Reef Angel Forum

you are right steve, now that you mentioned it. I am such a noob. I was dumb enough to actually pop the bottom of the driver open and went and turn a little screw like thingy in the driver thinking it was the internal potentiomenter.

https://twitter.com/mervinliew/status/2 ... to/1/large

did I just screw up the driver???! please let me know.

Yes I am going to use the LED setup with a Reef Angel controller plus which i will order as soon as i complete my plumbing, sump, RoDi kit. I have alot more work to go.

thanks steve,

Hmm.. in your pic that is a potentiometer. I have not popped my LPF's open but I wonder if they are adjustable now that I see your pic.

Nick

did I just screw up the driver???! please let me know.

Your guess is as good as mine

Anyone can make a mistake, so don't feel bad! I have jumped into things without fully resurching, so now it is always a case of RTFM even if I think I know what I am doing.

Post us on how it works out, then others will learn from your experience.

Interesting...
Please do let us know what you find out.

Hi guys,

My driver seems to be working fine. I did another test and my LEDs light up alright no blowout. I guess before you do anything read the specs that the driver manufacturer created. Next step for me is to plumb my sump and make a DIY overflow out of PVC.

Cheers,
mliew

00Warpig00 wrote:Waiting for my RA+ to arrive and sunrise/sunset has been a big goal of mine from the start. I too have a 72 LED aquastyle kit and went with the cheap Maxwellen drivers because I was not able to find a driver at the time that would dim to less than 10%. Decided i would replace them later when I got a controller. Well it's that time... From reading this thread it seems as if the LPF series go down to 3%. I would be ok with that I think but am a little confused about what you state about the LPF drivers going into standby mode to shut them completely off to 0% I realize there will be a gap from 3% to 0% but the spec sheet of the LPF series seems to contradict what you are saying is happening real world.

Sebyte wrote:
I went with the MeanWell LPF series because they have a self sensing circuit that detects if a Pot is connected or an external analog or PWM signal. In addition the MeanWell LPF series will turn the LED's dim to 3% and at 0% go into a standby mode, like a TV, and do not really need to use up valuable RA ports.

Sebyte wrote:You can run several drivers on a port.

But you do not even need to run the drivers through a port

Instensity grows from 15 to 75 and back down to 15.
Returns 0 when not within the time schedule.

The 0 at the end of the function forces the Driver to switch off. With Meanwell drivers they go into a hibernation state consuming very low power. My understanding is that Meanwell recommend not turning the drivers off as they respond better from that state when the command signel is ramped up.

These LPF drivers sound great but the spec sheets for the LPF series say that to turn the LED's off you will need to wire a relay. (Bottom of page 4 of both documents)

http://www.meanwell.com/search/LPF-60D/LPF-60D-spec.pdf
http://www.meanwell.com/search/LPF-90D/LPF-90D-spec.pdf

Just so I understand fully before I buy LPF drivers...

Are you saying that you can use PWM to turn your Drivers/LED's all the way off and essentially do NOT have to plug your drivers into power outlets on the relay box? I hope so this is what I want to do.

Also I was hoping to leave one of my strings of Bridgelux Royal Blues dimmed to 3% and have this string function as my moonlights. So essentially I would use the Parabola code but shut 3 of my 4 strings of LED's off to 0% and leave one set on at 3% for moonlights.

Am I crazy and not understanding something in this thread? It sounds like what I want to accomplish is workable with the LPF series drivers according to your experience, but not according to the spec sheet.

Any more insight you can provide would be great.

Thanks,

Nick

I have received my LPF-90D-36 Drivers. I have been playing with them. Not quite getting the same results Sebyte describes. I was wondering if I might ask a few more questions?

First, what I did and what is happening in my case.

I rewired my strings of LED's as mentioned earlier in the thread. My RA+ is the Analog model and I am hooking up my LPF drivers to a Analog dimming module that I had Roberto custom modify for me to make the first three ports 0/1/2 PWM ports and the second three ports 3/4/5 Analog ports. I hooked my drivers up to the dimming module's ports 0/1 (PWM) and did some testing but those ports dont seem to work to control my drivers. So I went to the analog ports 3/4 and my drivers seem to respond pretty nicely to the analog input the led's brighten to about 95% of what they are capable of (they get a little brighter if I leave the dim leads to float open circuit) even though the analog port is set at 100% the ports max out at ~9.7VDC I'd love to get the full 10V out of them if possible. On the other end of the spectrum the led's dim the analog ports down to approx 0.5 VDC they dim down pretty dim but they do NOT turn off even when the analog port is set to 0%. At 0% the voltage across the analog port with the drivers attached is 0.5VDC but the ports go down to about 80 milivolts when the driver leads are disconnected from the ports. Not sure whats up with this but I believe that these drivers may not be capable of reaching lights out/standby mode when being driven with an analog dimmer. This leads me to a couple questions for Sebyte.

