veg testing ( different spectrums )

ok, finally at a point to get this going somewhere

Main goal of this project.. to have a all white LED lamp giving max performance ( lower watts used ). I guess one could say, why not just buy some T5 and be done, well I could, at it makes logical sense and $ sense also, but then I wouldn't be following my heart.. damn heart leads you down the harder path every time, but it's been enjoyable so no complaints.. I hate "retro" / purple color light looking at my plants, the whole point of growing for me is to enjoy looking at them, and taking care of them, smoke is something secondary as I feel "in-tune" enough to never need it if it came to that.. but do I enjoy it.. hell yes.. and thus the quest was started to bring an all white LED to life, being able to get max enjoyability from my plants again, and wanted no mercury.. I guess we could go into metals and heavy metals, but mercury was on the mind years ago, and .. well I guess we work toward progress on step at a time.. I always wondered why no one every built a seedling tray light for clones / bonsai moms / and young plants.. it made sense to me, but I guess to no one else, so above all this hits the spot as since LED came out I was wanting a light to cover a seedling tray, and now have it

I am focused on veg for the moment, as it's the first stage of plants, I grow from seed and moving away from clone so it's even more important, and I believe it's just as important as flower, as shitty plant in, means shitty plant out.. veg is under-valued I feel, and we must have respect for all sides of growing, life to death..

I'm using xm-l2. why? I'm a perfectionist, and they are the newest chip, new to me, means more for the same if I was to use xm-l. bad is that each chip that comes out changes color spectrum.. so this test might not mean much to some, to others it might help if building a light, or switching out chips from xm-l down the road..

I like to keep things short, so a little more. fans have been changed to "better" newer models, and pushed together to only have airflow out the sides, as before it was coming out the middle and am sure being re-circulated.. colors are CW at 6500k / NW at 4500k / WW at 3000k .. still deciding if I should have gone 4000k for NW, and 2700k for WW but this is some of my first stuff for HML, so I can't be to hard on myself.. Simon go back ( Simon is my perfectionist sides name.. haha , thank the wife for that.. ) , also using sinkpad stars, suppose to give better temps which = higher lumen, hence my fans also..cooler sink = cooler chip = higher lumen.

I have 6 bars, so 6 tests can go at a time, 1 is open to my imagination still.. I do have some ideas how to narrow this down quickly in spectrum, and is as follows:

COMPARING:

NW/WW - NW/CW
WW/NW - WW/CW
CW/NW - CW/WW

then there is more a tailored mix to try once the above are shown what grows best to:

CW leaning - 9 CW / 3 WW / 6 NW - 9 CW / 3 NW / 6 WW
NW leaning - 9 NW / 6 CW / 3 WW - 9 NW / 6 WW / 3 CW
WW leaning - 9 WW / 6 CW / 3 NW - 9 WW / 6 NW / 3 CW


now a thing to keep in mind, these bars were built on the basis of max performance, and to light a seedling tray ( 1x2 foot ) to very high performance.. it's designed to be overkill for two reasons, number one is simply overkill, getting max lumens, second is upgrade ability, being able to be used later down the road for veg / flower or any idea that comes to mind.. all that needs to be switched are the chips / drivers.. the sink is built, also if it comes to the point of high lumens per watt, there's always the dimmer, or spacing the led, and using one bar to cover two trays... but that's down the road when we hit extremely high lumens per watt..


attack of the clones ( first time tacking LED to star base )


switching out fans ( mind the carpet, I'm in a extended stay hotel... moved again...... )


color combo as of right now.. most likely gonna change the all WW one, color can be seen from screw color


chart of XM-L2 for anyone interested in the color spectrum

continued from above ( limited on pic count )


one problem I feel I'm seeing is mass light being wasted from lens angle, ( look at the "spillover" on the carpet.. ) I feel even at this point, reflectors are a very worthwhile upgrade / even making some wings for the side of the lights should help. not sure I'm convinced using bare emitters are the way to go yet...

Is that a plastic bottle on top of the heatsink?

luvdemshrooms said:

Is that a plastic bottle on top of the heatsink?

Click to expand...

Yeah, another form of liquid cooling (for the grower)

By the way, I'm in !

luvdemshrooms said:

Is that a plastic bottle on top of the heatsink?

Click to expand...

yep, can answer any questions, but it was simply, I was moving, and it was the watering source for the babies at that time..

hempfield said:

Yeah, another form of liquid cooling (for the grower)

By the way, I'm in !

Click to expand...

haha. I have thought on the idea of liquid cooling, or even forms of it, as the idea that you said using some liquid to pull in heat.. but I'm no thermodynamic engineer, and I hear the law of thermodynamics was proven wrong by a Austrian who spent his life developing "funnels" or "tubes" for free energy machines... anyways either or, liquid cooling is a interesting topic. I stopped getting into computers around the time liquid cooling became popular, so it is always close to me though.. but for now fans will have to take the duty of cooling..

nice to have you here

Sometimes when I enjoy a joint on my porch I like to let the ideas flow trough my head and not once I surprised myself thinking of a LED powered greenhouse, in which I use liquid cooling for the LEDs for two main reasons : better thermal management of the light source and energy recovering system .

