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Quantum Boards

OZZ_

OZZ_

Well-known member
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Goats said:
yeah, QBs have head room requirements for sure.

if you want to go LED and have your plants close to the lights, check out strip LEDs. seen people getting plants within a few inches with no adverse effects.
Click to expand...

Hi Goat, thanks for the input. I’m still debating on what kind of lighting would be best for that little cabinet. I’m seriously considering just slapping a 250w hps in there and call it a day. With that glass heat shield I’m certain temps would be fine.

With that being said, I’ll look into the strip LEDs you mention. What exactly are you referring to though? Have a link to an example? Strip LED is a bit vague seems there’s several different types

Thanks!
 
OZZ_

OZZ_

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Lost in a SOG said:
Solstrips possibly.
Click to expand...


Those solstrips look to be the perfect solution for my cab! Really appreciate the input guys. However, can anyone answer me this.... why do the HLG quantum boards need to have that much headspace, but the same wattage of solstrips doesn’t? They are both LEDs???
 
I

Ichabod Crane

Well-known member
Veteran
OZZ_ said:
Those solstrips look to be the perfect solution for my cab! Really appreciate the input guys. However, can anyone answer me this.... why do the HLG quantum boards need to have that much headspace, but the same wattage of solstrips doesn’t? They are both LEDs???
Click to expand...

Just a guess but the Quantum Boards are more point focused than the Solstrips. By this I mean that you can spread the strips out over a larger area because each is 1.6 inches wide and 15.75 inches long. 1 Solstrips are 288 diodes which is the same as one Quantum Board.

This means you can put the Solstrip end to end and be spread over 13.5 inches while the Quantum Board is still only 11.25 inches. And if you wanted you could put a gap between the strips for even more spread.

That said the density of the diodes on the Quantum Boards is not as high as the Solstrip. So there is less metal to transfer the heat away from the diodes. So run at the same wattage I would think the Solstrip diodes would run hotter with out a good heatsink.

All that aside the Solstrip is running a older Samsung diode than the Quantum Board is. You will get slightly better efficiency from the Quantum Board than from the Solstrip. But this will cost you 15% more for the Quantum Board.

So to me if you need to spread the light out the Solstrip is better. But if you want better efficiency and stronger point loaded light the Quantum Board is better.

If you run denser wattage I feel that the Quantum Board is better at getting heat away from the plants than the Solstrip.

I am comparing the Solstrip X3 and the Quantum Board 288 V2
 
M

morgandecaptain

Active member
The pre-built fixtures like the 550 are designed to meet a price point for sales just like most lights out there, they have 4 boards driven hard on a smaller heatsink to keep the price down, that said it means more head room. I prefer to build my own and run softer for higher efficiency and I can run mine at 16".
 
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Ichabod Crane

Well-known member
Veteran
morgandecaptain said:
The pre-built fixtures like the 550 are designed to meet a price point for sales just like most lights out there, they have 4 boards driven hard on a smaller heatsink to keep the price down, that said it means more head room. I prefer to build my own and run softer for higher efficiency and I can run mine at 16".
Click to expand...

Same here.
 
M

morgandecaptain

Active member





I noticed a small decrease in yield with the QB 96 Elites so this run I added some more reds, 630 and 660. Looks like the yield is back lol, GG#4 day 49.
 
M

morgandecaptain

Active member
Change of plan on the next Elite run, reworked the red bars to include some blue to fill the dip in the spectrum a bit. The bars are now 6-475nm, 6-495nm, 14-630nm, 10-660nm, had to lose 4 reds because the blues draw more voltage and the driver is near it's limit. The 9 elites pull 561 watts at the wall and the added bars pull 74 watts atw, so 635 watts total atw on a 5 x 5 screen for 25.4 watts per sq/ft. Second pic is day 35 on two K Band that are under the elites and bars.
 

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f-e

f-e

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HEAT

The latest QB's use the lm301 in a manner that produces around 200lm per watt. This is Almost 30% of the electricity turned to par light. The rest is almost all turned to heat, with a little radiated off out of the par band.

A 600 is under 25% efficient. So while the QB is wasting ~70% as heat, the 600 is wasting ~75% as heat.

We try to loose most of our heat in the form of hot air. The QB's heat is pretty much all hot air. Ready to go. The 600s heat is different. Around a third of it is radiated off (IR). This warms other surfaces (generally the plants) and they turn that radiated heat into warm air (and humidity by sweating it off) to extract.

That is the big difference between the two. It's the ~150w of radiated heat a 600 produces, that an LED doesn't.

It's almost true to say HID's beam down heat, and LED's don't. The heat from LED's leaves almost entirely as warm air, that could rise up and get extracted, without ever coming near the plants.

So while leds do produce a little less heat, the real difference is the type of heat produced.
 
OZZ_

OZZ_

Well-known member
Veteran
f-e said:
HEAT

The latest QB's use the lm301 in a manner that produces around 200lm per watt. This is Almost 30% of the electricity turned to par light. The rest is almost all turned to heat, with a little radiated off out of the par band.

