Diy vertical LED grow light

Hey everyone, have not posted in years, just trying to get up to speed on the whole new technology of led lighting technology.

I have been reading a fair amount about about people building diy led strips to light a flat garden but was curious as to if anyone had played around with building a vertical light to sink in the middle of a collaseum type grow.

The plants would start off around 2' from the light and finish around 6 to 9"

I am noticing that most are spacing their led arrays around 1' in the horizontal strips but the only Comercial vertical led light I saw seems to have the lights closer together.

Curious to any advice for this old timer to set me on a new path of tinkering.


Anyone attempt a diy vertical light array?

Thanks

I believe that these LED strips that Cutter sell are for vertical grows

http://cutter.com.au/products.php?cat=Leds+on+Linear+PCB

I have not tried them myself.

I see a problem with the big distance in the beginning of the grow.
Maybe it would work if one could make a lamp that can be " folded in and out " , so that the lamp is like a cylinder that can change diameter.
Otherwise you could use a lamp with very high output and then dim it when the plants come closer, could also be done with double number of diodes and then shut off the half of them when plants get close.
Just random thoughts from the top of my head.

Rilla

OK so I am just getting up to speed on these new led lights, do they not yet have the punch of a hps bulb would have? I have used 600w hps bulbs in a stadium style vertical setup to great success and was wondering if I could replicate that with led's. I like the idea of overdriving the led's till the plant grows closer then dialing it down, but if it puts out like a 600w bulb why would I have too?

I was thinking of fabricating something like this with replaceable led arrays...

http://plantozoid.com/extreme-420x-pro-vertical-led-grow-light-review/

I was thinking I could hook up a inline fan to cool the unit and exhaust it out of the room.

Just curious if this is feasible or do lcds not have near the punch of a 600w hps?

Thanks for your patience getting me back up to speed.. I am newly retired and have time to tinker! Lol

If you use Cree cobs they have the power but then they will have to be dimmed when the plants gets too close, and you should not overdrive leds, dim instead.
It will also cost a bit if you should use 16 big cobs, I would still prefer hps in a cool tube.

Rilla

the isue i see with this are:

cost
cob thermal management*
fixture design.

if you start a project/report on this i'll follow it, for sure.

may i suggest to post here before buying any component? just to give a check and if possible/needed some form of feedback on the part you are going to get.

once the cob ceramic layer is attached to a heatsink, with a nice thermal greese, you should be on the safe side.
the real heat come from a high current, if you drive your cob, let's say, at 700mA or lower this won't be a big issue, a passive heatsink should be enough.

remeber this:
higher the current more the lumen output, but less ppf overall.
the less the current the more cob you'll need to get a similar output to, let's say a 600w hps.

for some more specific math on efficiency and stuff like that refer to Dion post

*mostly depends on what current you'll use with the cob.

here we go. hail hail Pet

I Imagine a aluminium cab full of leds.

GoeRilla said:

If you use Cree cobs they have the power but then they will have to be dimmed when the plants gets too close, and you should not overdrive leds, dim instead.
It will also cost a bit if you should use 16 big cobs, I would still prefer hps in a cool tube.

Rilla

Click to expand...

Cree says it's ridiculous to dim: not sure they meant for growing, longevity, or both. I suppose if your tent/height is too low, you have no choice but to dim

I believe the Cree guys were saying that in terms of cost/ppfd but who knows.

Don't want to hijack a thread, I was searching for info from others doing vertical grows with LED's. I think that there is a lot of potential, but perhaps not the "traditional" hanging HPS "donut" style. Certainly bears some discussion and experimentation IMO.

In the past year I've helped a friend set up a closet with PPK system. These don't lend themselves to pulling out of the closet for maintenance, and trying to get into a 4' x 4' space packed with bushes isn't fun. We've reworked that closet with a 300w LED panel in each corner vertically, but the jury is out on how well it's gonna work - another month or so till harvest.

As an experiment I reworked my old grow box, about 42" x 18" x 42". I've used vertical lighting over the years, always micro grows - first with 150w HPS. In a small box, heat is a big problem, and the last couple years I've gone to LED's. After a run or two with standard mount, it seemed to me that in my cabinet - roughly the size of a kitchen sink cab, extended up to give me about 42" total height. With my PPK setup it's 15" to the top of medium, and with the need to keep light 12" above plants, plus a few inches of height lost even mounting it flush to the ceiling - not a lot of bud space in between.

