Bueno Grows w/ DIY COB LEDs

[algreenery]

Man i love that even canopy!! Very nice work Bueno

 

[nephrosis]

The brand on the driver is JHX LED , they are power factor corrected so they pull only the current they use to operate from the wall, supposed to be 90% efficient, put out just over 1400mA current, they say max vF 37 but will go up to around 40V on the LED side I guess according to someone else's testing on another forum he has tested 52 of them and they have all been good. He had issues with a Chinese vender of drivers that looked almost exactly the same but they didnt put out half the rated current.

As long as you stick with this auction you will be good, I got 2 of them hooked up tonight and they are working fine.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/181399694068?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

Not sure what COBs you are looking to go with but the CXA3070 is pretty much maxing this driver out as far as vF or forward voltage to the COB, the CXA3070s run around 37-38vF depending on current and temperature.

so 2 of those 50w drivers will work with the 100w cob? way cheaper then a meanwell!!! makes the price better for me too, i can get a better heatsink.

 

[Bueno Time]

so 2 of those 50w drivers will work with the 100w cob? way cheaper then a meanwell!!! makes the price better for me too, i can get a better heatsink.

No, one driver per COB. The vF the COB runs at and current in Amps the driver puts out determines the wattage. EX: vF of 37.14 volts x 1.4 amps (1400mA driver) = 52W each COB x 2 COBs is how I got the ~100W of lighting.

If you wanted to run a single COB at 100W you would need a driver that puts out the full 2800mA that is the CXA3070 COBs max current.

 

[blynx]

Those plants are putting out some nice sized colas!

Are you going to stagger the harvest by maturity or pull them all the same day? How much longer til they start coming down?

 

[Bueno Time]

Those plants are putting out some nice sized colas!

Are you going to stagger the harvest by maturity or pull them all the same day? How much longer til they start coming down?

It will depend on if they are all looking done at once or not but should probably all be coming down around the same time within a week of each other if not all at once from the looks of it, although the Pineapple Chaze seemed to take a little longer to start building bud sites in flower. They arent really even close to done yet still lots of white hairs and more growth to pack on in the next few weeks. Though there are two Blackberry Jones that are more Blackberry dom that could end up finishing a hair earlier if they finish flowering quick like their mom did, she was done in 8 weeks from start of 12/12. That was from clone though I have found from seeds they seem to take a week or two longer depending on maturity of the plant at the time of flip to 12/12. Plus they are crossed with Chemmy Jones and that seems to be a 10 week strain, maybe 11 on some phenos. These ladies are only at a couple days over 6 weeks of 12/12 so they have some ways to go yet at least 3 weeks if not 4 probably around the 9-10 week mark I would guess. Going to wait until they are pretty well done before I harvest them so really dont know for sure when they will be done Im just going to have to watch them and wait.

 

[Bueno Time]

Took some cuts off the Sugar Kush x Chemmy Jones for my buddy.

Doing a little experiment with 6 cuts all cuts taken/prepared the same way other than the cloning solution used. They are in 50/50 Ocean Forest and Coco with a small amount of perlite added. 2 of them using Azos from Xtreme Gardening, 2 using EZ CLONE gel, and the other 2 using freshly picked Aloe Vera gel from inside of one of the leaves.

Should be interesting to see if any particular one works amazing or significantly better than the other.

 

[cocogrower]

HI,

I really enjoy reading and watching how you put together this setup, its's super clean! Your plants look great and seem to enjoy it to!

This thread is a goldmine to me, since i have built a cabinet of the same size as your tent used to be, 96x45 cm. What's the size of your new tent?

In order to optimize lm/w and spread, i'm thinking about running several 3070's driven at 350-700 mA, preferably with constant current drivers with some extra juice, that let me ad some extra blues for veg and reds for flower. My plan was to chase the z4's but now you got me dreaming about thees ab's.

Still have a lot to learn though before i pull the trigger on buying drivers and other stuff needed. Hope you dint find that i'm not to OT, if so please tell me. If you have any advice it's also very appreciated!

Will keep watching the show anyhow!

 

[Bueno Time]

HI,

I really enjoy reading and watching how you put together this setup, its's super clean! Your plants look great and seem to enjoy it to!

This thread is a goldmine to me, since i have built a cabinet of the same size as your tent used to be, 96x45 cm. What's the size of your new tent?

