RGB LED Lighting for fish tank - Fading, and color select

[iamsuperbleeder]

Hi guys. I'm looking into making a simple RGB LED lighting system for my fresh water fish tank. I'd like to have a few features, such as be able to automatically fade between colors (preferably with an adjustable fade speed via the use of a pot, so it can be easily adjusted on the fly), and have an "over-ride" system that would allow me to select a solid color, again with the use of a pot, so that the color combination can be fine tuned. I also would like it to have a simple on off switch to light all three colors to produce white light, but that's something I can do no problem I won't be using too many LED's; maybe 4 at the most, since water diffuses the light pretty good, and with less LED's, the shimmering water puts off a neat lighting effect.

I would also like to have it work without the use of a PIC if possible. And that's where I'm hung up. I'm not sure what IC I'll need to make this work, much less how the schematic should be laid out. I can easily make a simple 555 timer circuit to fade a single LED on and off, but I think it would be a little cumbersome to use multiple 555 timer LED fader circuits for the fader part this project...

I'm also at a loss on how to make the solid color adjustable setting work correctly. I would assume just using a comparer like an LM339 and some transistors, but again, I'm not sure where to begin



Any help would be appreciated; my fish and I are growing old of the yellowish tint the 30watt filament bulbs are giving off Thanks!

 

[iamsuperbleeder]

or I guess I could just to the easy route and get something like **broken link removed** off of fee-bay

I guess I should have just looked for something prebuilt to begin with. That setup would actually be nice, because it has the 3m tape on the back, and some are water proof so the tank moister wont harm it, plus it has a wireless controller

 

[Boncuk]

A very simple circuit would consist of four identical PWM circuits, R, G, B and UV(A).

They would require four pots to set from zero to 100% PWM, thus eliminating the need for switches.

UV is great for an aquarium since it makes all colors of the fish visible at high intensity.

380 to 400nm UV LEDs are cheap to have and relatively harmless if you don't look directly into the UV source.

Boncuk