Power LED Underwater Lights

Intro: Power LED Underwater Lights

This brief instructable will provide you with the details and inspiration required to light up your lake. This is a simple LED project which i'm hoping to extend to use PWM dimming with RGB lights to make any color desired.

STEP 1: Putting Electricity Into the Water

So you want to light up your dock/boat/waterfront but you don't want to electrocute swimmers in the area. Power supplies, specifically switching power supplies can fail resulting in 110V AC zapping everything in the nearby area if any contacts or wires are exposed. Although unlikely, this could result in lawsuits and funeral expenses worth far more trouble than using a proper design.

Fortunately LEDs run on low voltage: between 2-4 VDC, this means that even with exposed wires or contacts nearby swimmers won't feel a thing. We just have to make sure we use a power supply thats failure mode wont put 110VAC in the water.

A transformer based power supply will do the trick! To the best of my knowledge these wont go 'live' upon failure. However you may need a large transformer depending on the number of LEDs used.

The best solution i've come across as a power supply (the one i used) is a 12V car/marine battery. This will ensure you will never get more than 12-14V in the water. Be careful though, if shorted these can produce very high current. Disconnect from circuit to charge.

Materials listed in this step:
12V car / marine battery, or deep cycle if possible

STEP 2: Building a Current Source for Your LEDs

You can't just wire LEDs to your battery and say go.
Well you probably can but you may not want to as it will hurt the life expectancy of your (relatively) expensive power LEDs. We need to make sure these things are operating at or just under their design current.
Initially i thought about using a circuit based on the lm3406 1.5A buck regulator. After calculating the price after making custom PCBs and components I decided on something a little more simple: The LM317 linear regulator.

There are already instructables out there which explain how to use this so I will keep it brief. The 317 maintains a constant voltage of 1.25V between its 'adjust' terminal and its 'output' terminal. If you wire a 1.25 Ohm resistor between the two 1Amp of current will flow (V=IR). Now simply attach your LEDs between adjust and the ground (see the diagram).

Discussion: Although simple, this design is not perfect. The Lm317 dissipates power as heat to control the voltage. If you are supplying it with 40V and using it to drive a 4V LED at 1amp you will be dissipating 36Watts. P=I*V (40V-4V)*1amp =36W. You will want to power it with a voltage very near to that of what you are driving. With a 12V battery and a 1.25 voltage drop across the resistor and 0.5V drop across the IC you will be able to power 2-3 LEDs depending on their voltage

The box shown above consists of 12 identical circuits to provide 0.8A to chains of LEDs

Materials listed in this step
12 - Lm317 regulators
12 - 1W resistors ( value dependent on desired current, I[A]=1.25 [V] /R[Ohm])
12 - cable connectors
1 - on-off switch
1 electrolytic capactitor

STEP 3: Wiring and Mounting LEDs

I used 6 sets of 3 Luxeon K2 Royal Blue LEDs wired in series to light up my dock. Although rated for 1A at 3.85V (each), I used 0.8A which i found required around 3.70V. So this means we need at least 3*3.70V = 11.10V to power a string of 3 Royal Blue LEDs wired in series. We also have to take into account the voltage drop across our current source (roughly 1.25+0.5V). So we need a total of 12.85V which is very close to a fully charged 12V battery. If we only used 2 LEDs in series we would only need 3.7*2+1.25+0.5 = 9.15V. The regulators would simply dissipate the extra power.

So to run the total of 18 LEDs i used 6 parallel sets of 3 LEDS wired in series. This equates to 3.7[V]*1[A]*18[LEDs] = 66W of juice.

22 gauge telephone cable worked nicely for wiring this. There are 4 wires in the cable, I used one cable to power 2 set of LEDs, (2 wires each) but one could power 3 sets of LEDs per cable while using 1 wire as a common ground, especially if using smaller gauge (thicker) wires.

Hopefully you get the idea by this point and can design whatever setup you like.

It would be nice to make little underwater enclosures for the lights. However due to time and budget I simply mounted the lights on heat sinks (which you will want if running out of the water, they get hot!), the glued the heat sinks together and screwed through the middle into my dock. I used a staple gun to attach and hide the wires along my dock.

Materials used in this step:
18 - Luxeon K2 LEDs $5 each
18 - Luxeon K2 Heat sinks
epoxy
X many feet of 22 gauge telephone cable (or whatever cable you want)
connectors to connect the wires to your current source.

STEP 4: Youre Finished!

Now you have a dock outfitted with power LEDs that glows at night and may or may not piss off your neighbors. You can be sure, however that it won't electrocute your swimmers.

Note that it doesn't have to be your dock! My current plans include mounting these on the bottom of my lake to make runway lights for my boat. You can add different lenses to the lights which will collimate or spread the beam. Try different colors too. You can hook them up as long as they are rated for the current your current source supplies (don't worry about voltage).

STEP 5: Extending the Project

So far everything has been relatively simple. We can do better than using a control box to turn blue lights on and off.

The first step is to control their brightness. I've attached the design i made for a PWM controlled buck regulator circuit however i later realized that one could just add a transistor in series with the lights and use the PWM signal or an analog out signal from a micro controller to control the brightness of the lights. This is my next step, it can be easily integrated into the finished project.

Changing the colors:
The receptors in your eyes are only sensitive to the red, green and blue wavelengths of light. You interpret a color by the relative excitement of each receptor. For example yellow light would excite the red and green receptors. Thus if we stick red green and blue leds together and control their relative brightness, or the relative amount of time they are on or off with respect to each other (in a very very short time frame (PWM!)) we make our brains think we are seeing different colors. This is how TVs work!