In order to optimize lm/w and spread, i'm thinking about running several 3070's driven at 350-700 mA, preferably with constant current drivers with some extra juice, that let me ad some extra blues for veg and reds for flower. My plan was to chase the z4's but now you got me dreaming about thees ab's.

Still have a lot to learn though before i pull the trigger on buying drivers and other stuff needed. Hope you dint find that i'm not to OT, if so please tell me. If you have any advice it's also very appreciated!

Will keep watching the show anyhow!

My new tent is 2'x3'x5' so roughly 60cm x 90cm x 150cm.

If you run them at 700mA and run more COBs your efficiency will be better than mine and your light coverage would be more even. If the same amount of light is spread by more points the coverage is more even, Im sure you realize that. Running more quantity of COBs at lower current is better than fewer ran harder so that is a great plan.

If you can get the Z4 bins I would just do that they are excellent COBs and the Z2s are even great. Im still using one of each CXA3070 3000K Z2 and Z4 and they are doing great for the wattage.

The plan of adding some red and some blue for veg/flower is very good too.

Good luck with your build and let me know if you have any questions I will try to help you out if I can.

 

[Bueno Time]

Day 43 12/12

BBCJ Blackberry Kush Dom

BBCJ Chemmy Jones Dom

 

[cocogrower]

Thank you for nice words, thumbs up, and offering answering further questions. I know that the my striving to achieve the optimal light is a little bit vane, not to say stupid. Especially considering how fast the leds are developing and the facts that my electricity is for free... But i lack your growing skills and think i need a very optimized led setup in order to come close to your results when it comes to grams per watt..

Will get back to you when i've read more about drivers and cob chips just to know that i'm not doing something entirely wrong.. Until then i i'll be watching! I'm so curious to see what your beautiful setup is capable of!

 

[Bueno Time]

Thank you for nice words, thumbs up, and offering answering further questions. I know that the my striving to achieve the optimal light is a little bit vane, not to say stupid. Especially considering how fast the leds are developing and the facts that my electricity is for free... But i lack your growing skills and think i need a very optimized led setup in order to come close to your results when it comes to grams per watt..

Will get back to you when i've read more about drivers and cob chips just to know that i'm not doing something entirely wrong.. Until then i i'll be watching! I'm so curious to see what your beautiful setup is capable of!

If you dont mind the extra upfront cost of purchasing the best quality and more components to run more LEDs softer rather than fewer LEDs ran harder, I would highly recommend it. You will not regret it.

Your growing skills will only get better each grow, my first several grows were pretty bad but you get better each time as you practice. As long as you are having fun and trying to grow the best buds you can that's all that matters.

 

[SloStoner]

hey bueno i love your grow! very nice plants! What smaller cob from cree would you reccomend to run more of them, let's say 4 arrays of 4 cob's. this would be for my 2x2 box and i plan to supplement them with pl-l's. Thanks

 

[Bueno Time]

hey bueno i love your grow! very nice plants! What smaller cob from cree would you reccomend to run more of them, let's say 4 arrays of 4 cob's. this would be for my 2x2 box and i plan to supplement them with pl-l's. Thanks

I dont know much about the smaller Cree COBs but the Bridgelux Vero 10 are pretty nice COBs for multi COB setups. There is a guy MrFlux on RIU that has a real nice all LED NGB style cab and he is using like 45 Vero 10s on two high voltage drivers. Hes got 5 bars of 4 Vero 10s on one driver and 5 bars of 5 Vero 10s on the other.

If you did something similar with heatsink bars and do your 4 or 5 arrays of 4-5 COBs per bar depending on how many COBs you will need to match the driver output.

The thing about running multi COBs in parallel is like MrFlux did you have to use a small driver say a cheap 350mA driver (whatever driver is close in output to what each COB will be running at in your array use that to test each COB) and test/record the exact vF of each COB at that current then the fun part of puzzling together combinations of COBs so that each bar has as close to exactly the same vF as possible to avoid any issues.

Not sure if you planned a large single driver or a driver per bar or a driver per COB so I just figured Id let you know basically all I know about multi COB setups which isnt much.

Also if you decide to use Veros foryour flowering the spectrum of the Vero 4000k is similar to the Cree CXA Series 3000k spectrum. If you would want to go with 2700k Cree then a Vero 3000k might be similar blue and red percentages. (Im using Cree 3000K)

These arent exact numbers but they have been proven very close to real world testing. MrFlux did the calculus to determine very closely the approximate blue and red power of the different spectrums.

