[wattsthis]

Or just buy an aluminum sheet, get it bent to on a machine shop, stick the strips, wire em up and you're done.

[Medicine, Man]

Originally Posted by wattsthis

Was sceptical at first too but they have those Golden Membership badge with a number (7 for our seller), indicating their years of membership and that being Gold means that their factories were physically verified by Alibaba on site.
Also, they have little transactions per year/months but if you look closely they amount to $000,000 so probably bulk orders.

Ok, I wasn't aware of the verification. I hoped their other numbers were low because of bulk orders, and the lights actually worked properly, so they didn't need much repeat business so far.

As for my order, got the tracking number via DHL and would be arriving at most by friday.

Cool, keep me posted when they come, if they work properly, etc. Did you order a reel of strips, or rigid sections? From that "Brightest" seller?

And for the prices, those are quotations for bulk orders. Just shoot them up and they'll quote you based on your quantity. Mine was priced at $3.5/m but that was for minimum of 50m, just bought 10m and it went to $5.

Good to know. I'll probably be ordering around 100 meters , so hopefully they'll be on the cheaper side.

I bought the 60led/20w per meter for my horizontal fixture to provide better spacing and even light distribution. I'm running 600 leds/10 meters on a HLG-185 so I'm under driving them a little for a bit of efficiency and mostly so that I can move them closer to the canopy with softer light output per diode, reducing the Inverse Square Law. You too could just buy more leds and under drive them or the other way around as this Samsung chips are really good.

Ok, I'm still leaning toward the 60/m strips, as the 120/m are just side-by-side chips, and with the single row chips wrapped around the duct, I should have a chip every 1/2" anyway....but, if I went with the double row strips, could I reduce solder points per fixture? Would that be reason enough to go with the side-by-sides?

You could easily do that but you must not daisy chain the strips for more than 5 meters as the succeeding strips would experience voltage drop and would be dimmer as compared to those nearer to the driver. I myself is wiring it all at parallel directly to the PSU every 2.5 meters to reduce the drop to a minimum. Around 0.3v at the end. If I'm more inclined, I would wire them every meter but thats too much soldering. Haha A better and economical choice would be 2*HLG-185 and I guess this is already enough or 2*HLG-240 as it goes exponentially expensive the higher we go on these drivers.

Hmmm...so, is there a way to wire (5), 5m strips to one driver, or do I need 5 drivers? If I do, is there a way to wire 5 drivers to 1 wall plug? Too much soldering is the reason I started looking at the strips on reels. I figured I could wrap the (5), 5m strips around the duct pipe, and minimize soldering. That's also why I thought of the duct rather than individual vertical rigid strips. I plan on having a fan either way, so passive cooling isn't so much of a concern, hopefully.

I also have to make a horizontal flower light (Probably 1mx1m) to cover a 4x4' area, a vertical veg light (probably half the power and size of the flower fixture), Horizontal veg light (Probably covering about 2' x 2') and 2 horizontal clone lights (Probably 2' x 2' also)...SO, hopefully I can figure out the power issues and get parts ordered this week. I'm pretty sure I can power all veg and clone lights with 1 driver each, but I'm not so sure about the flower lights.

3500k of the Samsung diodes is more likely a 4000K of the Crees/Citi cobs as what I've read from the other site so that would be awesome from veg to bloom. Just specify Samsung LM561C 3500k 80CRI S6 bin as this are what the QB guys use. Mine was 5m 3000k, 5m 3500k. I was looking at the LM561c data sheet and combining those two has the nearest spectrum to the PhysioSpec of the Fluence SPYDRx minus the deep red peaks which they have a separate diodes for those on their fixture ( which I plan to add on my next grow for comparison.) Also going down 3000k and you'll lose efficiency so that's the lowest I would suggest we go. On my next purchase I guess I'll just order alternating 3000k and 3500k diodes on a strip.

I'll probably just ask for the 3500ks, or possibly 3000k/3500k alternating by diode, if they're that customizable? Unless you happen to have specific ratios of specific wavelength diodes offhand? I'd rather keep it simple, unless it's relatively simple to order X number of white, red, blue per meter of strip, then I'd be up for trying that.


