Pimp your led

[positivity]

Finally got my first led project done
And by some miraçle it actually turned on!

90w pro source illuminator. Worked well except for long nodes, wasn't quite satisfied.
Replaced drivers with a 120w inventronics 2100ma and 16 xml l2. Reused everything else including wiring and plugs. 7 ww, 6 nw, 3 cw. Took about 4 hours to put together.

In now runs at about 120w and can be dimmed down to 20w. Cost about $250. Pretty happy so far, it's running cooler than I expected. Will be my new veg light. Will update with growth results after I've run it for a while.

 

[WeedIsGod]

Looks cool. I don't even wanna know what's going on in pic#1. >_<

Why didn't you just buy a phat heat sink, though, and start from scratch?

Can you shave some of the plastic off the frame to help more of the light escape?

 

[positivity]

Pic 1 is what I think of 1w diodes.
I did consider scratch but it would have cost twice as much I also really liked the idea of not wasting a perfectly good housing.
I am considering trimming the housing for sure. I almost put the heatsink on the outside of the case but then it would have started to look like Frankenstein. The way it is now it looks nice and clean, it's plenty bright, quiet, dimmable. Everything I wanted in a small veg light. Too bad nobody sells one for a good price.
Oh yah..and when an improved xml comes out I unscrew the led and pop in a new one. Find me a commercial led that does that....

 

[habeeb]

now that ingenuity and motivation.. bravo


let us know.. in my testing, I'm not liking the CW.. maybe it's just me, maybe I can't grow.. but I'm finding the NW the key to success. please let us know, as there's too few of us, and would like to get some info in before they hit the next chip out..


nice work

 

[positivity]

Thanks habeeb

I have a panel I got from china that had half of the leds switched out for cree cool white. The rest were standard red and blue. I thought it would be a great veg light with the cool white. But that has been far from the case. The plants were not thriving at all and were almost dying.


That's why on this panel I just put three in for extra variety. Cool white heavy did not work well, so now I'm trying a more mixed spectrum with warm and neutral heavy as that seems to be working for a few people.

So far in just 48hrs the plants have responded wonderfully. Very healthy, beautiful green growth so far. One plant that was near death has started growing again, a very good sign the spectrum is working.

Will update after a few weeks of observation..

Needless to say the cool white panel that hasn't worked well will also be modified similarly. Perhaps I will try all neutral white to note growth differences.

 

[PetFlora]

Cool idea and great title

I see a biz op retro-fitting

Did the $250 include the ufo purchase, or just the upgrades?

CW brings nothing to the table that isn't already covered with NW If you want to veg, mix NW + WW ~ 6:1 should take the plants through first 7 days of flower

 

[positivity]

Yah..it's all experimenting at this point

After habeeb showed ww keeps them nice and green you may not even need nw

But for this panel I kinda looked at it like a woman...some parts you hit hard...and some parts you just tickle a little.

The panel is about 5 years old or so, whenever prosource first came out. It did a good job but some of the nodes were crazy long compared to other setups I've seen. The 250 was just parts...

 

[positivity]

Version 2.0


Tried to improve light spread and cooling. Light spread worked, cooling not so much. I think the small sink contained was taking advantage of the air swirling around the housing.

So in conclusion. Either way works, probably prefer this way since all the light gets out. At 2100ma 100% it gets pretty darn hot. I can still hold the plate but, yah, it's hot. At 70% to 80% power it's just warm.

I knew it would be too much power at 100% but I wanted to see it for myself. 1650ma with a thermostat to trigger it off in case of fan failure would probably be a sweet spot and highly effective veg light.

I will be taking this one step further with a new beefy heatsink on the way. Śince the spectrum is working so well it will be worth it.

The plant in the pic was near death and has rebounded with shiny green growth. Lucky I was confident in my soil and fert regime and identified it as a light problem.

On a side note. I put 50w fluorescents while working on my light. The xmls output is amazing compared to the fluorescent at same wattage

 

[PetFlora]

She's making a fine recovery!

I always feel gratified whenever I save a plant that I somehow managed to abuse: a few from death's door have rewarded me with some fine smoke for my efforts. Maybe not as much as had I not abused them, but more than enough to make the effort worth while.

I wonder whether a CPU heat sink would do the job, even if piggybacked over your current heat sink.

Something like this. Maybe they are available with bigger pad/contact areas

http://www.amazon.com/Silverstone-T...f=sr_1_60?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1377452785&sr=1-60

 

[positivity]

I put two of these between the integrated leds in my noah 4. They work well but it's more of a band aid fix compared to a larger heatsink

I took advantage of the heatsink USA coupon code. It was about $55 for a 24" t slot heatsink. Should give me an awesome spread of light and need minimal cooling...plus lots more room for leds if I feel the need

 

[positivity]

I was going to make a new thread for this but it still kind of falls under pimp your led since ill be reusing a housing and some of its components.

Looking at building a 300w flowering fixture. I've been studying up a lot and have formed quite a few opinions but I still value all input from others.

The drivers have been chosen, all inventronics, they seem to be a solid unit. Leds count are what the drivers will allow. Two 120w 2100ma for 32 xmls. One 120w 700ma for 18 3up Philips deep red and 6 semiled uv violet.

Trying to keep it simple yet effective.

Theory behind just deep red is that the xmls seem to have ample 630. 660 should allow the plants to fill out more than without.

No far red since rrog seemed to have a quick flowering response and the xmls also show some in their spectrum.