This is my current box, it has two PPK planters using 1 gallon feed pans, sitting on top of 5 gallon totes which are plumbed together. Can't see in pic, but I have 3 totes one is just for a reservoir and houses the pump. It sits between the first plant and the vertical LED panel, to keep some distance from the light. Plan is for a 10 week flower period, chopping one plant every 5 weeks.

My photo skills suck, but here is plant 1, flipped lights 1 week later:


Around day 47 - I neglected it, most of the taller branches fell over and I tied them back a bit.


This shows a bit of overall cab, I have a few 10w led bulbs stuck around the left side, I'll move the plant you can barely see in the far left of pic, to the right side spot after harvest. Apologies for the pics, it really looks burnt/bleached from the led


Using a roll of the reflective insulation from Lowes, I added the top piece and bottom pieces over the planters. Hoping the curved shape will help a bit to keep the light directed. I held phone against left wall to take pic, the led is a MarsHydro Reflector 48, ~150w I think. You can see the 10w bulb, ordinary household warm leds with the plastic globes removed. You can tell how well the light penetrates sideways.


From the other end:

I'll be chopping in the next day or two, curious to see the result. I really should have spent time training & trimming, there are still so many branches laying down with buds I just let it go.

FWIW, this looks like an ultimate vertical LED rig - "WOG" Wall Of Green? lol
https://www.lightrail3.com/lightrail-videos/

Ive been seriously considering the led in a vert system myself
my rooms smallish at 6x4x7'
i run a circle jurk around a 2.2k stack of 3 bulbs and its dope, but i have another 2.5x4' feet of wall space this way im missing out on.



thing is, i believe youd need to let go of the whole donut idea
as in think flat against the wall, and depending on your vertical sections/plants build a led panel for say a 3x3 area.

the other option is build a 8 cxb3590 and fire 4 each side 180* apart
and use a lightrail this way you can still get in and out of the room

i keep running into the realities, thats a big area the leds will take up, 3x the size of a bulb, like do i wanna be yanking down lights everytime i need to work?

BUT

thats my room

i can see in my minds eye

a 8x8 or bigger/longer room

a 8 foot wall with say 3-4 girls split open with a 3-4 cob rig each pot
very expensive yes
ive calculated even using the vero29's @22$ it would run about $400 per 4x rig prolly slightly more

i could see this being a feasable commercial method in my head and with light mover yeah, you could prolly maximize with the minimum

but gotdamn

leds still aint there yet for me personally
if i was running a bigger room, yeah id prolly play around
but im kinda in a room thats not quite big enough for normal horizontal style which is where this setup is designed for
nor small enough to necesitate an led rig for size/heat

if im gonna drop 400+ for a new light
im getting a cmh instead

i really wanna play around with these things, i just need a paradigm shift to see how it would work for me

Check out the Bridgelux BXEB line of LED strips. They are available in 11", 22" and 44" lengths. 22v for the 11 and 22", 44v for the 44" strip. If you made a 4' column of strips hung from a light rail, could probably be done for a decent price. Cheap enough where I'm considering building one for my first vert.

After some stellar results flowering with the vero29 c @1400ma, I've been bouncing some ideas around in my head for a vertical/bare bulb style led setup similar to the Heath 5 lamp X or a Superweed style tree grown around the strips and screen.

attach a group of Samsung strips to some aluminum flat stock form that into an octagon and place that where you would place your hps bulb. You can make the strips as much as a foot in diameter and get some good lumens out of that. Mount a fan on top and pull cool air upo from bottom and you have a horizontal grow

Hey Uncle Freedom!

You've had some good advice from knowledgeable folks so far; have you come up with any fun new lights yet?

For a little more inspiration, I'll post a pic of one of the fixtures I just put together below. It's a (potential) 480w DIY LED vert flowering light, designed for a 4x4 tent, but installed in a 3x3, and dimmed to about 60-75%.

It's only been active a couple weeks so far, so I can't give any definitive results on performance yet, but I'll try to answer questions, if you have any.

Oh, the plants pictured below started flowering in a 4x4, around the 200w vert veg light that I built prior to this flowering one, so I have some faith in the LEDs so far. I'm still looking forward to seeing how plants perform through a complete cycle under LEDs, but feeling positive about the results once the learning curve is balanced lol

I also have some experience on using LED grow lights. Here is my room.



I mainly adopts the 1000W grow lights for the cannabis. And I found that the brightness and life span is pretty much satisfactory. The points to note is that we should not place the light to close to the plant; otherwise, the leaves will be decolorized.