT so it doesn't get warm either.

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