Correction on the parts list: Change the Cinch Jones plugs to 3 pin connectors instead of 2.
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Correction on the parts list: Change the Cinch Jones plugs to 3 pin connectors instead of 2.
currently I have a 3'x18" cabinet with a procyon 100, 2 85 watt 3000k cfls and 3 10w 660nm spotlight arrays. I have 20 plants Scrog style in the cab. the procyon can't get the full 3' wide since I only have it about 12" above the tops( lack of space). I have the procyon in the center and then 1 cfl on each end. the plants that are the biggest are the ones receiving a good amount of the procyon and the cfls. However, the plants are all doing extremely well and I think I have comparable results to my 400w hps bulb in the same cabinet. they are almost as big as the hps, but they definitely have more trichomes and the buds are extremely dense. however, I don't think I would have the same result from just the procyon. the plants underneath the procyon are doing just as good as under my HPS, but It won't cover the same floor space as a 400w hps, as others have said. I think the procyon would do a 2'x2' cab good. I want to build another LED in the near future for in the cab and get rid of the cfl, but for now it works just fine. I have no air conditioner in my closet so using a HPS was out of the question this summer. therefore, I bought the procyon. if you have the money and understand what your buying I definitely recommend the procyon, but I believe you can build your own LED to work much better. if you have the time and know how.I have about 2-3 weeks left to grow and i'll try to get some pics soon.Quote:
Originally Posted by Projman
also as far a grams/watt/month or whatever he said, I don't see how that is relevant. since it all depends on the type of plant you are working with. I may be wrong, but I thought breed had a lot to do with the size of the final product. at least that is what my experience has been. I think to really judge a hps and LED you need to compare g/w/m with the same breed preferably clones.
You are right, yield can certainly differ from plant to plant and you would need clones to get a true comparison. .5 grams/watt/month is just a benchmark set in the Cervantes book in order to measure the effectiveness of your grow setup.
Also you do need some kind of defined numerical standard to compare experimental results. That is really no other kind of measurement that will work for comparision purposes besides g/w/m.
However, that does bring up a related issue. What kind of plants are going to do the best under LEDs? That's some more work that needs to be done.
Getting coverage with the brick type lamps like Procyn is a problem. You have to have them too far from the plants to get enough area. I personally think even 1 foot for LEDs is too far. That is about a normal distance for an HID light with a cooled hood.
If you can get your LEDs at 3 inches above the plants, Each LED delivers 16 times the power to the top of your plants compared to a 1 foot distance. You can also do away with focusing lenses since you really won't have too much wasted light.
If you can get the LED 1.5 inches above the canopy top, you will have 64 times the light power hitting the leaves. Of course you have to have the LEDs much more spread out.
I believe this is the major advantage of LEDs... getting them right on top of the plants. I seem to be in a minority with this opinion. All the commercial units concentrate their power on a small platform and expect the grower to have them 1 to 1.5 foot above the plants. I am taking some pictures tonight and will have them posted tomorrow.
By the way, don't be in a hurry to dump the CFLs. So far, the LED/CFL combo seems to be working much better then either CFLs or LEDS by themselves. In that configuration, they seem to be on par with a comparable wattage HPS.
Here is first pic of new project. This is the basic layout showing the frame and module placement. Each module will be moveable in the X,Y and Z axis. Some will also have a tilt or angle adjustment.
Redline,
I agree spreading the LEDs out will get much better results than a brick light. also, your light looks awesome and can't wait to see your results. heres some picks from my grow if anyone is curious.
Stup,Were those grown completely with the Procycn? They look really good.
Next step in the construction. Using 1 1/2" wide by 1/8" thick aluminum. I cut 3 long strips. The LED arrays will be attached to the brackets by the threaded adjuster.
Next, I cut two shorter strips. The power jacks will be mounted on these strips.
They will help support the longer mounting strips.
For some reason the forum is not letting me upload latest pics.
Got the pics to upload. 1st one shows the long strips for mounting lights. The second pic shows the shorter support crossbars.
lets try again.
OK, what are we talking about when we say spreading out the light? Are you saying 2x 50w is better than 1x 100w? Depends. You've got 100 watts illuminating one spot on your plant. That spot is getting good light, and other spots are getting marginal light. Now you divide that 100 watts into 2, and put one 50 watter on each side of the plant. Now 2 spots are getting half the light that one spot was getting. Which way will make the plant yield more? I'm betting same same. Kinda like topping makes more bud sites, but they are smaller so the end result is the same.
I could be wrong. It happened once before.
Ok I am looking into this. I am building closet set up, HID seems like a bad idea. So LED is the better selection. My area is only 2' X 3'. It seems like you are building them for a wider area then I will be dealing with. What size would you recommend? I would also like to have a wider light not a brick light, but i am not sure it would make a difference in this small a set up. There seem to be some serious obvious advantage to LEDs, at least for a cabinet/closet grower. Now I haven't bought anything, I want to design the system then buy the parts(get a solid concept of what I want).