Best LEDs on the market this days have a real efficiency of 25-40%. Most past of that energy is waste as heat, which is lost into the surrounding air. Imagine what could be done if that heat is recovered from the liquid used for cooling.

Ok, that's enough off-topic for a single post.

I just want to say that in one week or two I will start a similar experiment with CREE LEDs, on which I will use 6 XM-L chips (1CW,2NW and 3WW) to grow a plant from seed to harvest without any additional light.

I had good results using just CW XM-L in veg (with some minor problems - N and Mg deffs. caused by the explosive grow), but I want to see what can be achieved with just a compact white light source.

Here is a grow log of one of the new led light with the CREE 10 watt leds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Js2Fk_MJA

-Funk

^ thank you hempfield.. very interesting as I have no knowledge on others using the cree XM series.. I was not seeing what I thought was good growth with a combo of CW/NW , but this is why I'm testing, to get to the bottom, and move on and know.. so very interesting to me, as I was thinking it was too much blue, not enough other color.. but I guess already if you've seen good growth, I'm stumped.. I was seeing excellent growth with the CW/WW color though... but once again I'll just test and see. are any pics in your album to check out the veg time???

a greenhouse with LED would be amazing.. I was going to by a GH, but things just changed, as I'm moving on with paperwork to get into Switzerland ( 2-3 years.. ouch ) but yeah.. would be nice!!



thanks funk, would love to see an all white though, unless I missed a model on there page, also wonder what bin they use on the chips...




I will be updating shortly, missed some pieces in a order to complete the lights, so another order in, and all will be hooked up.. damn driver boxes are not easy to make....

also my house is being sold as we speak, and need to move into another place before I start this up, thought I was moving back into my house, but someone gave me a good offer... so stay tuned as I've been ready for a while to get this started...

After seeing that water bottle the first thing that came to mind is right now today we have desktop computers using super cooling to overclock the hell out of them , so why have none of the big led companies just borrowed from the idea and built a liquid cooling system just like a tower for there panels and remove all the heat?

cateros said:

After seeing that water bottle the first thing that came to mind is right now today we have desktop computers using super cooling to overclock the hell out of them , so why have none of the big led companies just borrowed from the idea and built a liquid cooling system just like a tower for there panels and remove all the heat?

Click to expand...

Not water cooling but maybe better....Kessil uses phase change technology to cool their H350s.

habeeb said:

continued from above ( limited on pic count )


one problem I feel I'm seeing is mass light being wasted from lens angle, ( look at the "spillover" on the carpet.. ) I feel even at this point, reflectors are a very worthwhile upgrade / even making some wings for the side of the lights should help. not sure I'm convinced using bare emitters are the way to go yet...
View Image

Click to expand...

Why don't you try making a little set of curtains from orca or panda film.

Ala......


IMHO, in as far as a veg spectrum.........
To me there are some distinct phases.

1) seedling/clone
2) adolescence (start stacking on nodes.)
3) Mature mother plant.
4) At least for me, after a year or 2 some mommies just seem to get old and die. ;-(

So what is your best guess for optimal spectral shift for each phase?

And yes, I've gone to the dark side.

cateros said:

After seeing that water bottle the first thing that came to mind is right now today we have desktop computers using super cooling to overclock the hell out of them , so why have none of the big led companies just borrowed from the idea and built a liquid cooling system just like a tower for there panels and remove all the heat?

Click to expand...

there is one I know, the TI smartbar, but never seen one on here, but maybe someone uses one, but also would be outdated chips.. obvious problems are stoners and water/ electric don't make a good match.. hanging lights with water lines sounds like disaster.. also someone would have to start coming up with .. well to me would be made, a unique 6-8 inch duct radiator , but would be good for inlines, as they have great pressure.. simple ideas, can make very hard production products.. I look at the watercooled HPS kits, and they are far from popular.. maybe it's the water and glass the light has to pass though.. let alone cooling a 1k takes a chiller or a huge reservoir.. air cooling is obviously far simpler, and watercooling is for high tech "nerds" or people who are dedicated..



10:30 .. OMG.

yes, I 100% agree with you, on different veg "cycles".. I have always had a sneaking suspicion that one can never fully compare growing seedlings to clones.. I feel clones have something stored in them to greatly "cope" with life, where as seedlings seem to maybe not have produced a chemical or something of the likes stored in the plant..

this is where I feel LED needs a closer eye when growing seedlings vs. clones.. and may needs attention when someone talks about using LED, as I think the seedling needs more "attention" or something I cannot even say.. that's all I can say on that with my observations right now..


color, and my best guess on my very limited knowledge ( xm-l2 color.. ) :

seedling: 1 CW /1 NW / 1 WW
teen: 3 NW / 1 WW
mother: CW / WW
old momma: NW / WW

I have no clue though, good question.. and its why I am starting this, to understand more, as we could be wasting watts used on a "wrong" spectrum vs. using another one..