The question is now how do we control 3 different lights (RGB) per group of lights without running a zillion wires everywhere. This is your dock, not your electronics lab. We would need at least 4 wires per set of RGB lights rather than 4 wires for 3 sets of lights as we could do before. The answer is that i don't know how to do this nicely! I'm hoping the informed readership will contribute.

One answer would be to wire all the different colors together with their own colors. ie. all the reds in series and use pulse width modulation to control the relative amounts of that color. This would mean less wires running under your dock but it would also mean that every group of lights on your dock will be the same color at the same time, rather than half green and half purple.

The system could be redesigned completely so that the control electronics are located underwater with the lights. This would require only 2 power wires and one control wire per group of lights. But getting your electronics wet will probably result in failure so this may not be the way to go take.

To sum up the problem: how do we minimize wires, but maintain individual control over the R,G,B LEDs in each group of LEDs? Remember we want to keep any voltages generally below 12 V (can't put all LEDs in series on one string) We are basically balancing degrees of freedom of control with the number of wires. This is a typical example of engineering constraints.

Please send suggestions and any questions you may have.
Good luck!

Comments

[Lateral Thinker]

Go solar to charge the battery.

[wireless charger led flashlight]

why need solar to charge the battery?it be charged so sowlly by solar. do you worry about it must to be used unerwater?
now I get a new underwater led lamp,which can be wireless charged
you can be view the here : http://www.wirelesspower-ledlighting.com/

[elias.alberto]

One option is to put a common 'minus' for each RGB group and one common 'plus' for each rgb color. You will use the common minus to select one given group of leds, and the common R, G and B plus will drive them the voltage they need to power up. You'll be simultaneously driving 'plus' to all other leds, but they won't work because they won't have the 'minus'. Then you cycle very quickly through all the arrays to select each array, and while a given array is selected you use pwm (or voltage regulation) on it to choose your color. This is the best method because you'll only need one wire for each color (R, G and B) and one wire for each array (six arrays) so you end up using just nine wires. And for each array you add, you'll only need one more wire (the common minus). The obvious disadvantage is you're not gonna be able to drive them full power, the maximum power of each array will be 1/n of their nominal power, where n is the number of arrays being used. But you said your leds are already being underdriven, so this is not a problem to you, thus this remains to be the best method. This is the only problem of this method, but even this problem has a very simple solution, you'll just need to put a capacitor in parallel with each led (then the problem will be the price of so many capacitors, but a capacitor will be just a fraction of the cost of each high-power led, so this is not a problem for you). The quicker you cycle through the arrays, the smaller (and cheaper) the capacitor you'll have to use. I made a drawing for you. http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/1572/instructablespowerledun.jpg :)

[Waterfox51]

Very nice. Getting the PWM going is my fall project. I think I will try and implement your method here. Thanks!

[jackyboy256]

this will go mad with my fishing kayak the light should atract the fish(correct me if im wrong) thanks man

[ElectricalFreak]

How is the capacitor connected in this circuit, and how important is it for the functionality?

[Waterfox51]

 It goes across the input terminal and the ground. It is there to ensure that only DC is getting to the circuit. Its not too important, just sort of standard practice for DC power supplies. 

[ElectricalFreak]

That is quite correct, now that i think of it the capacitor on the input terminal to ground smoothens the ripple that might occur from the supply (unless it is VERY stable).

Furthermore there could also be a capacitor on the output as a buffer.

[Nyxius]

You obviously put a lot of effort into designing and building your lights.  However, if you fail to properly insulate your circuit from the water in the lake you will have massive corrosion resulting from just a few weeks* of running.  I would highly recommend putting your lights in some form of watertight enclosure or you could risk losing your entire investment.

*Depending on the impurities in the water.

[Waterfox51]

That is exactly what I discovered when i took them out of the water this fall! I was expecting a little bit of corrosion but given that I used non-stainless screws to put them in the dock the heat sinks were covered in rust and algea. The clear lenses on the LEDs themselves had also become soft. Everything still works fine but in the sping im definitely putting them back in with a casing around them and hopefully I'll never have to take them out of the water again.

[Widespread Panic]

I have been working on underwater lights using Luxeon stars. I found they fit nicely in 1/2" PVC slip fittings. I actually have a few that I have been testing. Luxeon 7007 Endor star and LM 350 driver fitted in a 1/2" slip X 1/2" male threaded PVC fitting then potted with clear epoxy. They work well in the water but will melt down in about 10 minutes in the air. With the PVC you can come up with all sorts of mounting options. 1/2" pipe, 90 on the end, LED screwed into the 90, wires in the PVC, I ran a pair of these for 12 hours at 3 ft deep on a rechargable drill battery.

[mathews]

When you PWM your lights, have a look at the manufacturer's datasheet for the peak pulse current, as you should be able to use this to make your LEDs more efficient. If you do pay attention to the duty cycle.

Also, as you said you wanted to control the colours, as well as brightness, this could be achieved by using a small PIC, or some clever logic, to decipher a serial signal from your control panel and the LEDs. This would only require two power wires and a control wire.

And if you want to put these control electronics near to the water, look for some IP67 enclosures. IP67 means it will be waterproof upto 1m, however if you know it will not be enveloped by water, then IP65 should do.