1. With your LPF drivers are you dimming using PWM ports or Analog ports?
2. Are you driving your LPF drivers from the Relay Box or from a dimming module?

I know my drivers can go into standby mode and turn the LED's completely off. I have tested this by twisting my two dim leads on the drivers together to short them to 0 Ohms and the LED's turn off quite nicely. I have compared my Parabola function code line to what Sebyte gives as an example earlier in this thread and my code appears to be correct. I even have the last 0 to turn the led's/drivers off/standby but my drivers don't turn off at 0% when hooked to the Analog ports.

I also have a question for Roberto if he sees this.

I ordered a Analog RA+ and an additional Expansion relay box. The Relay box that came with my RA+ has a sticker on it that says Analog. The relay box that shipped with my expansion relay module does not have this sticker. Does the expansion relay box have PWM ports? Can I interchange the relay boxes and test with the ?PWM? ports on that relay box to eliminate an issue with my Modified Analog/PWM dimming module?

I would really like to be able to turn off my LED's without using a switched outlet and currently I cannot seem to do this.

Nick

Yes, you can swap them.
The one without sticker is PWM signal

In response

1. With your LPF drivers are you dimming using PWM ports or Analog ports?
2. Are you driving your LPF drivers from the Relay Box or from a dimming module?

1. I am using PWM

2. The PWM signel is from the two channel ports on the standard RA controler. I do not have access to PWM expansion so I have not been able to verify.

In response

1. With your LPF drivers are you dimming using PWM ports or Analog ports?
2. Are you driving your LPF drivers from the Relay Box or from a dimming module?

1. I am using PWM

2. The PWM signel is from the two channel ports on the standard RA controler. I do not have access to PWM expansion so I have not been able to verify.

Thanks for the info guys.

I did some reconfig and testing today and tonight.

I hooked back up to the PWM ports 0/1 on my Dimming module and tested and got the same exact results as with the analog ports 3/4 on the dimming module. Not sure why I couldnt get the pwm to work before but it appears to be working now. LED's still do not turn off and they dim to the same level on either the analog or PWM ports.

Being that Sebyte's results were achieved while using PWM hooked up to the PWM ports on the relay box I tested that configuration as well. I hooked my LPF's to the Actinic and Daylight channels on my PWM version relay box. Uploaded the appropriate code changes to the RA+ and got the same exact results as with my dimming module. The LED's still do not turn off but do dim to an acceptable level for moonlighting in my opinion.

This got me to thinking about the PWM/ANALOG ports on the dimming module.
I downloaded Eagle and peeked at the schematic for the dimming module. Looked at the spec sheet for the LM358 dual op amp. The spec sheet for the LM358 noted that the output's were short circuit protected. This made the lightbulb turn on in my head. In theory I can leverage this short circuit protection. This is just an idea and Roberto please chime in with your feedback since I do not want to blow out my dimming module, but here is what I saw in my head when the light bulb went on.



I can use ports 0/1 to drive the dimmer from 1%-100%-1% in my parabola and I can use a SPST relay that will short the dimming + lead's of each LPF driver to ground as shorting my dim+ leads to ground turns the LED's off. To turn the lights on in the morning I deactivate ports 3/4 turning off the relay connected at my desired times and turning on the respective colored lights. This removes the short from the Dim+ lead this will turn the LED's on at the lowest setting. I then manipulate pwm ports 0/1 for my lighting schedule. I can use ports 3/4 as on/off switches and can turn the white LED's off at night then leave the blues at 1% as moonlights and can activate that relay by schedule to turn off the moonlights.

Is there a better/easier way to do this without using AC outlets on my relay boxes?

I have plans for all of them. I also want to get rid of my old dial timers. After all why did I buy a controller?

Is there a way to put the op amp input to ground inside the dimming module via code?