Habeeb has shown just warm to work well but I think the extra neutral can only help.

And just a little uv as too much seems to harm plants ala neekz. Indoor always seems to lag a little behind outdoor in potency so I'd like to try uv out.

One possible variation could be in the 3up Philips deep red. I could change one of the leds to any other philips 3w led. Maybe in a few of them put a green led? Or blue?

So here's the layout on a 24" heatsink USA t slot
Yellow is xml warm
Blue is xml neutral
Red is 3up Philips deep red. Normally 1.4w stacked for 4.2w and to save space
Pink is semiled uv

Any comments or suggestions welcome

This will be for a 3x2 space max @ 50w sq/ft

 

[positivity]

Not to scale. Leds should have ample spacing

 

[PetFlora]

Look at your drawing IF possible stagger every other row by half

This will significantly increase the balance of lumens over the entire foot print

 

[habeeb]

positivity,

one question, what's the distance to canopy? as I'm seeing a little longer internodes then what I'm use to, also your light should be plenty bright so it shouldn't be throwing that.. you can get it pretty damn close, I know you have more watts in the area then I do, but should be able to get it very close.

love the idea, I'm planning a 330 watt panel myself right now.. well two of them.. thinking to do some cobs mixed with reds, and then a all xm-l2 with some reds..

honestly, at this point in flower with my WW panels, I'm thinking some 660 is in order, and to switch some of the WW 3000k to 2700k .. hear me out everyone. if you look at the charts, the deeper you go into WW, the less light, but that's because of the reds. you also though get a nice bonus of better CRI, and more red spectrum. that's my thoughts anyways.. I don't know how many to switch, I'm not thinking like half, maybe like 4 ( I have 18 per panel ) .. just keep that in mind, as when we talk about WW, we need to talk specific brand, and then what spectrum ( 3500k / 3000k / 2700k .. ) . the good thing is I think the market is wanting to shift to better CRI, so that helps us as you can see the plant better, and more red spectrum, so they need to play building the red department.. all good things for us..

obviously everything is theory, but experiment on.. love your attitude, too few willing to do... as petflora said, stagger the LED.. the downfall of design is trying to equal the light, which we do far from good at.. I'm thinking oversized sinks / odd layouts / different lens angles' ...

what actual nm UV are you thinking to do? I also say no no on the green led, there should be more then enough with all the whites.


keep in mind this chart.. just for reference..



another thing you might want to consider. the meanwell LLD drivers.. they only max out at 1000ma / and 56 volts, but the dc to dc drivers are making headway.. might not work if your driving the xm-l2 at 6 watts though, as they'll only do 3. there is some 1400ma ones from another company.... just throwing that out there

 

[positivity]

Canopy distance was at about 30" until recently. My mothers were already stressed and I would have hated to lose them, so they were being babied. Now I have it at about 16" or so to get the right spread. They were stretching with the light raised but still less than what the stock light did. Also only running it at 60w to keep the small heatsink cool. So maybe about 1000ma instead of 2100ma. It runs nice and cool at that level.

I also noticed the spectrum shift as the xmls got warmer. I haven't been able to find a good bin of 2700k mounted on stars though. Not sure i want to tackle reflow yet. My warms are 3200k.

As far as staggering I will try my best but with enough headroom I think the colors should blend fine.

For uv the best I could find was 405 nm. There seems to be a drop in the xml there so I thought it would be a good fit. I'm also including cool blue at 480 nm and far red at 735 nm in all small proportions. That should hit almost everything in the important spectrums which seems to be a good way to avoid spectrum problems. The light should still be tuned for flowering, but with small amounts of the missing spectrum.

I do have one important question. If anyone has a definitive answer please share!

I wanted to run all leds except for xmls on one 120w 700ma inventronics driver. That would greatly simplify everything. I have seen talk that different voltages even though the same current can cause problems. The leds all fall under the wattage and min / max voltage requirements

Can I run leds with voltages of 2.4v, 3.4v, 3.5v, and the 735 nm at 9v on the same driver?

I'm thinking not. But maybe just put the 9v on its own small driver? And the rest should be close enough hopefully?

It seems the safest setup is three drivers for the three voltage ranges. It will just take up more space and probably up my overall wattage. Which might not really be a bad thing...

 

[positivity]

On another note my heatsink USA 24" t slot came in. It makes every other heatsink in my fixture collection look like tin foil....lol

It would be pretty cool if it could passively cool 16 xmls at 2100ma. Maybe a tiny 3" noctua fan I have laying around would do it. We will see soon...

 

[positivity]

positivity,




keep in mind this chart.. just for reference..
[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=44751&pictureid=1130100&thumb=1]View Image[/url]


Gotcha. Almost forgot about that chart. 75% in the warm range.
Lucky I'm taking my time on the big light. It's going to be quite expensive so there's a lot of figuring to do. Should be worth it though...I think it'll be an upgrade able, cool running, efficient, BEAST

 

[Neekz]

Version 2.0
[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=46217&pictureid=1127695&thumb=1]View Image[/url] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=46217&pictureid=1127694&thumb=1]View Image[/url]

Here's what I did. Fashion L-brackets out of metal strapping... Plenty of airflow, and the fans nice and close...

 

[positivity]

I knew I couldn't have the only pimped led

I'll definitely be using strapping or something similar to get my housing mated to the t slot sink

Thanks for the idea and example

 

[positivity]

Version 3.0

The UFO has landed

She's a superfreak...superfreak....she's superfreaky

If she ran any cooler she would need an igloo