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Building New Panels - Sharing the Process

rrog

rrog

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Rives- I'd certainly consider consolidating from 5 to 4 if I can. Consolidating to three means that I have 18 LEDs on one driver, which might need to be a 65V driver.

I can't really spec the drivers until I select the specific LEDs, and get their mA rating and Forward Voltage.

xmobotx- I'm looking at Cree 10W CW, NW and WW. That's all I got so far, but clearly I need to select them next in my progression. Starting with the viewing angle. Seems that it's better to have a larger panel for light coverage, and a narrower angle could be accommodated to get good overlap.

I will Google "wall wort" power supplies. Thanks for that

So I guess my next step is figuring out the viewing angle. Any great ideas? Again, the thought is 4 of these panels for a 4' x 4' grow area. Each panel might be 12 x 15 or whatever.

Thanks guys! This is getting closer to a full plan.
 
rives

rives

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Umm, that's "wall wart", like a wart on the wall. Think cellphone chargers, etc. The voltage-based dimming works well if you are going to interface to an external controller or want to control a number of drivers simultaneously. For localized, manual dimming I've found it easier to use the resistance method. Many drivers (particularly Meanwell) accept three dimming signals - a 0-10vdc signal, a 0-10k resistance, or a pulse-width modulated signal.
 
rrog

rrog

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So that one main power supply outputs a higher amperage or such (I have no real working knowledge of electricity - currently -haha) and the step down driver feeds the mA we want to the LED? And I can dim by introducing a pot.

Rives- I have to digest that one a while.

OK- So given that I'm only looking to potentially dim all of the CW and some of the WW, sounds like best dimmed with the pot guvoo mentioned? That's local and manual, no?

Sorry for being such a newb. And thank you (all) for your patience.
 
repuk

repuk

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rrog said:
repuk, what deep reds are you adding? Just curious.
Click to expand...

Philips Rebel ES...

Anyone think I should build a bit more headroom than 30W psf? I'm thinking headroom is always a good thing, so maybe I should target 45W psf, and move to a panel with 200W, knowing that maybe 25W of blue or red could be dimmed at any time.

Wow- there are a lot of values I need to calculate a sink. Holy smokes. A few parameters involve the conductivity of the LED itself, and I haven't even gone there yet.

Seems I should really be selecting LEDs first. Should I just go Cree for all of them?
Click to expand...

I'd go for 60W per sq/feet, I've read tons of posts growing with leds people getting the best yields had that figure.
 
rrog

rrog

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So that I can select some LEDs, I need to select viewable angle. Vukman used 30-60 degree. Guvoo used 60 degree also.

I'll have 30 LED's on the panel, so the panel might be ~12" x 12" or 12" x 18". I suppose that might figure into the angle. Again, 4 of these panels over a 4x4 footprint. Doesn't seem like I need a wide dispersion.

A 60 degree angle intuitively seems good.
 
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habeeb

habeeb

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^ in my logic, lens angle is dependent on height the bar is above plants..

lower, no lens
higher, 90 degree lens


remember lens cut 'power' or whatever you want to call it, some say 10-12%


I would like to hear others, but I always vote for low height on bar, no lens.

what are looking at for 'heatsink' right now RROG?
 
rrog

rrog

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I thought the raw LED could be ordered with different angles? So like a Cree CW XM-L 60 degree? Do I have that wrong or do they apply a lens when you order? Otherwise I could just leave off as you say.

I Understood that I needed to know the LEDs and drivers being used so I could use a heat sink calculator. I'd like to have a housing like Guvoo - dual fans over aluminum heat sink fins. That's all I got so far.

I'm thinking this will be a 12 x 18" panel, maybe. I say that more from a light placement standpoint, not from a heat sink standpoint. I'd like to maybe spread out the big 10W LEDs.
 
tenthirty

tenthirty

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what are looking at for 'heatsink' right now RROG?
Click to expand...

It would be well advised to source some heat sinks at this point.
The entire build centers around it!!

Once you have the heat sinks located and are available,
you can then start worrying about how many and what kind of diodes you are going to use on each heat sink.

