LED Control and Moonlights

[mvwise]

Hi,

I have a Red Sea Max 130 that I am looking to have a controller for. I have replaced the T5 lighting in the canopy with 28 LED's on two separate drivers. The drivers are Mean Well ELN-60-48D with an analogue dimmer attached. The drivers are wired into the existing hood power supply / timer. The hood also has 4 LED moonlights that were already part of the system. The two drivers and moonlights are wired into an analogue timer and them run out through a single power cord. Through the timer the moonlights are off when the main light are on and off when the main lights are on.

What I'm wondering is - would it make sense to have the main lights on all the time and simply dim down the white lights to 0% at night and the blue down to 10% to simulate the moonlights and then ramp everything back up during the day? Unfortunately this would also cause the hood fans to run constantly as they are wired directly to the LED power supply. However, this would be the cheapest alternative for me.

Another alternative would be to somehow re-wire the existing moonlights to a power supply and plug it into the controller so that it can simply be on or off.

The final option would be to install two Reef Angel moonlights in the canopy. However if they require a PVM port or two then I would have to spend another $100 on the PVM expansion as well as the $40 for the moonlights.

Any thoughts?


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[rimai]

My 2 cents is that meanwells are too bright to be used as moonlights even at the lowest range.
Unless you had gone with the new LPF series. Although I have not used, I've heard and there are a couple threads in here about them.
They seem to go all the way down to 3%.

[mvwise]

Okay, that makes sense, especially since there are 14 blue LED's on the same driver.

The built in moonlights are on their own transformer, so if I can figure out the wiring, may be able to simply add a power cord and control them separately through the RA.

If I have the D version of the Mean Well driver I will need the analogue version of the RA. If at a later date I added the PWM expansion module for other devises, are they in fact PWM or does the analogue part of the main controller follow through? I don't mind having analogue capabilities for my existing LEDs but would not want to be limited for future expandability.


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[rimai]

Totally separate.
You can have PWM or analog on the relay box and PWM or analog on the expansion module.
I'm actually about to change the name of the module to Dimming Expansion Module, since they will be also offered as PWM or analog versions.

[mvwise]

If a relay expansion module is added are the two PWM ports live or disabled? For example, the addition of the relay expansion module and relay box would now provide you with 4 PWM ports or just the original two?

Are the PWM ports on the relay box powered or is a booster required for analogue control?

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[rimai]

disabled on the expansion relay box.
On the main box, they come with booster built-in on both analog and PWM version.

[mvwise]

Awesome, thanks for the speedy response. Just placed my order, now I have to work on my programming skills.

Thanks for the speedy responses.

Matthew


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[abhi_123]

just an off topic question. cant we use pwm expansion module with analog version of reef angel?

[rimai]

Yes

[KenethBongard]

final option would beoor LED Lighting[/url] to install two Reef Angel moonlights in the canopy. However if they require a PVM port or two then I would have to spend another