Pinstripe's 22W LED grow (Rubbermaid/Osram Golden Dragon)

What's up, guys? Long time lurker comin' out. Before I get started I want to give props to all you LED Lab:ers, and especially Knna and Weezard for spending tons of time tutoring interested people.

So I wanted to share this wicked thing that happened last week.

I didn't have much to do for a few nights, so I decided to line a rubbermaid with an emergency blanket. I figured making a light trap, and planting a few of seeds wouldn't hurt either.

Here's what it looked like when I was finished:


Still, I had no light for them little babies. I figured they would be okay in the dark for a night and went to bed.
Later, that very night, I woke up being blinded by this levitating, humming thing. It flew very slowly, heading towards my new grow box.

I was completely freaked out, but I managed taking this pic of the landing sequence:


Googling "Alien space ship looking for weed" comforted me enough to let it stay. Apparently, most aliens come in peace.

Now it's been sitting on my rubbermaid for a little more than a week, and the plants are doing great.


I took the thing down to the lab the other day, and it uses Osram Golden Dragon Plus LEDs. 12 red, 2 Royal Blue, and 3 White 3500Ks. The sum of the forward voltages is 44.1V and 0.50 constant Amps are running through them. This means they're fed with 22 Watts.



The LEDs are mounted on a 8x6inch heatsink and according to master knna's great guide. The heatsink barely gets warm when the leds are running, and the temperature inside the rubbermaid is 4-5°C above ambient. The grow box's dimensions are 9.5x13x13" (W x D x H).
The driver gets kinda hot, maybe over 50°C, so it is mounted on a bent piece of metal.

A shot of the plants:

My initial plan was to run a few F3 Lowryders, but only one out of six germinated. So I planted two freebee Blackberry seeds. The Blackberrys are supposed to be made out of seeds from the original Californian Blackberry clone. We'll see how they turn out.

There's a few more pics in my album.

Enough for now
Peace

I heard Blackberrys are addictive. Nice looking setup. I will be watching this for sure.

Very interesting! Look forward to seeing updates.

grouchy: Thanks man! Btw, your cab is looking great, and so are your ladies Blackberry's addictive? For real or for being addictively good?

Rouxdy: Thanks for looking in!


I'm actually gonna mount the LED light on a miditower PC case in two weeks from now. It'll be a little stealthier and more comfortable to grow in. My plan is to scrog the girls (hopefully) right away.

Okay, so here's the weekly update. The temps in the box has been around 25-27°C. I've haven't done anything about the humidity which probably is somwhere around 25%. That probably slows things down a little. The plants are doing okay though.
I'm using organic soil made for growing vegetables. I'll probably not need any fertilizer during the veg. For bloom they will get Hesi Bloom complex.



They're a little droopy from just getting watered. The lowryder needs to be transplanted. The blackberrys will get bigger pots in a few days too.




I'm not impressed by this lowryder. It's almost 3 weeks old. I just noticed the yellowing leaves and think it's a sign of the plant being rootbound. What do you guys think?
Also, I messed up when preparing the soil for this plant. When mixing it I added too much water making the soil a little chunky.

I'm afraid the lowryder won't be worth keeping, so do you think I should start a few more seeds? Because I would hate getting 2 male blackberrys.



Peace

First up, that thing is cool as hell bro. Consider me signed in. Is that a silverstone fan? I think your sick one need some ferts. The lower leaves yellowing off usually means they need some nitrogen, and a general indication that it's time to feed it. Seeing that it's a little more advanced than the other two, you should probably think about some light feeding for those too, before they get to that yellow stage.

nice set bro

Classy!

Classy!

Well done brah!
Subscribed.

Weeze

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great to see some LEDs finally making their way into the micro forum.

great looking setup and build.

do you think you could talk the aliens into eventually giving you design schematics and a parts list some day? I would love to build a LED panel but I don't know enough about electricity, resistors and stuff to build one. It looks like the aliens know what they are doing and I would love to simply copy their design

sito007: Thanks man!