You keep talking about putting things an 1 1/2", but if you do that a lot of the light energy for the bottom leafs would/could not be used. It is the same concept of you can have /light\ (wide) or you can have [light] very focused(which is what you are doing). Light reflect off the leaves and putting it a small distance(4'-6'?) away would be more effective it would seem. I guess what I am saying is that you can't over focus you light to much otherwise it would over shadow everything else? I don't think anyone has brought that up.
Maybe it would be better if you had more of a canopy top? That is why a goalie in soccer charges the player shooting because it makes the goal smaller. You are doing the same thing, by focusing to much light close you really aren't covering a wider area. Unless you have both blue and red light in each small section, which would take butt load of lights. (Maybe I am picturing things wrong?)
Also have you to taken into consideration too much of anything is bad(64 X the light, righteous)? A plant can only work so hard effectively? If they could work that hard would you need to keep close track of the water/nutrient level, it would drink a lot faster? Would this change nutrients up any? It seems doing a lot of these things would in effect only speed up growth not necessarily so much on yield(though there would be a small increase)?
You do have far more knowledge of LEDs, so I will listen to what you say these are just things I have questions about. Sorry for the twenty questions. I have been reading and understand some things, I need to know a bunch more before I get buying let alone building.
I dunno! I don't think anyone really has a handle yet on LED growing (including me). It is going to take a while to get thinks optimized. At this point we are all just screwing around, having fun.
I think a very flat growing surface is what is going to work with LEDs tThe penetration ,even on the best of them, suck. The reason I am placing lamps very close to the plants is because K2s have a very wide viewing angle of 160%.
Working with different viewing angles will play into your design. If I was using Crees with a 90 degree angle, I would probably have the lamps a couple of inches higher. Or if I was using a 30 degree lenses, the design parameters change again.
The array I am building now, will have 2 different types of lamps in each half so I can do some comparisons of different light angle and drive current.
Yup, I tend to agree with you regarding light on a single plant, no free lunch.
My designs are going to be more geared towards a green carpet as opposed to discrete plants like in the SNSealth initial grow.
[quote=redline]Stup,Were those grown completely with the Procycn? They look really good.
Not completely with a procyon. I have a 3' wide cabinet so I put 1 85 watt CFL on each end. But, the plant in the pictures is directly under the procyon and doesn't get any direct light from the cfls, but it gets some indirect light from them. also, they were vegged under cfl while I was waiting on the procyon. I think a 22" x 18" cab would be good with the procyon only. otherwise you need to put the procyon too high from the tops. I have 7, 5", pots across the 3' span. and the pots on each end don't get much light from the procyon at about 10" from the tops.
Placement should depend on lens angle, and I agree with redline that closer is better.
I have seen some very good results with CFL/LED combinations. You might try leaving the Procycn at 10" and filling in with CFLs.
That's not a bad idea, Just finished a pure LED grow.Quote:
Originally Posted by redline
The concept is proven.
I'm gonna throw a 42W CFL at one of my flower girls that's 4 weeks in and see if it beats the last crop
Got 2 girls scrogged together and one of them is lagging.
I'll point the CFL at shorty,
At the least, it can't hurt
Thanks for the wake-up
Weezard
ah.....The Perfect Elusive Equation...
Oh to be able to know what x is huh? xLEDs at x distance at xNm + xW CFL at x in from plants.
PLEASE GUYS!!!! Figure this out...Im countin on ya'll to answer this shit. My ass is trying 3 Procyons with 4 40W 3000k T12s now...Seems to be doing better than without the T12s, so who knows...
I agree we are not at 100% efficiency with LEDs alone yet...But we are getting there.
whiskeytango
VEEEERY medicated....:joint1:
Quote:
Originally Posted by SnSstealth
No gotta be perfect, brah.
Just gotta be good enough, ya?
Usin' less dan half da power,
built some LEDs an' gruesome flowers.:)
Overmedicated,
Sunday Weeze.
GOt a chance to do some more of the metal work. All this drilling, cutting, grinding, tapping really sucks up the time.
I needed to cut one more of the short supports from the 1/5 inch strap. This will be the only center support. The other two short straps will only be used for power delivery.
Picture shows the detail for end screw locating peg for the long straps that will support the light modules.
I am going to try and do as much mechanical work as needed on the individual modules before mounting LEDs. However, I am sure I will forget something and have to make some retro mods.
I hack sawed 1/4-20 threaded rod into 7 inches lengths. Then tapped a hole towards the center to the heat sink. This will be the vertical adjusting rod. Adjustment range will be slightly over 6 inches.
I am going to set up all modules where I can easily add on an adjustable bracket. This will allow me to mount a fan directly on the heat sink, incase area cooling is not adequate.
