Steve's Things

Nothing special in todays update but I figured I’d post a few things for the fun of it. First off I guess is my lab. I’ve been using it for a month or so. A little small, but at least it’s not at work.

New lab as of April 2011

Nothing to write home about I guess, but I feel comfortable here! Anyways, my little project for the day is the fish light. My bulb burnt out in my fish tank and since it was a high UV one I’ve decide to make an LED version. Since I have an array of LED’s I decided to go with some Whit, UV and a few red ones for good measure (I don’t like blue LEDs).

LEDs!!!

And here’s the breadboard, messy!

the LED driver on the breadboard

The LED’s are driven on 4 channels with PWM output on separate channels. The idea for me is to provide an on-timer for the cycles through the day and to provide a source of UV light for the plants. The diodes are driven by 4 TIP117’s so that each channel (White, UV, Red) can be controlled individually based on whatever profile I want.

Unfortunately I’ve discovered that the number of LED’s that I used is insufficient for use in the tank, not enough light. So I’ve ordered over 500 white LED’s and 150 UV led’s and 100 Red LED’s. I won’t use them all but it’s always good to have LED’s. One issue may be driving all of these LED’s. I have a maximum output of 1A on each of the PNP TIP117’s so an output of about 14W is all I can produce. Hopefully that’ll be enough!

Again, the LED Array

Anyways, here’s hopin’!