Not to be apprehensive or forward, but, if you read the entire forum there was ulterior motives and restraints governing the design. And what i built did it's job rather nicely (for what it was). I know 1W are the magic answer. My discussions emphasize my interests in further experimenting. But my title is not so misleading. What i build works to a degree, as a pure supplemental lighting on a budget. I won't keep a new design of much more power and cost on this thread though, rest assured sir.
I would so love to build this...but... all i see are words spoken in a different language... any chance of making this uber easy and just: find the exact parts we need, like a parts list... show how they go together... and how to wire... this way there are no discrepancies write it for a tard.... Im very excited, but I've casted tons of money in the wind on other projects that I just get discouraged and drop... i'd love to have a diy light, but reading really does this diy no justice... hope you take this into consideration... and if you could also do a veg light that would be cool as well
I will most certainly try to revise the instructions to the laymen terms as best I can. It might be a few days, as I have 2 jobs, plus I maintain a very large garden. Look sometime next week for some simpler instructions
Hey DAMAN! after an extensive search I found these, almost foolproof, not bright enuf...JUST ADD MORE..lol
OP: Damn, man. You could have saved yourself money AND gotten brighter LED's on Ebay from China. I admit, those Piranha LED's look bright, but there's a ton of scatter from those lens bodies. A 90 degree viewing angle makes the LED look bright from many angles. It also means your precious red light is being sprayed everywhere. It's like washing your car with a lawn sprinkler. This Ebay auction for $5.59 total would have netted you a DIY light nearly 2x as bright for 1/3 the LED cost at the expense of only...what...less than 14% higher electrical usage? It doesn't state the viewing angle, but if it matches the pic of the LED on a countertop, it looks like a 20 degree viewing angle or perhaps a bit more. The additional focusing of that light will benefit your plants way more than scattering a little bit of red light all over a large surface area. 100x RED EXTRA BRIGHT LED LAMP 5MM 10000MCD& resistors | eBay They even come with resistors! Protip: many different printer power supplies are cheap, plentiful and powerful enough to run many 5mm LED's. Read the sticker or info on the underside, though. A 36VAC power supply won't help you much! I'm using a 13vDC @ 1.8A Canon bubblejet printer PS to run over 300 5mm LED's as we speak. I have a 12v computer fan running to cool it, but that's a small price to pay for a lot of red light... [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQoMnN5MWnQ]Sound-activated LED light stick - YouTube[/ame] My next LED experiment will be using solderless breadboards ($5 each on Amazon) with LED's/components punched into them as small, expandable grow supplement lights. The LED's will be ordered in bulk from Ebay and I'll use an old computer power supply to power it. Many solderless breadboards have dovetails so that they can be attached together end-to-end or side-by-side. One could build a few at a time (or one at a time) and attach them together in the future when more are made. One could even change individual LED's out if they burn out or if one wanted to change colors. Also: no soldering.
This May be helpful in learning about how to build your own LED Grow Light... Intro to Breadboard Electronics - YouTube
So I know I have been kind MIA on this fourm I started, I kinda closed up shop for a few months, but I am back at again, and I am about to start a new journal with my new grow setup. It's currently not based on LED's, that has to wait until I have more spare cash to experiment with. I plan on making this design much more powerful, and hopefully not much more expensive.
How about using a modified solderless breadboard instead of soldering every single LED to a solder-on breadboard? That way you can just push the leds in. My guess is it would take about 10 minutes to mount 100 leds that way.
Thezon, the bread boards I used had some common lines of conductivity, but i just "bled" solder to areas I needed for jumps, instead of using cumbersome wires which is a pain in the ass. I have soldering literately 1000's or LED's in my two years of electrical engineering, so i am pretty efficient at it. But there is always room for improvement. It's just a ratio of effectiveness to cost that i am trying to get right.
Here's a small concept I put together just to show you what I meant: Those are 3mm LEDs, because that's what I had at home. I didn't cut the legs since I'm going to use them for another project later on. The bridges are staples Anyway, those are 9 LEDs in parallell. The small breadboard I used has 23 rows and could hold approximately 22 x 8 = 176 of them, leaving one hole per row for power connections, and putting two LED legs in every hole. Two legs can't fit together with the bridge though, hence only 8 parallel LED:s per row. No soldering required. Just hook up power and ground wires to every other row and you're good to go. You might want to add a resistor to the main ground or power wire as well. If you are using 5mm LEDs, you might not be able to squeeze them in as tight as with 3mm LEDs.
3mm and 5mm LED's are far too week for growing. In fact the ones I used where week too. Those boards won't dissipate the heat generated by the proper LED's for growing. Plus I like how solder is secure and wont fall out or move.
Have any info about using this for vegging? Right now I have a few CFLs for my mother and its baby (a clone that I will veg to about a foot) then I throw them outside to flower. With electricity $0.29+ a kwh, Id like to keep it down as much as possible, thats why I was thinking of LEDs. Plus living in hawaii the temps are always a concern (Got it finally at a steady 78-81). Thanks DAMAN2U1
Nice work with the LED's. im thinking build 1 myself and i make a small research about that. one of the things is that you have to put one blue led for each 2 red, so you can have different types of spectrum. but like i saw here you need red spectrum to flowering and blue for vegetative,right? and you think if i can get 8 leds f 10w each i will have 80w in led, but maybe in a practical way i will have more. greetings from Portugal
After a year of researching LED grow lights I built my own. I just finished it today and hope to have complete results of how it works out after a couple of cycles. I have a bit of the "Home Improvement" mentality so I did get a little overboard with the finished light measuring approx. 22" X 23" with the total actual draw of 338.67 Watts. If my calculations are correct it is the will put out a little more light 1000 Watt bulb. The 240 Watt BlackStar Grow light is only approx. 130 Watts and currently lists for $278.95 on ebay. My total cost for the build including the materials to build the casing, etc. is about $290. I will be paring my light with a DWC (Bubbleponics) and special layout to see how it compairs to my traditional grow. I will be keeping precise notes for future use in tweeking/improving results.