Those strips with silicone coating reduces light output, even glass lenses do so I don't know by how much but I guess worse. For architectural lighting it wont really matter as we can't really differentiate but for our plants, every photons counts! But you can try it anyways or build a higher wattage fixture to make up for the loss of for coating.

The main reason I was going for "as-waterproof-as-possible" was to protect diodes from mist if plants need sprayed for any reason. I can always make a reflectix shroud to wrap around the fixture while working in the garden regardless.

Do you think having the extra light from bare diodes is worth the lack of protection (from dust and moisture) overall? Obviously they're cheaper than covered strips, and maybe easier cooled too?

Hope this helps!

Absolutely- Thanks again!

[Medicine, Man]

Originally Posted by AvidLerner

real informative and good info too. been following your build. Have you considered using rectangular aluminum bars for your cooling. pull air thru the center with fans. saw your layout elsewhere.

Thanks man, I see you over in the other thread too! I have considered aluminum bars. I think they'll add expense and soldering to the project, but if the duct-and-fan idea doesn't work, I wouldn't be opposed to reconfiguring the fixture.

[wattsthis]

Yeah, I ordered 2 x 5 meter reels of 60 leds/meter from the "Brightest" store and got hooked up with a sales rep "Vincent Hu." Your 100 meters surely would be cheaper than my purchase per meter. More rows of diodes on a strip, the lesser your soldering job would be. But I would still choose the 60 leds/meter for a more evenly spaced light.

You could wire all your strips together but must be wired on parallel every 5 meters max. I already made a frame for my horizontal fixture, with it's wiring waiting in place for the driver and strips to arrive. Every 2.5 meters is directly wired to the driver, for a total of 10 meters ( 4 parallel wiring.) Here's a diagram below.



On ordering, the Vincent guy is really easy to talk to. You'll just probably tell him "I'll order 100 meters of 60led/meter with alternating 30 pieces 3000k, 30 pieces 3500k" and he'll get it.

On the water proofing, it's really up to you but I would go bare. Remember that the Quantum Boards has no coating too.

[Medicine, Man]

So, I'm in talks with the supplier, but they're on holiday this week. We've left off discussing diode colors, and powering the designs for the lights I'm trying to get together.
I'll probably end up going with 3500k all around, for convenience, unless it isn't any more complicated for the options they seem to offer.
It sounds like they offer not only 3500k/3000k alternating on the strip, but we could customize down to the ratios of different White, UV, and IR diodes that we need, by the nanometer. That, of course, seems to add a whole other level of complexity, but maybe someone here has an easy ratio formula already? (?)3500k:(?)?nmIR:(?)?nmUV
Anyway, here's the diagram I sent to the supplier with possible fixture designs, and possible drivers to power them. Unfortunately, I think our language barrier may be too much for the issue of how to correctly power each one, so I wonder if you guys could help pick out the potential problems you might see with these configurations? And by all means, feel free to try them out yourselves if you really like them. (The vertical tubes, at least. Wattsthis was the one kind enough to lend us all the horizontal designs) My main bump in the road at the moment is the power issue. For the fixtures over with over 5 meters of strips, how would one go about wiring to 1 driver per fixture?

**The patients may both be going vertical now, so I may just be building the vertical flower and veg lights, and the 100w seedling/clone light. Any thoughts on the horizontal are still welcome though.

[wattsthis]

Kinda been busy lately so didn't see your rep.

From what I'm getting with our convos, it's complicated/costly to customized the strips and unless we'll crowd fund for a large order (500+m) to deem their R&D for our customized design feasible.

And yes, the language barrier.



Each diode runs at 0.3w as per Samsung so I consider each 300diodes/5m to run at 90w max to be safe. But the strips are rated at around 120w/5m on their description maybe factoring in the resistors. With that in mind, you could under power the strips or just don't go over 90w/reel.

