divy Posted August 23, 2007 Report Share Posted August 23, 2007 hello all this is a DIY for using leds to light up your tanks i drew a picture to help explain how to wire it i bought my power adaptor off ebay for around $10 some have a switch on them which allows you to use 3v to 12v and you will see on the power adaptor a number and mA after it so each led is 20mA so if you use say 10 leds thats 10 x 20mA which is 200mA so you will need a power adaptor that says 200mA on it or more now for vaults im using 12leds and my adaptors switch is on 4.5v you should not use 3 valts, the more valts you use the higher ohm resistor you have to use but if anyone is un sure of what resistor to use or how many valts pm or add me on msn on divy_inc@hotmail.com and i will tell you what to use as for wiring it the picture should help soilder the resistors to the negitive leg on the leds and soilder the other side of the resistor to a long piece of wire then soilder te positive legs of the led to another long piece of wire the power adaptor will have to wires coming out of it ones black and the other usually has a white line on it soilder the one with the white line to the long wire thats connected to the positive side of the leds and the black wire soilder to the negitive long wire thats connected to the resistors heres a pic of the power adaptor and a pic of what a resistor is sorry if i made is sound hard or confusing its easyer then how i explained it its allway hard for me to try to explain things when i type lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brettc777 Posted August 23, 2007 Report Share Posted August 23, 2007 Hi Divy, Do you have brand and model number for the lights? a link? sorry update my question: does it matter which side the resister is soldered? does the yellow band have to be soldered to the negative wire? or is it the other way around? Also how do you make the connections with the wire from the light i.e do you just cut a gap in the pastic of the positive wire then twist in the positive light wire, or do you use speical connectors? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beano Posted August 23, 2007 Report Share Posted August 23, 2007 did you use a PCB for this? Or a breadboard? Or some other creative kind of attachment? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
divy Posted August 23, 2007 Author Report Share Posted August 23, 2007 hey brett here a link to the ones i bought off ebay http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi...N:IT&ih=004 yes the resister has to be on the negitive side of the led a 68ohm resistor which i used are gold black grey blue the one in the pic was just to show what they look like and no it dosnt matter which way they go on the blue side or gold can soilder to the led no i didnt use any speical connectors i jut cut the end off twisted it around an soildered Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brettc777 Posted August 23, 2007 Report Share Posted August 23, 2007 Thanks for the link. I see there is different colour lights. Not sure how many people know this but ill put it out there just incase. To grow plants you need at least 6500k (which al ot of us on here know) but another way to tell whether its has higher 'k' ('k' = Kelvins which is colour temp) is the colour of the light. I seen that there was red lights available on that link even though these might be bright in light... normally the redder a light is the lower the 'k' or temperature it is thus being in the lower end of the temp spectrum. So your normal yellowish house lights are around 2700k (on the red spectrum) however they can go up to around 6500k which will look more blueish (in the blue spectrum...5100k being the start of the blue spectrum). So a bright blue is usually good for plants the brighter blue the better. So around 2700k = reddish/orange colour Blueish = 5100k to 14000k and above Also remember some plants need different colour spectrums (kelvins or 'k') to grow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brettc777 Posted August 23, 2007 Report Share Posted August 23, 2007 Forgot to add the reason why blue light (6500k and up) is better is because this is the colour temp plants absorb i.e. more closer to natural daylight. (just for those who didn't know why you needed 6500k and up) here is a link if you want to read up more about it and see a kelvin colour scale http://www.3drender.com/glossary/colortemp.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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