A 600 is under 25% efficient. So while the QB is wasting ~70% as heat, the 600 is wasting ~75% as heat.

We try to loose most of our heat in the form of hot air. The QB's heat is pretty much all hot air. Ready to go. The 600s heat is different. Around a third of it is radiated off (IR). This warms other surfaces (generally the plants) and they turn that radiated heat into warm air (and humidity by sweating it off) to extract.

That is the big difference between the two. It's the ~150w of radiated heat a 600 produces, that an LED doesn't.

It's almost true to say HID's beam down heat, and LED's don't. The heat from LED's leaves almost entirely as warm air, that could rise up and get extracted, without ever coming near the plants.

So while leds do produce a little less heat, the real difference is the type of heat produced.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm... I’ve been told it’s the opposite, that in fact LEDs put off radiant heat (which is difficult to extract) and HIDs put off convection heat (heating of surrounding ambient air).

This correlates because many growers report that they can get plants much closer to HID bulbs than LED panels. I’ve experienced this first hand. With proper airflow I have been able to get plants within 8” of a 600w hps.... as a comparison a tiny little HLG-100 is nearly stressing the plants at 8” and is only 1/6th of the power output/lumen output. No where near the same type of output and yet a much greater “headspace” is required with LED panels vs HIDs with good ventilation.
 
Koondense

Koondense

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If you look at the hid and led spectrums you can clearly see a spike of IR in all hid lamps(800-850 nm). This is radiant heat as it's direct infrared radiation glowing towards the plants.
Leds can cause issues when put too close to plants but mostly because of intensity of the narrow beam(optics).

Afaik f-e's explanation makes sense. Except the lm to par(efficency) conversion. If you look at some specs it seems some models can come close to 50% efficency converting electric watts to par watts. But I may not be correct so correct me please if there's data about this.

Cheers
 
OZZ_

OZZ_

Well-known member
Veteran
Koondense said:
If you look at the hid and led spectrums you can clearly see a spike of IR in all hid lamps(800-850 nm). This is radiant heat as it's direct infrared radiation glowing towards the plants.
Leds can cause issues when put too close to plants but mostly because of intensity of the narrow beam(optics).

Afaik f-e's explanation makes sense. Except the lm to par(efficency) conversion. If you look at some specs it seems some models can come close to 50% efficency converting electric watts to par watts. But I may not be correct so correct me please if there's data about this.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Interesting. Good info all around to consider. I should mention I swapped out that small HLG-100 panel for a few solstrips. The solstrips are being driven at a higher power than the HLG-100 was and putting out almost double the lumens and the necessary headspace has dropped to maybe 5”-6” or so. The solstrips do have the diodes spread out over a greater distance it seems whereas the HLG boards have them packed tighter together on the heatsink. Maybe this has something to do with it. I do have an HLG-550 v2 but don’t have the space to run a larger grow at the moment so I’ll have to wait until next year to see how it performs. Probably will be in a 3’x3’ tent
 
f-e

f-e

Well-known member
Mentor
Veteran
OZZ_ said:
Hmmmm... I’ve been told it’s the opposite, that in fact LEDs put off radiant heat (which is difficult to extract) and HIDs put off convection heat (heating of surrounding ambient air).

This correlates because many growers report that they can get plants much closer to HID bulbs than LED panels. I’ve experienced this first hand. With proper airflow I have been able to get plants within 8” of a 600w hps.... as a comparison a tiny little HLG-100 is nearly stressing the plants at 8” and is only 1/6th of the power output/lumen output. No where near the same type of output and yet a much greater “headspace” is required with LED panels vs HIDs with good ventilation.
Click to expand...

Lets look at a household radiator as an example. It warms you in two different ways. We call it a radiator, because sat in front of it, it warms you by radiation. It's Infra Red that you are feeling. Heat radiating off the thing. You don't need any test gear or expert to tell you, that a 600 does the exact same thing. Cooking your hand with IR energy. The household radiator also warms the room by convection. This is the warm air rising above it. So it's both a radiator and a convection heater. Led's don't beam down IR cooking your hand. Their heat is conducted away by the heatsink, warming the air around the heatsink, that then rises away.
 
f-e

f-e

Well-known member
Mentor
Veteran
Koondense said:
If you look at the hid and led spectrums you can clearly see a spike of IR in all hid lamps(800-850 nm). This is radiant heat as it's direct infrared radiation glowing towards the plants.
Leds can cause issues when put too close to plants but mostly because of intensity of the narrow beam(optics).

Afaik f-e's explanation makes sense. Except the lm to par(efficency) conversion. If you look at some specs it seems some models can come close to 50% efficency converting electric watts to par watts. But I may not be correct so correct me please if there's data about this.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Did I do a conversion? I don't know.. that's a whole page away now. It was all very much rounded off to be fair. A 600 is only 22% light and of the 78% heat, 30% of that is IR radiation. The gap is really quite wide, but I think my numbers are easier on the mind when it's just a simple comparison we want.

A 50% efficient led is possible, and would be about 300lm per watt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy
 
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