DIY leds Discussion Thread for all your how tos and doubts and anything related

[Neferhotep]

something from cutter

Watch out with Cutter Knoxfield. I ordered stuff and paid and never heard from them again. They even don't answer to email.

 

[SwS]

Watch out with Cutter Knoxfield. I ordered stuff and paid and never heard from them again. They even don't answer to email.

I'm referring to Cutter Electronics...is it the same vendor ?

 

[Rocket Soul]

Theres a lot to respond to here but id like to start by trying to make a shortcut: have you considered growlights australia? They are here on the forum and have some nice discounts right now, along with other discounts for forum peeps, bulk discount even on some low numbers (this works out even better with strips since you use more of them). Somewhat pricey gear if though but creme de la creme (remember to convert from aussie dollars not US dollars!); water proof and can be hosed down if you do some finishing sealing of solder joints, high efficiency/ppf per watt even if UV included (UV will always pull down ppf per watt somewhat even if using very efficient chips, its just part of UV containing less photons per watt due to each photon being higher energy), both strips and boards available and can all be attached to the same driver since its the same pcb architecture.

Ive bought both from GLA and cutter and been happy with the results but cutter was not good at communicating; in the end i had to call them up internationally but i got it figured out in the end; they have several individual emails of the staff, you should make sure to have more emils than just Mark/the owner.

GLA strips gave me very good flower results, both yield and quality and have been 100%. Smoke quality was very on point but my guess is that their flower boards would do better; if in a tent id go for them. My only gripe would be that the strips is not available in the full flower spectrum; its a full cycle spectrum with a little more green and blue. Green dont seem to be doing any favours to end flavour results imho but it does seem to be very good for yield and penetration.

Another good thing with GLA is that their gear is much easier to driver match than the blux strips.


Just white light 3000k 80cri for flower: yes it grows well and yield fine but having compared from the same genetics and flower room with other souped up designs (adding uv and reds): everyone ive had blind test could identify the plain white as the lowest quality terps and flavour wise. Its no contest really Good enough if you look mainly to yield but if growing for personal stash id go for something which gives best possible flavour experience.

If you still wanna go the way of blux strips i can give some advice on that but i do believe theyre not ideal to work with, its hard to match them with any meanwell drivers unless using the A type dimming HLGs which allow you to push up voltage a bit with voltage regulation. Note on the ABs: they do not seem to have this feature, maybe on some of the models but certainly not on all.

 

[Neferhotep]

is it the same vendor ?

Yes; Cutter Electronics in Knoxfield.
I send mail to three separate adresses and they responded to one but not adequately.
This is ten days ago.
@Rocket Soul I may ring them up in a couple of days.

I was looking for 660 nm only strips and found them at Cutter's.

 

[Rocket Soul]

Yes; Cutter Electronics in Knoxfield.
I send mail to three separate adresses and they responded to one but not adequately.
This is ten days ago.
@Rocket Soul I may ring them up in a couple of days.

I was looking for 660 nm only strips and found them at Cutter's.

This sounds very familiar. My advice: just call them, thing became much better after i called.

I think the problem is somewhat down to them making everything almost like custom per order: they dont have stock of the strips just the parts for the strips. But it also means you usually have tood possibilities to get anything custom which is nice, most other places dont. Im not defending them in any way just giving my experience of dealing with them and my conclusions on why it was not as good as i would have hoped.

If any consolation i was very happy with my strips, 2700k 90cri + 660 photoboost with their top cree midpowers of the time. Its probably the light with most consistent great results ive done, and still not a single diode gone since 2020.

 

[SwS]

Theres a lot to respond to here but id like to start by trying to make a shortcut: have you considered growlights australia? They are here on the forum and have some nice discounts right now, along with other discounts for forum peeps, bulk discount even on some low numbers (this works out even better with strips since you use more of them). Somewhat pricey gear if though but creme de la creme (remember to convert from aussie dollars not US dollars!); water proof and can be hosed down if you do some finishing sealing of solder joints, high efficiency/ppf per watt even if UV included (UV will always pull down ppf per watt somewhat even if using very efficient chips, its just part of UV containing less photons per watt due to each photon being higher energy), both strips and boards available and can all be attached to the same driver since its the same pcb architecture.

Ive bought both from GLA and cutter and been happy with the results but cutter was not good at communicating; in the end i had to call them up internationally but i got it figured out in the end; they have several individual emails of the staff, you should make sure to have more emils than just Mark/the owner.

GLA strips gave me very good flower results, both yield and quality and have been 100%. Smoke quality was very on point but my guess is that their flower boards would do better; if in a tent id go for them. My only gripe would be that the strips is not available in the full flower spectrum; its a full cycle spectrum with a little more green and blue. Green dont seem to be doing any favours to end flavour results imho but it does seem to be very good for yield and penetration.