Once you're at that point we can all chip in and give you some options based on your heat sink heat dissipation qualities and size. (more or less)

Again,
It's not what the perfect spectrum is........
It's what is the best spectrum I can cool, fit, afford.......

And just to throw some water on it.

The best spectrum is like "the answer to life the universe and everything".
 
rives

rives

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The only LEDs that I've seen that are available with different angle lensing built directly onto the LED are the Oslon SSLs. Some people are staunch advocates of lenses, others avoid them at all costs. To me, anything tighter than about 90 degrees seems counter-productive. The Lumi has 90 degree lenses, and it will burn the plants if you get within about 12" of it. Having to move your fixture farther away seems backwards to me. The GD+'s lens is around 170 degrees, which I think is too wide - I would like to get some of the 110 degree lenses for them that are out there, but I can't get the fucking rep to return my emails for only 120 of them. As Habeeb said, every time you go through a lens you lose some light, and the most common figure for it that I've seen is a minimum of 10%.

For the power concentration that you are talking about, the 10.080" wide heatsink from heatsink.usa might be a good choice. It's a couple inches narrower than what you are thinking, but it would have a hell of a lot of heat dissipation capability. You could also rack a couple of them up side-by-side and do a ?" x 20" fixture.
 
W

WeedIsGod

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10" width, whatever height that heat sink happens to be, by whatever length you tell them to cut. They charge by 1" increments.
 
rives

rives

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You could do 10" x whatever, or figure out a way to rack them together and make it 20" x whatever. They have a pretty minimal cutting fee ($5, I think), and can do a nice job either cross-cutting or ripping. I used the 8.46" wide extrusion and had them cut (2) 4" +/- wide pieces out of it. They ripped it twice along the vertical fins adjacent to the center and threw away the center piece of the base, so each piece had a vertical fin on each side. Nice workmanship, and reasonable as hell.

The end view shows what I'm talking about - they cut two of these out of an 8.46" piece -

picture.php
 
hempfield

hempfield

Organic LED Grower
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Use reflectors instead on lenses to focus the light. Lenses are more likely to attract dust and to loose their transparency in time, reducing the output.

However, when using reflectors or even lenses you gain more than you loose , especially on the case of narraw beam reflectors (is just a simple math that prooves that).

And a few words about led drivers: they do not feed the leds with constant current, but they limit the value of the current, avoiding the cascade effect which will cause the leds to burn out and die.
 
rrog

rrog

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Thank you for the insight into the sink. The 10" is great. From a light spread perspective, would this panel be better as 10 x 12 or 10 x 18? 300W

Hempfield, thank you for your comments. I haven't seen any reflectors on DIY LEDs. Side reflectors mounted off the heat sink looking like more traditional HID reflector?

Regarding the drivers, I gather that the current can vary / fluctuate and this is the harm.

I will look up "cascade effect". Does a wall Wart take care of this?

Guvoo had recommended this driver solution. Wondering if this helps with the current fluctuation:

Main Power-supply
NES-350-48
48V - 7.3A - 350W
http://www.meanwell.com/search/nes-350/default.htm

Led-Drivers
for every channel one of this
http://www.recom-lighting.com/upload.../RCD-48_02.pdf
 
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habeeb

habeeb

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^ are you going 4x4 room?

my train of thought, as I learned it.. maybe I'm wrong, but the closer you are to the plants ( what you want with no lens' ) is you need a longer bar to fill out the sides.. so for a 4x4 room, you would go with ideally a 3 foot bar ( 36 inch ) , this accomplishes two things, more heatsink means more thermal management which the hotter the LED the less efficient it becomes, second is being able to spread the led farther and being able to add more / have a better spread layout design vs. a cramped close quarters layout

to me, 18 inch heatsinks seem too small, but also I guess I'm not sure on the layout of the bars / placement.

my idea is in a 4x4 room, 3x 10 inch wide , 36 inch long bars would cover 4x4 good.


as always, anyone is free to dissect my words / correct
 
rrog

rrog

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Hi Habeeb-

This would be 10" x 18" panel. 300W That's a big heat sink I think.

4 of these identical panels for a 4x4 area. So 75W per square foot. I like Rive's opinion of Guvoo's panel. Good as a component of a modular application. Several overlapping panels rather than one.
 
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