Klompen
Active member
I am fairly new to the world of building LED lights, but so far I have mostly played with easy-to-use, but hard-to-cool 50W "driverless" COB lights. They haven't been without issue and they certainly aren't the most efficient, but I certainly think they have been worth the money. I started out with about 1/3 4000K white COBs and 2/3 "Blurple" "full spectrum". Most of the white COBS actually burned out fairly fast, but the blurples have toughed it out for more than a month of continuous use so far(I run my autos at 24/0).
One of the lights I made for my current setup using driverless COBs:
Here's a shot of it and the other one I made in action(you can see what an odd mix my side-lighting is):
There is a new generation of driverless COB lights available now that run cooler and better in general, but I am exploring other options. Most importantly, the type of growing I am doing involves a lot of side lighting. I want to surround the plants in light, but have a very intense overhead fixture. Each stall in my new grow chamber will be about 16" wide and 24" deep, with maybe up to 4-5' of clearance. If I could put a flat panel on each side of the stall, I could really bathe them in light. Unfortunately I am having a really hard time finding a specifically horticultural panel that is small enough and cheap enough is hard.
Here is a picture of the eBay panels I am looking at:
There are some good-looking panel lights on ebay that are basically an ultra thin panel that is about 1 square foot and has 225 LEDs running about 22W. They claim efficacy of about 157 Lm/W, but at about 20 bucks a piece that would add up to a lot of money since I would need 16 of them. Driverless COBs would probably be too hot for side lights and I don't have 350 dollars to dump on those panels. Plus, the COBs are 50W each and I don't need to put 250W per plant.
Thing is, there are a lot of very cheap panels online if I am willing to go with a non-grow panel. I just don't know how "regular" diodes compare to "full spectrum" diodes for growing. I need to find a solution soon though as I will be moving to my new cabinet within the next couple weeks as my current grow finishes. How would regular panels like these compare?
One of the lights I made for my current setup using driverless COBs:
Here's a shot of it and the other one I made in action(you can see what an odd mix my side-lighting is):
There is a new generation of driverless COB lights available now that run cooler and better in general, but I am exploring other options. Most importantly, the type of growing I am doing involves a lot of side lighting. I want to surround the plants in light, but have a very intense overhead fixture. Each stall in my new grow chamber will be about 16" wide and 24" deep, with maybe up to 4-5' of clearance. If I could put a flat panel on each side of the stall, I could really bathe them in light. Unfortunately I am having a really hard time finding a specifically horticultural panel that is small enough and cheap enough is hard.
Here is a picture of the eBay panels I am looking at:
There are some good-looking panel lights on ebay that are basically an ultra thin panel that is about 1 square foot and has 225 LEDs running about 22W. They claim efficacy of about 157 Lm/W, but at about 20 bucks a piece that would add up to a lot of money since I would need 16 of them. Driverless COBs would probably be too hot for side lights and I don't have 350 dollars to dump on those panels. Plus, the COBs are 50W each and I don't need to put 250W per plant.
Thing is, there are a lot of very cheap panels online if I am willing to go with a non-grow panel. I just don't know how "regular" diodes compare to "full spectrum" diodes for growing. I need to find a solution soon though as I will be moving to my new cabinet within the next couple weeks as my current grow finishes. How would regular panels like these compare?