{"id":261,"date":"2013-07-10T17:27:14","date_gmt":"2013-07-11T00:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/?p=261"},"modified":"2013-07-11T00:26:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T07:26:40","slug":"dreaming-of-dreamchips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/?p=261","title":{"rendered":"dreaming of DreamChips"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year or two ago, members of the online reef community got together to address a point of growing concern amongst would-be LED upgraders. This concern is the so-called “disco ball” effect that occurs when multiple light sources (read: LEDs) originate from different points, which is typically the case for traditional LED fixtures. Enter the multichip LED. These LED chips cram tens to hundreds of LEDs on a single chip, closely approximating a single point light source. Additionally, using multichips reduces the need to mount a bunch of individual LEDs on a heat sink fixture. The DreamChip was envisioned to be a full-spectrum solution for reef tanks on a single chip. It contains white, royal blue, and violet\/UV LEDs all on a single chip, breaking out the LED strings in 5 individually controllable channels.<\/p>\n

We wanted to have full control over each of the 5 channels, so we paired the DreamChip with one of our LDD-5 Driver Boards<\/a> and of course a 6-channel Storm LED Controller<\/a>. This combination of controller and driver should allow full control over the DreamChip.<\/p>\n

\"5-Channel<\/a>

5-Channel DreamChip mounted to a substantial heat sink<\/p><\/div>\n

Running at full tilt this beast is insanely bright. It’s too bright to look at powered up to merely 2% duty cycle. It also throws off a lot of heat. Passively cooled, I don’t think that this heat sink is good enough to cool the DreamChip sufficiently. The current setup has a 6″ x 9″ heat sink that has a base that is about 1\/4″ thick, and the chip is mounted properly using Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound as well as #4-40 socket cap screws with nylon washers to distribute the load. Even with this proper mounting and thermal interface, it takes about a minute to get too hot to handle. Luckily this is just a demo setup so it won’t be running this way for long.<\/p>\n

\"DreamChip<\/a>

DreamChip mounted with lens<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The chip is rated for a maximum of 1,400mA per channel. While we do have access to 1,400mA drivers, we decided to use the LDD-5 board for simplicity. Here we’re limiting the current to 1000mA via driver selection of Meanwell LDD-1000H drivers. Running at 1000mA per channel (x5) with a 36V forward voltage, that gives a total power consumption of 180W. Even though these EpiLED and EpiStar individual LED components aren’t as efficient as say Cree XM-L, it is still an amount of light to be reckoned with. The LDD drivers are impressive to say the least, with no discernible heat emanating from the fully potted package.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"LDD-5<\/a>

LDD-5 Driver Board wired up to power the DreamChip at 1000mA per channel<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"DreamChip<\/a>

DreamChip powering up at 36V. Had to keep it at 1% brightness or else it would blow out the exposure.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"DreamChip<\/a>

DreamChip with Coralux LDD-5 and Storm Controller<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A year or two ago, members of the online reef community got together to address a point of growing concern amongst would-be LED upgraders. This concern is the so-called “disco ball” effect that occurs when multiple light sources (read: LEDs) originate from different points, which is typically the case for traditional LED fixtures. Enter the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276,"href":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions\/276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/coralux.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}