Any Ideas anyone?

Nick

I'm starting to feel that something inside the drivers is keeping that last 500mV applied on the dimming input of your driver.
The module does output 0V, or close to 0V as you measured 80mV when the leads are removed.
Your idea of shorting the Dim+ would work. I don't see anything that would cause problems. In theory, when you dim it to 0%, the output is supposed be GND level, so you should be shorting GND level to GND level.

rimai wrote:I'm starting to feel that something inside the drivers is keeping that last 500mV applied on the dimming input of your driver.
The module does output 0V, or close to 0V as you measured 80mV when the leads are removed.
Your idea of shorting the Dim+ would work. I don't see anything that would cause problems. In theory, when you dim it to 0%, the output is supposed be GND level, so you should be shorting GND level to GND level.

I totally agree with you and yes I read ~80mv on the Dimming module port when the driver is disconnected. and ~500mv on the dimming mod port when the driver is connected. It appears as if the ~500mv is what is keeping the LED's lit and I agree it appears to be being generated by the drivers themselves which I'm not sure makes sense. Both drivers behave exactly the same way while hooked up to any of my PWM/Analog options on the RA+ or it's accessories, I even decided to try the analog ports on my analog relay box today with very similar results. If anything the analog relay box ports provide the lowest light output setting. It dims my Royal blues to the point where they have just the slightest bit of flicker/pulsing in them like the circuit is about to collapse and go into the power saving mode and shut the LED's off but just cant quite get there. I didn't measure the voltage on the that port though, but I suspect it is slightly lower than 500mv.

I wanted a full sunrise/sunset setup with the RB's on very dim for a few hours as moonlighting each night before complete dark for a few hours too. I knew there would be a chance that wouldn't happen due to drivers alone. So this is my next best option. Since it seems you agree it should not cause an issue on my dimming mod, I think my next step is to put a small jumper across the dim leads for my next test to eliminate that stray ~500mv across my dimmer leads and verify that shuts my LED's off completely. I'm sure it will do the trick but I didn't want to proceed without your opinion. If that works I will have accomplished my secondary goal but at a cost of two ports to control relays on my dimming module. I'm not sure I had plans for all of them anyway. I need to go back to my big plan and take another look but I'm probably good to go if shunting the 500mv does the trick. I will report back.

Also need to get my ATO up and operational in the next 6 days going on a trip for a few days and need the topoff working asap. lots to do.

Nick

Looks like I will have enough dimming ports. Big plan calls for three LED Drivers. 10000K Whites, Royal Blues, and Fuge LED's so even if I need to pull the same relay trick on the fuge LED's I should be good to go. Now to wait until my light sched gets all the way down to 0% at 11pm tonight to jump those dimming wires for my next test.

Nick

I am planning a build for my 120 gallon reef (48x24x24). I plan on running meanwell drivers, but am unsure on which ones I can use and with how many LEDs. I will have all the drivers connected to two PWM channels. Here is a list of what I want to run
8 x 3-up Luxeon Rebels Royal Blue
6 x 3-up Luxeon Rebels Natural White 5K
6 x 3-up Luxeon Rebels DR/CB/Cy
3 x 3-up True Violet

Is it possible to get all of this onto two drivers? 1 for Blue and Violet, 1 for White and Exotics?
Or would it be better to get three drivers? I would like to use the meanwell LPF series as I understand they can dim down to 3% and have an automatic sleep mode once below 3% so I dont need to waste a Reef Angel power socket.

Thanks!

You can certainly split this on to the two PWM channels.

Each channel should be able to take the load of two LPF drivers, If I remember right they can run up to a max of 800 mA , but Roberto can give you the exact figure.

With the LPF drivers just make sure you have a balanced circuit and keep an even number of each type of LEDs in a string or leg if you are running series parallel circuits.

If you ever had experience with Cree Leds do you think those are as good?

Cree are high quality LEDs but expensive.

I'm planning on building a 72 LED package too, but I'm customizing the lights to be more full spectrum.
I'm leaning towards the LPF drivers too for the same reason Steve did.
I'm going to have 6 dimmable channels for customization to all area's of the lighting.

There will be 2 fixtures, one over each side of the tank laid out like this...

RB C V B 10 G 65 B 10 V C RB

P UV R B RB UV RB P B R UV P

RB G V 65 B C 10 B 65 V G RB