Vero 3000K
Blue : 8% power, 6% flux
Red : 27% power, 30% flux

Vero 4000K
Blue : 13% power, 10% flux
Red : 23% power, 25% flux

Vero 5000K
Blue : 22% power, 18% flux
Red : 15% power, 17% flux


CXA 3000K
Blue : 10% power, 8% flux
Red : 24% power, 27% flux

CXA 4000K
Blue : 19% power, 16% flux
Red : 17% power, 20% flux

CXA 5000K
Blue : 24% power, 20% flux
Red : 14% power, 17% flux

How much wattage are you trying to run of COB and how much PLL?

 

[cocogrower]

really stupid question probably, but what does flux stand for?

 

[cocogrower]

Ok. i see you are talking % of total lumen output? numbers were so low that i got confused.

Slostoner: I'm looking at this chip, http://se.mouser.com/search/Product...ampaign=941-CXA25200N00R250H&utm_term=CXA2520

It's not very small, but a lot cheaper than cxa 3070 so you could run several of them on a lower current without getting totally broke.

It gives close to 125 l/w at 550mA and would probably be even more effective at lower mA's. It lacks red spectrum, even for veg i believe, so you would have to supplement it with 630-650 nm.


Bueno, let us know if you think this discussion is getting way OT? I would totally understand it!

 

[tleaf jr.]

still sticking with ya' through this thang' B . your rounding 3rd bring it on home

 

[repobird]

Sorry, I am not an electrical expert. It is not clear to me why it would be better to run multiple COBs at lower mA's, can you explain the reason? I get having multiple COB's for a more even distribution of light, but why not keep them at the same 1400mA vs running at a lower mA?

 

[Bueno Time]

Sorry, I am not an electrical expert. It is not clear to me why it would be better to run multiple COBs at lower mA's, can you explain the reason? I get having multiple COB's for a more even distribution of light, but why not keep them at the same 1400mA vs running at a lower mA?

Higher efficiency when driving the leds at lower current but higher cost.

You can run 2 COBs at 1400mA or run 4 of the same COBs at 700mA each and have more light output per watt from the 4 @ 700mA due to higher efficiency.

Obviously its not economical to buy 8 COBs and run them at 350mA each rather than 2 COBs at 1400mA each though you gain efficiency the cost is also much higher so you have to find the balance point of cost vs efficiency and decide what a happy medium is for you.

Im happy with the CXA3070s at 1400mA drive current to me its a good balance of being cost effective and still very efficient.

 

[Bueno Time]

really stupid question probably, but what does flux stand for?

The %flux is basically the percentage of the light that is being emitted of that color range where the %power is the percentage of power the led is using for that color range.

Ok. i see you are talking % of total lumen output? numbers were so low that i got confused.

Slostoner: I'm looking at this chip, http://se.mouser.com/search/Product...ampaign=941-CXA25200N00R250H&utm_term=CXA2520

It's not very small, but a lot cheaper than cxa 3070 so you could run several of them on a lower current without getting totally broke.

It gives close to 125 l/w at 550mA and would probably be even more effective at lower mA's. It lacks red spectrum, even for veg i believe, so you would have to supplement it with 630-650 nm.
https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=54123&pictureid=1270874View Image

Bueno, let us know if you think this discussion is getting way OT? I would totally understand it!

Ya that is a 5000K spectrum, that would for sure need red supplementation for flowering. Has a ton of blue but the red is severely lacking. Id recommend the 3000K version for flowering if you dont want to have to add a bunch of supplemental LEDs. Simpler and more cost effective to choose a more proper starting spectrum with the COBs than to buy a bunch of LEDs, drivers, and heatsinks to supplement the spectrum.

If you wanted to do COBs on all the time and be able to use the same light fixture for veg and flower then maybe do a 4000k COBs and supplement with a few blues if that for veg and some reds for flower.

Theres so many different ways you can build your own LED lighting just depends on what direction you want to go and how much you are willing to spend.

 

[cocogrower]

Yes finding an efficient cob thats not to expensive and give you a good spectrum without supplemental lightning is of course the most convenient option. Just thinking that the 5000 k's are more efficient, and that you could ad efficient 3-5 watters in the lacking apectrum if you run the cobs @350-700mA and use a constant current driver with the right current and a suitable voltage..

Am i thinking wrong here or would it be possible to do it this way?

I have a thread on this project if you wanna answer there instead..

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=287557