For me, seedlings always seem to stretch. I think that all cw would be a good starting point.

Clones seem to do better with nw to cw. Mine don't seem to root as well under ww.

habeeb said:

obvious problems are stoners and water/ electric don't make a good match.. hanging lights with water lines sounds like disaster.. also someone would have to start coming up with .. well to me would be made, a unique 6-8 inch duct radiator , but would be good for inlines, as they have great pressure.. simple ideas, can make very hard production products.. I look at the watercooled HPS kits, and they are far from popular.. maybe it's the water and glass the light has to pass though.. let alone cooling a 1k takes a chiller or a huge reservoir.. air cooling is obviously far simpler, and watercooling is for high tech "nerds" or people who are dedicated..

Click to expand...

HeHeHe!
Yeah,
And try using any conductive-liquid cooling of heat sinks associated with newer high-voltage driver circuits, like KNNA was starting to get into with the newer Cree LED designs, and you are really out on the bleeding edge of tech! A back-up system with moving parts and electrical systems that don't work when they get wet or leak sounds like a recipe for disaster...How about the cooling systems that failed when the Japanese Nuclear plant generators were flooded due to the Tsunami as an extreme example of BAD Design???


Good job, Habeeb! I may re-wire some of my damaged EVO bars with newer LEDs and a variable driver to allow over-driving.
I still like the idea of passive cooling, especially for the basic, dependable design without fans, but a "overdrive mode" with cooling boost that removes the heat without extra sink area or airflow would be great for flowering or "pulsing" to simulate natural bursts of sun between clouds.

I have some ideas for integrating solid state COOLING with LED heatsinks, but it still needs some development to match the latest geometries and led base attachments.
Here's a Tech keyword to investigate and hint of the possible future for boosted and pulsed LED cooling: Peltier effect- otherwise known as reverse-thermocouple effect, where a current flowing through a bi-metal junction produces a heat-pump that moves heat from one side of the junction to the other. This works with low-voltage DC, just like LEDS! They can also be cascaded or stacked to amplify the effect, and then fan-cooled, for even higher heat transfer requirements.
Power supplies for the solid-state cooling modules would have to be matched with LED driver specs, but you can get some off the shelf systems now, if you want to experiment...
Remember you saw it here first, and please me a call when you make the first all solid-state prototype!

Good Luck on the house, move, and your continuing voyage into the forefront of Tech!

^

interesting wants from the evo. sounds like a solid plan to me, please make a post if you do, I'm sure people would love it!! I also love the passive idea evo did with the panel, but i do know it got hot as hell putting my hand on it, and I just can't go back once i made these with fans.. there so cool it's not even funny what a fan makes a difference for cooling..

I know the peltiers, I use to be into computers.. hence the noctua fans... haha. that would be a awesome idea. maybe one day soon brother. would be a bad-ass design.. I see more a super intense spot light sort of idea with the new Cree chip whatever it may be like a beam of sunlight so intense it causes damage looking at it, sunglasses required!!

can I ask thoughts no how you would setup a peltier? as I know them to be they are very small, so I wonder if going a long stretched bar is possible, or is it only gonna cool the middle of the sink ??? I'm no thermodynamic engineer, or whatever they may be called.. haha


ahh the future the future. only good things are to come from combining the words, LED and future.. I believe . well I hope we will have such high lumen chips, we will go with huge "spotlight" designs like they have, but at about 100 watts, and it's gonna be so efficient we don't care it's in a small design.. who knows, maybe some panels with 3 in them running lower watts... anything is possible I guess, and there is just so many options


Thank you sir. haven't got the test up and running as my house is sold, and no new house to buy yet.. I wait patiently..


see you around

tenthirty said:

For me, seedlings always seem to stretch. I think that all cw would be a good starting point.

Clones seem to do better with nw to cw. Mine don't seem to root as well under ww.

Click to expand...

This is what I am most interested in. seedling stretch.. I find it takes high high power to get a seedling to not stretch.. I feel like if you have a lamp where the seedling doesn't .. your on the exact right path.. this is how I judge all lamps, seedling growth / stretch.. my secret is out now.. haha

I just wonder if there is such a thing as too much blue, or the idea of too high blue to all other color.. take a look at a MH lamp, it has huge amounts of "red" in them... makes me think this is more complicated then just throwing blue at it....

please tell me you are using your led for veg or clone or something.. nice lamps they look, was seeing rives progress. but I am starting to wonder about ballasts and MHz frequency ( am I right stating that ) like there is outward transmission that the body might get "hit by" powering HID bulbs.. I even wonder that for led drivers too.... any info someone has is appreciated.. I have even gotten rid of my cell phone for this being one of many reasons, and and cutting out wi-fi products.. please if someone has info to add on this subject it would be great as I am no engineer. but always willing to learn