Well, I've just about got everything to do another Drop of Green... One of the changes to this build have been suggested a few times and to be honest, I just didn't think about it the first time around... but this time, I choose a more appropriate can... Bud Light... I dunno... Is that too "on the nose"? -Loki
Okay... here's the first part of the DIY for the Drop of Green. I'm just going to attach it to this thread as its not a proper growing technique, in that the effort you'll put into growing such a tiny amount of weed is completely impractical and this is more something to do just for the fuck of it. Step One. Cans... Get two 24 oz Cans of Bud Light (or whatever). One can is going to be the top, and the other is gonna be... umm... oh yeah, the bottom. I use blue painters tape to maker where I'm going to cut. You can do it free hand, but this makes it pretty easy. Start your first cut at the end of the can and not where you taped it, because the first cut will make bends and kinks in the can. Take a sharp scissors and cut your way to the tape... In the botton piece, make a hole big enough for the power wire... -Loki
Step Two. Power supply... Anything from 9 volts to 12 volts, DC, will work best. I'm going to use a 18.5 volt one. It's a old laptop AC adapter. It's rated for 18.5vdc at 3.5 amps. Which means it can pull nearly 65 watts (volts x amps)... far more than we'll need... With the LEDs and fan, it'll be pulling less than 5 watts... So, if you have a 12dvc @ 500mA (.5 amps), you'll have 6 watts... Step Alpha LEDs... The 10mm Xbrite LEDs work well, but you could use the 5mm ones if you want. LEDs will have 2 important specs... the forward voltage (fv) and the amperage (a). The LEDs I'm going to use have a forward voltage range of 1.8-2.2 volts at 200mA. You don't want to over drive your LEDs, because they'll just get hot and wear out faster. Take your LED specs and plug them into this LED wizard and select "wiring diagram"... LED series parallel array wizard This will help you figure out the best way to wired your LEDs. With this power supply, I'm only going to have one string of LEDs, but it's more common to have a series of these strings of LEDs. If you put those number into the LED wizard, but use 9 volts for the power supply, you'll get a different array. -Loki
Step Bravo LED/fan housing... This is just a piece of plastic foam. It needs to be about 1/4" thicker than your fan. Use the can top to mark a circle on the plastic foam. And cut the piece out. It should fit very snuggly into the top of the can... Cut the piece into two circle pieces, one as thick as your fan. Ah, the fan... it's a 12vdc @ 100mA PC fan. -Loki
Step 3 Wiring the LEDs... Just poke the LED leads through the plastic foam and twist them together with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. The hard part here is making sure you wire the right leads together. LEDs have a positive and negative wire... You want to make sure you don't get them mixed up, or you're lights won't turn on... I just need 9 LEDs, wired positive to negative with a resistor at the end. You can poke and twist the resistor wires too. Once you have everything wired, you can >>carefully<< hook up your power supply and make sure they work, but be careful, if you short out a power lead on a LED, you could fry it. -Loki
Step... /Puff Solder that shit together... Connect the negative leads of the power supply, LEDs and fan and well, solder them... same with positive leads... Trim the extra wire... When you plug the power supply in, the LEDs and fan should come on... if not, you fucked something up... Step... /Puff /Puff LED/fan assembly assembly... Take the other half of the plastic foam disc and mark out where the fan is going to sit... cut that out. Now, hot glue the fan to the top of the LED disc... tuck all the wires under there, so it looks all neat. Then glue the piece of plastic foam you just cut out around the fan and to the LED disc. Once everything is glued together, trim it up and cut out the part in front of the fan output. The last piece of the LED/fan assembly is a piece of plastic cut out of a milk/water jug. You'll have to find the right jugs, not all have the indented circle in the sides. It's that shape you want. Cut it to fit tightly into the top of the can with a decent sized hole in the middle. Glue it with the beveled edges down. -Loki
Step /Pass Okay... that's it for tonight... I still need a few more things. I didn't have a milk/water jug to finish this piece, so the pics are of the original can's lights. When it's altogether, you should be able to see it work by blowing some smoke over the can... if it sucks it in, it's working.. if not, somethings not tight enough... After everythings together, you can bend the LEDs so they are all aligned... I didn't bother, since I don't have the last piece... -Loki
Again thanks everyone for all your kind words... now, on with the DIY... Step Whatever... Finishing the LED/fan assembly... I found I did have an old milk jug. Just cut out the indentation, carefully, so it fits tightly in the can. Then lay it over your fan and mark the center of the intake. Cut out a quarter sized hole. Take some hot glue and make a bead around the fan, as a sort of gasket and glue the piece down. Then go around the edges with hot glue... When it's in the can and turned on, you should be able to feel air being pulled into the can. -Loki
Step... The plant holding part... This is any straight sided plastic bottle. You want enough space between the can and the insert for the power wire to fit between them. Cut the bottle so it's a 1/4" to a 1/2" above the top of the bottom can and put a couple drain holes at the bottom. Then wrap the bottle piece with duct tape until it just fits into the can and cut out a channel for the power wire... -Loki
Final Step... Colar piece... This will align the two halves of the can and prevent light leaking out. Cut a strip of plastic out of a two liter bottle about two inches wide and long enough to wrap around the can a little. Line the inside of the strip with metalic duct tape and trim it to about the size of the tape. Now, put the power wire through the bottom can hole, slide in the plastic bottle piece... put the colar around the wire and slide it between the can and bottle piece and slide the top on... and that's it. -Loki
Random thoughts... I haven't tried it, but I think you could put a dryer sheet around the outside of the colar for odor control. I'm not too concerned about smell, so I didn't really do anything about it. Until the last couple weeks, a couple squirts of Febreze around the can does the job. I should have used a lighter gauge power wire... It'd work as is, but when you're puttig the top on, you have to be careful you don't strangle your plant. A stiff power wire makes that harder to do... -Loki
do you also cut a notch out of the foam holding the LEDS so the breeze from the centrifugal blower can get to the plant
Is there a way to make the plant a tiny bit bigger? not much, just increase its height by a couple inches? like could you put another half a can section in there somehow so the plant could grow slightly taller?