Vostok, I want you to look through my journal on the first page or second, there a segment about how I used an HID car light to grow plants in a car from the east coast to the west coast of the USA. Before I put that setup in my car, I used it on the east coast inside my room, with a 12V 4amp car battery charger. This light is fantastic, perfect spectrum for VEG, gives off little to no heat, and worked great for me. You should consider this light for supplemental lighting. Like underneath the canopy or on the sides where the light from you main lamp wont reach. This link is for 2 lights, and 2 drivers, all you have to do is hook it up to a car battery, or your charger, and your good to go. HID CONVERSION XENON KIT H1 H4 H7 H11 9005 9006 GREEN | eBay
Well ...Daman2u1, I am intrigued and amazed. I like this site even more every day. To be able to have access to so much information from great minds like yours and willing to share with everyone for no personal interest.... I am glad there are guys like you and will keep up with your journals hoping your prototype works. Aww ... Man. I really feel the urge to know how to give +rep. I never had the interest to find out how until I read this thread. Cause you are "Da Man" 2 u 1 .... You rock!!!
What kind of LEDs are those? What is the operating voltage and current of each? Seems to me they are not SMD LEDs, but through hole ones that don't output nearly as much power and light as the SMD high powered LEDs. Yes, they run hotter, but can come on MCPCBs that can easily be attached to heat sinks using thermal adhesive. What you want for growing is the SMD high powered LEDs that run 1W and over. Those you will want right on top of the plant or they will not do much. Penetration probably isn't very far if they don't run over 1 Watt each. Here is a 25 Watt side light I put together recently. Heatsink is even DIY out of flat aluminum stock and 1.5 inch angle aluminum. I'm adding panels to a 250 Watt HPS and they help. There is also a thin DIY 15 Watt blue LED array next to it.
Very impressiv sir. And I agree with everything you said. I wanted to use 1W LED's, I just didn't have the money, or a power supply to run it. This was a dry run just for fun. When some money starts flowing from new jobs, I will be improving my design, and adding more powerful LED's. This was a reactive measure because one of my plants grew so tall, that i NEEDED something. The exact LED I used was from SUPER BRIGHT LED'S .com. There should be a link on this thread on the first page for the exact spec sheet.
Your too kind sir, just applying what I learned from my two years in electrical engineering. The world lives on the breath of information. Those who seek to limit the flow truly feel that ignorance is bliss, and they should pass on and let those who appreciate information rise up.
I see, I guess I skipped over that post with the datasheet and other build info. If you ran them all in parallel off of 5V, they would likely die off quick. The max voltage rating on the spec sheet is 2.5V, typical voltage is 2.2V@20mA. Are you using a power resistor in-line or something to drop the voltage? Unless you set up a constant current driver at 20-40mA or constant voltage driver at 2.2-2.4V, this is not optimal for LEDs and performance/efficiency. You can regulate voltage with an LM317 IC and a couple extra components. This is what I would suggest rather than hook a power resistor in-line with the supply. What do you get for voltage measurements across the LEDs. Test a bunch and make sure there is little to no variance. If there is a variance + or - .3V, a constant voltage driver will make your light last longer. So assuming they are driven at 2.2V and .02A, they would have .044 Watts of power each. 100 of these gives 4.4 Watts. Get them as close to the leaves/buds as you can in the areas you want to illuminate more. At that power, you have little to no penetration. The light may appear bright from far away, but photons are what matter for plants. Photon count drops off pretty fast with that little power output. It is a good learning experience though, I love playing with my LEDs. Keep it up man, you are on your way.
You know your shit, and I look forward to further collaboration on this with you. I don't think a couple volts extra are gonna really kill the life span of these, and no matter what it's mo only option. The variable outputs only have a max of 600mA. So the fixed 5V 4amp OUTPUT is my only option. When i get back on my feet financially, I plan on doing this right, and a huge scale. I need one hell of a DC power supply, and I will use 1W LED's. Off to work now for the second job. Peace
I too have my electrical eng. degree. Once I saw some threads on LEDs for growing, I had to dive right in. I don't trust the online vendors though. Most of those units are built in China and with inferior LED emitters that are often over/under driven. Yes, they are damn expensive. The 70 Watts I have now were around $200 just in LEDs. For the rest I plan to build I will need about $600 for the components. This will give me the rest of the ~150-190 Watts I need, depending on how hard I drive them. Here is my BoM if you want a reference. No heat sink parts though. I use scrap aluminum I can get through various sources.
I kinda figured you had a degree. I Just landed a good job in vegas serving tables, so the money will be flowing soon. And as soon as my gargantuan list of bills is caught up on, I am gonna do this as hardcore as my wallet will allow me. I am never daunted by a challenge, especially one like this that could have so many beneficiary aspects it. My first crop is harvested on OCT 1, and hopefully I can make some money off that, as well as eliminating that pesky $400 a month bill. You know the one.........I smoke alot. This first crop will be small, being that half of the plants where scrapped because they where males (I started this grow opp from NON feminized seeds). So I would say in the next 3 weeks I will be taking this to the next level.
With the 6 CFL's, your gonna draw 156 W. My LED setup draws 4-5. But I want to upgrade to 1W LED's, so, I guess If you used less than 156 1W LED, the LED setup draws less energy.
My current setup is lacking in power. It's purely a supplemental element. Even more than that, it was a reactive measure because one plant grew too tall and I needed something. I lacked funds to implement proper 1W LED's to a sufficient LED system. There are certain LED's with specific nanometer wavelengths that accurately mimic the proper stages of development pertaining to flowering plants. If you look on the first page or so of this thread, someone posted the proper wavelengths for the specific stages of development. In Layman terms: Blue for VEG, Red for Flower, but it gets alot more deeper than that of course. There is a spectrum roughly from 0 to 1000 nanometers, each area promoting certain development. I know I just kinda rambled on and on a bit, but I have been at both my jobs for 10 hours today, and just smoked and drank scotch for 4 hours, I might babel a bit.
Eliminating the need to buy weed on the streets is the key. You start saving money after the first harvest. I was able to upgrade my cabinet slowly over time as I got harvests in. I am running perpetual with three different cycles giving me 3-4 oz. per cycle (month). That is the way to go IMO. Keeps me busy, but I like the turnaround. I can't trim 12 oz. of weed at a pop or I would go insane. Staggering it keeps my hands from blistering. After some harvests come in, you can gradually buy your LED parts to add. They add benefits of light coverage with very little heat gain. I would still use the CFLs also. I like the combo better than the sole LED route. In the summer my cab gets a bit warm though, but they push through the heat.
Neither. Power companies don't really care what you use for power, just pay your bill. You would need way over 10k Watts of light before raising suspicion.
This title is misleading because for 30 bucks you can make an incredibly low powered setup, you bought 100 x 0.088 watt LED's = 8.8w total. You need 1w 350mA LED's
i read that you could actually use led christmas tree lights as grow lights...you just gotta use the red and blue ones.