Building a Home Made LED

[tenthirty]

I wonder if your way of looking at this revolves around keeping your electric bill as low as possible, where as I want a very bright light (in the correct wavelengths) and am willing to pay a bit more to do so.

When a watt gets dissipated in a device (led), It's ether going to be converted as light or heat. Thus my infatuation with XM-L and XP-G2/E2's.

At the moment, the prettiest girl at the dance is cree IMHO, but that could change.

By the way, general rule of thumb,
If you can't grab a component or the heat sink in a electronic device. This is a bad sign.

 

[Weezard]

Water? Cool.

Water? Cool.

Water cooling?

Oh, yeah.
Turns out it was not needed.

The fan is a mo' betta solution.
I noted that you are aware of "shadowing" by upper leaves, etc..
Mount the fan in the center of the 'sink, and use a thermal switch.
My $ .75 thermal switch kicks the fan on at 50℃.
If you hang the light from a central cord, it will make a half turn when the fan turns on and off.
You get a cheap and easy redneck light mover in the bargain.
Everything gets to see photons.

Aloha,
Weeze

 

[tenthirty]

Water cooling?

Oh, yeah.
Turns out it was not needed.

The fan is a mo' betta solution.
I noted that you are aware of "shadowing" by upper leaves, etc..
Mount the fan in the center of the 'sink, and use a thermal switch.
My $ .75 thermal switch kicks the fan on at 50℃.
If you hang the light from a central cord, it will make a half turn when the fan turns on and off.
You get a cheap and easy redneck light mover in the bargain.
Everything gets to see photons.

Aloha,
Weeze

I'm going to start calling Rube instead of Weeze.
Nice concept though.

 

[luvdemshrooms]

When a watt gets dissipated in a device (led), It's ether going to be converted as light or heat. Thus my infatuation with XM-L and XP-G2/E2's.

Hard to beat the XML's.

By the way, general rule of thumb, If you can't grab a component or the heat sink in a electronic device. This is a bad sign.

It's a rule I know well, and live by.

 

[Weezard]

We're on the same page.

We're on the same page.

"Correct wavelengths" is key for efficiency.

I wonder if your way of looking at this revolves around keeping your electric bill as low as possible, where as I want a very bright light (in the correct wavelengths) and am willing to pay a bit more to do so.

Absolutely!

With what they gouge us here for power, growing with HPS costs more than just buying meds on the street.

Up front costs of good LEDs are no object though, they amortize.
So, I spent the extra to get more diodes so I can run them in their sweet spot energy efficiency-wise.

Spent for cooling to keep them in that sweet spot, and only use power for the most effective wavelengths.
Generating unwanted colors also generates more junction heat that must be dealt with.

If I wanted White light, I'd use CFLs and just waste watts on most of their spectrum.
CFL are way cheaper than leds for white light and almost as efficient.
(If I wanted or needed Yellow light, HPS actually gives more photons per watt than LEDs)

But no.
No McBurgers!
Nothing but Caviar and Champagne for my girls.

Just my opinions, please prove me wrong.

Aloha,
Weezard

 

[vukman]

@hempfield

Ya bought it, then threw it away.

"Hey! I bought you kids a ton of green light, and it's still on the plate.
Eat yer greens ya little ingrates! Plants in China are starving!"

Weeze

Hey hey... we got ourselves a wiseguy here!!!!!!!!LOL

just busting chops my friend...Can't be serious all the time else ya get all uptight and shit..

 

[luvdemshrooms]

I don't think you're wrong, so I won't try to prove you so.

I could use CFL's, but my business is strictly LED related. I'd feel dirty.

This is my first home brew, and actually first LED grow light of any kind. So much to learn.

I'll likely play with the XML's in different combos for awhile, and then play with the red/blues. Fortunately, I have the space and the time.

What do they nail you for electric rates?

 

[luvdemshrooms]

Well, a 120mm, slow moving fan dropped the temps by 10c.

I was trying for passive, yet it's hard to argue with success.

 

[Weezard]

Tryin to stay on-topic when medicated

Tryin to stay on-topic when medicated

No wanna hijack this thread so I left ya a visitor's message and a rep message.
If anyone else is curious though, it's about $.43 per KWH.

A single, 1K HPS runs about $170 per month at 12:12 including cooling and ballast loss.
My 112W. of LEDs runs $18. per month.
A no brainer decision.

If there is any advantage to growing with White leds I do want to know about it.
The two grows that I tried with white leds failed miserably so I kept looking.
If you lot get decent results, I'll fiddle with it some more.

(Well, I did mention being lazy and , um, frugal.)

Aloha,
Wee

 

[tenthirty]

No wanna hijack this thread so I left ya a visitor's message and a rep message.
If anyone else is curious though, it's about $.43 per KWH.