ScrubNinja: I'm honored seeing you here I've read a lot of your stuff, and for the PC grow I'll probably make one of those light traps of yours.
The fan is an Adda 80mm/14dB(A)/19.0cfm run at 9V. There are no figures for the static pressure (again, thx for teaching me about that ), but I'm sure it's ridiculously low.
Venting out the heat was always the big challenge when designing my last grow boxes. This one, on the other hand, was such a pleasure putting together. I'm guessing 12-13W (including 6W of light) is actually emitted inside the box, so it's really nothing to worry about.
Thanks for the advice on the feeding, I'll definitely think of starting to (carefully) feed the other two as well. It makes sense that the lowryder shows signs first, considering the chunky soil it grows in.

Weezard: Thanks! Good to see you!

asa77sol: Hey man! I saw your LED grow on cannabiscafe. Very nice design! Yup, it's the same driver. At 500mA, I believe it's 86% effective.

grow1620: Thanks for stoppin' by! For the moment I have a tons to do in school, but in two weeks or so I'll do my best to help ya out Actually it's really simple. Get leds, get drivers, don't mix up + and - , solder, grow.


All the best!

Hey this thing does look very cool.

Q: how many watts of led is that setup?

I so so wanna get me a bunch of led lights and do a mini micro grow.
well keep up the good work.

My reference to blackberrys being addictive was aimed at the phones. They are called crackberrys around here. Lookin good. You should be able to sex that lowryder soon. Do not give the lowryder the same nutes as the others. It should be fine with what is in the soil for the first 4 weeks. They are really picky about getting nutes at first. I would also lighten the soil with a 1/3 perlite for next time. The reason the leaves are yellowing could be a ph lockout on nitrogen.

How much money did you spent on that LED panel?

Otherwise, great work man! I love it.

Amazing setup, pinstripe! Its the best Ive seen built by aliens, by far.

They were very smart building it in a way the fins of the heatsink are out the box, so most of heat is released out it. Those aliens knows what they are doing

This is some REAL micro! Very nice how you build the lamp! I'll be following this one

Hey pinstripe, rock on. I meant to say also check it isn't overwatering, in case nobody mentioned. I see you mentioned they droop after watering, so I thought I better mention it. How they lookin?

Thanks for the comments everyone! I appreciate them, especially advice on how to treat the plants.

I've got some bad news. First I overwatered the blackberrys, and now I've underwatered all three plants. I hope they'll make it through.
School got really intentense and I didn't check on the soil yesterday. At that point the plants were looking good, except for one blueberry who showed a little symptoms of overwatering. When I got home today all three were drooping, and I haven't given 'em water for three days.

Dang I really messed up So, when I took the pictures all three was drooping. The Lowryder's soil felt light and dry, so I watered and the plant perked up quickly. The day after that, one of the blackberrys' soil felt dry as well. I watered it and... dang.

How do you guys know when to water? Do you ever let the plant show that it needs water? I've been doing fine with bigger plants, but I'm having a really hard time with babies like these. I usually stick my finger down the pot, and if it feels dry an inch down or so, I water. I guess this doesn't apply to small pots.

Do you think I can save the plants? I figured they would get extra shocked if transplanted, so I just watered 'em and will see how they'll do.
Edit: One blackberry looks fine again. It took one hour for it to perk up.

Oh well, I've still got plenty of seeds.

ScrubNinja Thx for looking in! You were right All the way I did my best not to overwater, but apparently I've done it again.

#1cheesebuds The leds use 22W and the driver is about 85-86% effective, which means the whole led-system uses 25,6W.

Zlatorog Thanks man! I spent around $150 on the system, and I think it's worth every penny. I can run the whole system with the fans running really silently. The grow box is hidden inside a closet, and you can barely hear the fans when standing right in front of the closet and having the door open. Also, when running 50W of cfls in the same closet, I got heat problems unless having the door a little open.

grouchy Haha, yeah I got the addictive thing just when I posted the message. Thx for the advice on the feeding. I just ordered perlite btw.

knna Good to see you here Hehe, those aliens have got some brains Btw, do you know what? I think the LEDs could've been mounted directly to the heatsink. Even when the multimeter probes are 1mm apart, the DMM says the resistance is infinite.

OG_Jaapie Welcome aboard!

How do you guys know when to water?

Click to expand...

lift up the cups and go by the weight, the difference between wet and dry should be obvious that way.

.

Posilutely!

Posilutely!

grow1620 said:

lift up the cups and go by the weight, the difference between wet and dry should be obvious that way.

Click to expand...

That, bears repeating!

Aloha, y'all

Weeze