Mine is 600 diodes so that would be theoretically 180w or based on their description, driven at 240w max. My driver is 187.2w so I'm either over driving my strips by 7.2w at full or under driving them at around 78% of their capacity ((187.2/240)*100.)

But they're at 140w atm. More light and I guess the leaves would burn.

With your plan of HLG-600 I guess the least you could purchase to be safe (and also efficient, more lm/w) is 7 reels equating to 630w but driven at 600w running them softer at 95% their max.

Or 8 reels of 300 diodes/strip equating to 720w but still driven at 600 so you're now running them at around 83% their max.

Or 9, 10 strips and so on. But also factor in the soldering hours.



With the K temp, just go 3500k for your all rounder light. Or go with the alternating 4000k-5000k lights plus 3000k with individual switch for each color temp (e.g. Veg 5000K 300w / Bloom 5000K + 3000K 600w.) But that would require you to turn the driver all the way down when running the single temp (e.g. 5000K) and switch on first your second strip (3000K) before turning the power up to avoid accidentally burning your diodes when half the strips runs at 600w.


Or just wire each color temp on a separate driver. 2*HLG-320B-24A and scale the strips accordingly. Still you're safe at 7 strips.

On wiring the strips on the driver, you could wire every 5 meter to the driver directly on parallel. Just cut varying lengths of wire from the driver to each 5m strips.

tl;dr
*Hassle/costly to customize the strips with Vincent unless ordering bulk.

*Consider each reel at 90w, always under drive, never over drive the strips when powering them.

*3500k on Samsung all rounder temp

*Wire on parallel (see diagram on my previous reply)


Good luck!

[Medicine, Man]

Thanks Watts! I'll probably stick to 3500k all around, for various reasons we've discussed.

Now, on my other thread, the rigid strips are being recommended for various reasons, and I'm seeing that you may have used them if you had it to do over. So, now I'm trying to figure out the changes to use these rigid strips instead, in a configuration not unlike your on-the-fly diagram from the last page here.

I'd probably be shooting for a horizontal starter light, using maybe 8 of the 560mm strips, a vertical veg light, using maybe 12 of the 560mm strips, and vertical flower light using 20-30 of the 560mm strips. They're sounding like they'll be easier to work with, and better performance, even though the upfront cost will be a bit more.

Any thoughts or recommendations on these ideas? I feel like I'm so close, yet so far away from ordering, but I'd like to be as knowledgeable as possible before putting it all together.

I'll be over here, scouring more threads...

[Medicine, Man]

Alright, so in the attached pic is a revised plan for the light fixtures, based on recommendations from others in the DIY community. These rigid strips will cost more, but should be a little easier to work with, and apparently give more lumens overall.

I think I've decided on the model and number of strips I want to use, so now it's a question of how to drive and wire them for best results. The flowering fixtures will be around 315w I guess, which seems low for a 4x4' vertical flowering tent, but should give more lumens than my original design, so I'm keeping fingers crossed.

The 315w is driving them at 500ma, I believe, so if I drove them @ 1050ma, would I have more like 600w? I think the guys recommending this setup are trying to help with efficiency being the main priority, but I'd like the area to produce as much as possible, and don't want to sacrifice a lot of yield for a little energy saved.

What do you guys think?

[ReikoX]

Interesting concept, I hope it works out for you. LED + vertical could be a game changer. I like the second design with the rigid strips better FWIW.

[Medicine, Man]

Originally Posted by ReikoX

Interesting concept, I hope it works out for you. LED + vertical could be a game changer. I like the second design with the rigid strips better FWIW.

Thanks ReikoX! Changing the game is the goal with the system I'm designing (but, I guess that's true for a lot of us here)...

These rigid strips are, unfortunately, about 4x the price of the flex strips on reels, but hopefully the extra lumens/watt will make up for the bruised wallet.

I've been advised on going with an HLG-480H-C3500 to power the 30 strip flowering fixture for just under 500w @ 700mA, but now I'm having a problem even finding them in stock anywhere

As for the veg and starter fixture, I'm still researching the best drivers for those as well....so, the search continues, and no ordering parts just yet.