A single, 1K HPS runs about $170 per month at 12:12 including cooling and ballast loss.
My 112W. of LEDs runs $18. per month.
A no brainer decision.

If there is any advantage to growing with White leds I do want to know about it.
The two grows that I tried with white leds failed miserably so I kept looking.
If you lot get decent results, I'll fiddle with it some more.

(Well, I did mention being lazy and , um, frugal.)

Aloha,
Wee

Way ouch!!!

 

[luvdemshrooms]

Ouch. It's a mere $.1543 here.

Sent a PM. It appears I can't receive any until I have a few more posts under my belt.

 

[rives]

Weez makes a good point about paying for energy that the plant isn't using. After the last couple of years of led experimentation, I've started back dabbling with HID's because I'm interested in both doing a little larger grow and in utilizing the heat in the winter. For me, power is .11/kwh, diesel is $4+ gallon and I'm heating about 8 months of the year. The white light is attractive because I can actually tell what the hell is going on with the plant - trying to troubleshoot magenta plants doesn't compute for me.

Some of the recent developments in HID are pretty amazing. The following SPD chart is from the Philips 315w CDM Elite Agro lamp. I think that it shows remarkable promise in hitting the desirable areas for the plant while still keeping the visible light in an area where humans work. Global Energy & Lighting (gel-usa.com) has developed a ballast for this lamp that has ballast losses of 5% (331w total for a 315w lamp), generates 115-120 lumens per watt and gives a lamp life up to 50,000 hours while maintaining 95% lumen maintenance at 20,000 hours. Amazing stuff, or at least amazing claims . Even at the ridiculous prices for the gear, it's still cheaper than leds for covering large areas.

 

[tenthirty]

First..................

Bud porn.

Harvested bud. This is the one that made it to my desk for future sampling. This is at about 2 days drying. This wasn't the best formed or the biggest by far, but.....sometimes I like the slightly ugly girls.


Under the microscope.


Now some just pre-chop pic.


Under HPS


The harvest was taken at 66 days. Should have gone to 70, but the line would not wait.

Now for the tail of the tape.

Methodology:
What I do is, take each plant, remove all the bud and manicure.
Then the buds for each plant is weighed and recorded, then put in the drying rack.

Points of interest:
The smallest yield was 19g wet.
The largest yield was 61g.
The average yield per plant was 43g.
Mind you this is wet weight and over time the dry yield has shown to be 23%.
Most of the plants were in the 30-40g range.

Considering we have no dry weight yet........
Any guesses??

Overall I would gauge the health of the harvested plants was pretty good and relatively consistent. There were 4 plants under 30g.

I consider this a success, because this is the last run that had any root aphids associated with them. Also this is a 20% increase in yield over the previous 2 cycles that were infested.

Now for the plants that are moving to the HPS for final 30 days.
(I do plan to replace the HPS with LED or the 315w agro unit eventually.)

These plants have spent their first 30 days of flower under various leds. What I want you to note, is the sweep of the color of light from right to left.
I call this the slop experiment.
This is because, when you feed the pigs, you just take the bucket and throw the slop into the trough.
Se we have a sweep from white/blue to red to yellow.
These particular plants are at 33 days in the pics.

The tray is divided into 3 rows each row containing 2 rows of 6-7 plants per row. This helps me track each individual/row and sort it in my mind.
When something unusual happens with a row or individual/group of individuals, there will be a starting point to go further in any replication or investigation/experiments.

Ran out of pic space......

 

[tenthirty]

Here are the babies that just went under the leds still in pre-veg.
I like to let them go till the get about 3 internodes on them and the roots start poking out the bottom of the rockwool cubes.

Note the aquarium bulbs in the t5 fixture.

Just look how happy and perky they look.
I would have the light closer, but it's been too hot.
The temp at rockwool level lights-on would hover 83-85f with a RH of 50-60%. So a little too hot and VPD is a little too dry.
This time I did hit them with .9 EC of DG grow, PH'd at 5.5 and the feeding tonight will be at 1.2 EC and 5.5 PH. The cubes will be a few point higher.
I'll also get a pic of them in their new home later tonight.

The subject of the day "The butterfly effect"

Check out this pic.


The 2 plants, one in the water farm and the other in the rockwool cube came from the same clone run.
The waterfarm plant was planted 2 days earlier than the rockwool block one.
The Waterfarm is under 4 PLL lamps.
The rockwool block plant was under the aquarium t5 bulbs.
The temps were better controlled for the waterfarm.
This is about 8-10 days out of the cloner.

Like dude..... major difference.
Lets hear some explanations/grasping at straws.
The first thing that came to my mind,
is top drip hydrotone that much better? but I think that is probably wrong.

Time to go tend the babies.