Another good thing with GLA is that their gear is much easier to driver match than the blux strips.


Just white light 3000k 80cri for flower: yes it grows well and yield fine but having compared from the same genetics and flower room with other souped up designs (adding uv and reds): everyone ive had blind test could identify the plain white as the lowest quality terps and flavour wise. Its no contest really Good enough if you look mainly to yield but if growing for personal stash id go for something which gives best possible flavour experience.

If you still wanna go the way of blux strips i can give some advice on that but i do believe theyre not ideal to work with, its hard to match them with any meanwell drivers unless using the A type dimming HLGs which allow you to push up voltage a bit with voltage regulation. Note on the ABs: they do not seem to have this feature, maybe on some of the models but certainly not on all.

Thanks for the referral to GLA, love they're spectrum the best I've seen to date. But financially, 6.6k aussie dollars( that's with the 50%off sale ) converts to 77k in my currency does not look doable. That is for 4x Ultri-Mates, and I need to cover 2 4x4's.
I just did some more research and found to hit the 1200ppfd I want I'll need
10x BXRC-40E10K0-B-73 =1200ppfd
25x BXEB-L1190U-40E3000-C-C3 =1200ppfd
And pricing is the same for both cobs and strips. And I see now what you mean about the driver matching it's a pain in the but really . Led really has come a long way and I think that buying a ready made fixture would be better then to diy.

 

[SwS]

Will just have to hunt for the spectrums I want I guess

 

[SwS]

@Rocket Soul i appreciate the help brother truly one love

 

[Rocket Soul]

Thanks for the referral to GLA, love they're spectrum the best I've seen to date. But financially, 6.6k aussie dollars( that's with the 50%off sale ) converts to 77k in my currency does not look doable. That is for 4x Ultri-Mates, and I need to cover 2 4x4's.
I just did some more research and found to hit the 1200ppfd I want I'll need
10x BXRC-40E10K0-B-73 =1200ppfd
25x BXEB-L1190U-40E3000-C-C3 =1200ppfd
And pricing is the same for both cobs and strips. And I see now what you mean about the driver matching it's a pain in the but really . Led really has come a long way and I think that buying a ready made fixture would be better then to diy.

I think youre overestimating what you need for a 4x4. Double long board is plenty for a 4x4, and if you can sort put driver and heatsink somewhere more local all you really need is 4 boards. For your veg tent: GLA boards is somewhat of overkill. Any old 4000k solution, strips/boards of whatever brand is convenient, is all you really need. 6k$ is is nuts even in aussie$, though one of those ultrimate would give you enough for another 4x2on top of your 4x4 flower (its one veg and one flower, rivht?). But you dont need that much gear really. 4 boards should be 170x4 and ausie dollar is almost half a us dollar iirc.
Get in touch with the guys they are really helpfull and say hello from me, i know them since these boards were being developed over at another private forum.
They have reliable software solutions (i think downloadable but not sure) to be able to run simulations of what your cannopy light levels would look like. Their efficiency testing involves some really nifty gear that also measure their spread so its based on data, not back of the hand estimations. But of course there are cheaper solutions over at the alibubbers.

Will just have to hunt for the spectrums I want I guess

Spectrum hunting is very fun, especially if you can run good side by sides. One of the flower spaces of my ex growbuddy had 4 different lights so it was really fun to see how different flavors would develop over one cut. After a while you could almost taste the spectrum. In my experience the best flavor results was with wide blue/violet uv but mid intensity, low green, and high and wide red, targeting around 630-640 and 660-680nm, it was the more loud and "bright" tasting flavors. More green and we got somewhat more subtle but maybe more complex taste, but i prefer more in your face. Too much blue seems to hit the yield and budsize somewhat, worth thinking of if you wnat to add uv violet: you need to compensate it with reds or start from a really low blue white base spectrum. These are few of the spectrums i had made woth my Ali supplier, sadly they are going untested due to falling out with my growbuddy:

The way things work with growlights nowadays is that most lights are cookie cutter copies of the easiest way to achieve high efficiency: 4000-5000k + 660 reds. Iny opinion not quite optimal for good taste terp quality and plant response, but very good for yield and deep penetration. Efficiency will up your ppfd numbers somewhat but you can get the same cannopy levels by just upping your wattage by 10-15%. But your actual taste depends more on the spectrum, which you cannot really change much unless you get into modding and tinkering. Of course theres other things affecting taste but spectrum is what creates your baseline, what genes will get triggered. This in my opinion is the main reason to diy nowadays - diy for cash savings in quite moot what with all the cheap lighting getting churned out of china.