And/Or it will let me tilt the light up to 60 degrees. I only foresee using the tilt feature along the borders of the grow, when I want to direct the light inward.
whoops, forgot pic
redline do you ever use stars or do you just use the regular lights. I ordered 10 3w red stars on ebay to play with, China knock offs. I was gonna order a piece of the aluminum heatsink on ebay, but had no idea how big of a piece I would need or want him to cut. do you have any suggestions? thanks
I was looking at the adhesive. I don't know if it matters, but the artic silver is not fully electrically insulated, some LEDs need to be insulated from the heatsink. if you buy the artic aluminum adhesive it is fully electrically insulated.Quote:
Originally Posted by redline
also, someone said the heatsinks are not available now, but if you type in just "extrusion heatsink" in ebay you will get the heatsinks redline is talking about. if you buy from him make sure you get the "large" one and tell him to cut to your size. its like 3' wider for the same price. the large is 8.5 x 12" and the other is 5 3/8 x 12 for the same price.
I use both stars and bare emitters. My preference is with bare emitters since they are cheaper and I avoid an extra thermal barrier.
I mount emitters with artic alumina adhesive. Stars you can mount with any good grease like artic silver since most have most have slugs that are electrically inactive.
On emitters, you can also use arctic silver adhesive (not the grease). Like the alumina it is also a non-conductor. I believe the difference between the alumina adhesive and the silver adhesive is less of a capacitance effect. This has no bearing on LED applications.
For heat sink size, you need 9 square inches per watt of conductive surface with no fans.
I got some more pictures which I will post in a day or two. Progress is painfully slow.
I went to order some LM317's and I found all different knids. they have lm317T, AT, A, AEMP, AEMPX, etc. is there a difference in how they work or just the design. Also, what gauge wire should I use to wire 3w LEDs. if I use artic silver grease on a star will this hold the LED to the heatsink or do I need to use the adhesive to keep it attached? sorry for all the questions.
thanks
Quote:
Originally Posted by stupefacient
Aloha Stupefacient
Get da beeg one.:)
You want the T0-220 package
(three terminal with case for mounting on a heat sink)
And 20 gauge will work jus' fine for under 1 ampere.
Actually you could use 22 gauge for short runs. Easier to solder.
Regards, Weezard
"Can not display page" <Grumble grumble.>Quote:
Originally Posted by stupefacient
W.
Stup, you need to us a couple of screws to hold the Star to the heat sink.
That means drilling and tapping a couple of machine screw holes. They also have some self-drilling and self taping metal screws that might work. I bought some but have never tried them.
Aloha RLQuote:
Originally Posted by redline
I used self tapping, copper plated screws in an aluminum htsnk for my last light.
As long as the hole size is right, they work a treat!
Sure beats tapping copper.
Ciao,
Weezard
sorry for all the basic questions, but I have another one. I tried finding the answer online but no luck. I want to wire 10 in series. my question is do I just solder to one positive and negative pad or to both of them? I attached some pics with different examples I found online, but wasn't sure which one to use,
Thanks
The positives pads are connected to each other on the star, as are the negative pads, so use whichever pad is easiest, or looks better, it does not matter. But just one of each will work fine.Quote:
Originally Posted by stupefacient
I'd suggest that you wait and get them soldered before you glue them down, though.
Line things up and cut n strip the wires, then remove the stars from the heatsink and do your soldering, then screw, glue them to the heatsink.
If you glue them down first and then try to solder, you will need a honkin' big iron and some patience.
Don't ask me how I know:(
Havin' fun yet?
Weezard
:wtf::wtf: That third picture makes no sense.:wtf::wtf:Quote:
Originally Posted by stupefacient
Weeze
thanks weezard. I didn't think the 3rd picture made any sense that is why I asked you guys.
hi,
i am looking to build a similar set up to mcqueen and b0fin but have no way of contacting them. Have another thread started here -
Designing an LED grow light - GreenPassion.org - Dedicated to Medicinal Cannabis Cultivation and Education.
which seems to be current and am about to invest in some cree or K2s only wondering which are better.
also have seen these pop up recently on ebay and am wondering if they look like a better new technology to use? Here is my original question -
Before I go ahead and stock up on Crees or K2s (any idea which is preferable?)
has anyone seen these going? I am trying to find out who manufactures them but all I've seen so far is what is on ebay. Check out -
1x High-power brightness 10W RED LED 260Lm Save Power7V on eBay (end time 24-Sep-09 14:49:29 BST)
or
1 PC BRIGHTEST 25W WATT HIGH POWER WHITE LED 1400 Lumen on eBay (end time 26-Sep-09 11:38:00 BST)
Could these be the latest technology that I have been hearing rumours of?
any contact on this appreciated. go via the original thread i posted if this one is dead
ta
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