 

[PetFlora]

I have 3 different hydro grow methods- super bubbler (with a screen so the roots are moist instead of soaking in a bath), high pressure aero (nothing beyond a small starter cube), & F & D (using lava rocks in Air Pots). All use as little medium (RW, S2G, Starter Cubes..) as possible. All grow ridiculously fast.

IMHO, it's the exposure to the moist oxygen rich environment that roots have an affinity for + causing the nutes to become more bio-available, sort of like super charging

 

[PetFlora]

Found this today. Build Your Own LED on line using their software

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuFVm2qVms4

 

[Weezard]

Burble, grasp.

Burble, grasp.

I think I found a straw!

The key part of root-bound, is bound.
Not saying either plant is actually "root-bound"
Just sayin that size of rootball governs size of canopy.
Want trees? Need tubs!

Aloha,
Weeze

 

[tenthirty]

I think I found a straw!

The key part of root-bound, is bound.
Not saying either plant is actually "root-bound"
Just sayin that size of rootball governs size of canopy.
Want trees? Need tubs!

Aloha,
Weeze

Not only that, but the depth of the WF vs. 4" cubes. (roots grow down.)
On harvest, I have torn apart some of the cubes, I would call the root density medium compared to the waterfarm root balls when a mommie gets trashed.
But that doesn't mean that when the roots hit the bottom of the cube, something may be triggered.
I'll get some pics of the cube/tray interface for evaluation.

Now my problem is in logistics.
As an individual grows she gets moved a minimum of 3 times.
Also at rotation/harvest time, the amount of labor right now is about 10 or 12 hours to complete a rotation.
Harvest, trim, record, clean trays/rez's, move plants, refill make solution, cal meters, clean utensils. I think that about covers it.
This is a lot of work for one person, I tried getting some help, but that was more pain than it was worth.

If I went with rock/drip/aero the amount of work will grow.....alot.
It takes less than 30 minutes now to clean the trays, rez's, etc.
That would turn into hours with cleaning an aero setup of this size with all the pots, etc. E&F we're talking about 100 lb. more or less of rock. (3/4 of a 30gal trash can using 6" pots)
Not to mention cleaning anywhere between 10 and 100 pounds of rock, if that is the medium and over time, the rock gets spilled, if not from a catastrophe, just the day to day dropping a rock or two at a time.
Same problem with soil or coco. I don't have the time or space for the mess.
The problem with top feed, is just in the numbers and feed lines, we're talking a minimum of 2 manifolds with say 40+ drippers per manifold.
Talk about a spaghetti mess.....moving plants........cleaning the manifolds, drip lines, etc. Been there done that.

What it boils down to is with the cubes, I have very consistent results, maybe not the best.
What I would really like is a rockwool cube that didn't get saturated with the nutes. so no leaching or flushing would be required.

Also , what I have been finding, is the RW cubes may need to be rinsed, besides soaked before use. In 30 days on the next run, I will be rinsing out the cubes before transplanting the clones.
Again, the biggest problem with this is logistics.
I want to flush with nutrient solution and the tote that I soak the cubes in is just big enough to hold the total number of cubes.
So there is no room to put a pump in the tote to rinse with the soak solution,
and there just isn't enough room for another tote to use as a rinse rez, and as you rinse the cubes the PH will rise in the rinse rez solution (but that can be monitored and compensated for)

Trial and error. I can step on my own dick just as well as the guy behind me can.

By the way, I'm waiting for the XP-G2's to build the next fixture.

Peace my brothers.......

 

[rives]

Tenthirty, I'm curious what your rationale is for running that many plants - are you running several different varieties, or ???. Until the last two runs, I had been using Sunshine Mix #4 with more perlite added, in either 3 gallon smart pots or air pots. The last two runs have been in Botanicare ReadyGro Aeration mix because I was tired of screwing around with mixing up the media and I wanted to see what the hype was about with coco. This media has a hell of a lot of promise from my results thus far.

I almost always run either a 3 or 4-plant scrog, which works very well with leds. You are pretty well restricted to running the same, or at least very similar, varieties with this style. I consistently yield 3+ ounces per plant when dried to 60%, with my lowest yield having been about 2.5 zips each from some BOG Sour Bubble, and the highest was a little over 4 zips per plant. I changed nutrients to V+B RO formula at the same time the media was swapped out, and it looks like the old record could well become the new average.

Anyhow, I thought that if lower plant numbers work for your needs, you could change styles a bit and perhaps reduce your workload that way.

*edit* Forgot to mention that I also run Blumats.

 

[tenthirty]

Tenthirty, I'm curious what your rationale is for running that many plants

The short answer is,
Unfortunately, every plant is an individual and will be somewhat different.
In order to me to see changes as a group, I need a descent sized group.
Any given test will/could last 3 or 4 runs.
At 1 month a run, the tests go pretty fast. At 3 months a run or more.....
not so much.