DIY LED lighting

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7th January 2009

With all the components now received the project got into full swing.

I turned the hood into a luminaire by trimming the lower 5cm of the sides. It didn't need to be as deep as it was now going to be hanging over rather than 'sitting' on the tank. I then cut some square holes that the inward and outward fans would rest. Finally I cut and fitted an 'inner lip' all he way around the bottom of the luminaire. This was 1cm from the bottom and would provide the 'seat' of the glass pane. Then the fans and glass were fixed into their positions.

To hang the luminaire I bought some chains, a pack of picture 'loops', a pack of 'S' hooks and a couple of heavy duty hooks. The picture loops were fixed to the front and rear of each side of the luminaire. The heavy duty hooks were fixed to some shelf supports above the tank. Then the chains were hung on the heavy duty hooks. The other ends of the chain and the picture hoops were joined together by the 'S' hooks.

The newly adapted luminaire was then hung in position with the fluorescent lighting still in it. It is hung at a very low height so the tubes are the same distance away from the water as they were when the hood was resting on the tank. Approximately 12cm from water surface to the tubes. After seeing the brightness of the LEDs from the test I anticipated that the luminaire will be considerably raised.

With the luminaire prepared I was ready to move onto the actual lighting 'mounting' board which would enable me to easily remove the whole setup from the luminaire to work on it if needed.

I had an old acrylic leaflet holder and the back section was about the right size so I stripped off all the protruding leaflet holder pieces leaving me a single 8mm sheet and then cut it to the internal size of my existing hood. I then marked the sheet into 15 identical areas where each LED unit would be centred.

Next I decided to use an old T5 reflector to mount the LEDs on and also to provide a little extra heatsinking. This was 80cm long and I cut it into 15 roughly equal pieces.

The next step was to wire the whole board up.
















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