 

[Neferhotep]

My tip for diy would be to always underdrive leds. For example those BXEB-L1190U-40E3000-C-C3 have typical power 27 watts so drive them at 14 watt max. They'll stay cooler and last longer.

 

[Rocket Soul]

My tip for diy would be to always underdrive leds. For example those BXEB-L1190U-40E3000-C-C3 have typical power 27 watts so drive them at 14 watt max. They'll stay cooler and last longer.

I agree, but the problem with doing this with bxebs is that youd beed like 30 of them for a 4x4. You need to have a really good plan for the wiring and driver solution for that not becoming a huge mess, especially if youre doing pure parallel connections. Maybe with daisy chaining but thats very wago intensive, youd need 60x 3 way wagos for that. Ive ran 4x19ish V in series without any problems with the bxebs. But as far as i can remember the connectors are rated at 60V (very low, most other connectors can handle 200V). For this type of setup id defo look into setting up series strings in parallel, you just need to figure out the right driver. Inventronics have great options for this, very good and varied voltage ranges on their constant power drivers while meanwell only do 3 in their xlg range (L/M/H but the H range is almost identical to a 54V driver).

 

[Neferhotep]

You are right, they need all to go in parallel probably.
Mean Well HLG-480-H-42-AB driver.
22 x Wago-5 connector.

 

[Rocket Soul]

You are right, they need all to go in parallel probably.
Mean Well HLG-480-H-42-AB driver.
22 x Wago-5 connector.

If you run them really soft you could probably get away with 3x 2 footers on a xlg-h (57 V, taking into account that voltgae drops a bit with lower current) or a 54A HLG with voltage turned up a bit.

 

[Ttystikk]

@Ttystyou mean intesity from lights ? Or plants ?
im with you on that one but getting tired of buying bulbs and i really like to intensity of the cobs saw some ppfd readings and its hitting the numbers I would like. Just haven't gotten around the spacing and how many to use in a 4x4 space. Oh and the heatsink prices is ridiculous, will be weighing the 2 to see which one makes more sense financially and which one gives the better quality light. Care to share some pics and details of your cob build?

I was teasing you and referring to "intensity" of plants. I mean, who's going to go to all this effort just to grow mids, right? LOL

My own build is Cree 3590 COB LED, CD bin, 72V, 80CRI 3500 Kelvin Temp chips. I use 4 such chips with glass 80 degree lens covers on a Meanwell HLG-185H-C700B driver. I used 72V chips only because everyone else was getting 36V chips and they were out of stock! Wattage is the same.

Each of these fixtures pulls 224W; 54W per chip and 9W for the driver. Each fixture is sized for 2' x 3' = 6ft² and I use 4 of them for each 4' x 6' = 24ft² trellis panel, which comes out to 900W or 37.5W/ft².

The kicker is that they're water cooled.

Forgot to add a pic!

 

[jonesfam7715]

Cree cmu2287 is probably my favorite cob I've ever run. If someone wanted to give cobs a go round nowadays that would be the way I'd go. More efficient and double the max power.

 

[Neferhotep]

224W; 54W per chip and 9W for the driver.

That would add up to 225 W
The thing you have hanging up is 4,5 kW LED power in total!
You should be manufacturing lighthouses!

What are those copper or brass things having multiple hoses connected? They look very nice.

Cree cmu2287

Some of those have really high cri too.
I'd like to order some just to play around with

 

[Ttystikk]

That would add up to 225 W
The thing you have hanging up is 4,5 kW LED power in total!
You should be manufacturing lighthouses!

What are those copper or brass things having multiple hoses connected? They look very nice.


Some of those have really high cri too.
I'd like to order some just to play around with

It was designed to light six trellis panels, so there were 225W x 4 per trellis x 6 trellis panels = 5400W

I had two of these, plus a few spare lights for a total of 53 modules.

Then I bought 125 x 270W LED bar lights, each was 4' or 122cm long.

But wait- there's more! I have 8 more LED lights, between 240W and 480W.

Soooooo I have a lot of lights laying around. Some don't work and need repairs but most of them are still functional.

You think that's bad, consider that I have 16 Tons of water chillers sitting around as well.

 

[Ttystikk]

@exploziv I discussed my lights and posted a pic above. Thought you might like a look.

 

[jonesfam7715]

±That would add up to 225 W
The thing you have hanging up is 4,5 kW LED power in total!
You should be manufacturing lighthouses!

What are those copper or brass things having multiple hoses connected? They look very nice.


Some of those have really high cri too.
I'd like to order some just to play around with

I grabbed up a pile of cobs off arrow those cmu2287 cobs are usually $20-30 us, but they got em on arrow for dirt cheap, like $3.50, I got cxb 3590 for $2.50 a few times and bridgelux cob even cheaper. I believe there is potential in cobs especially high cri, and having enough to under drive them like we do these strips.

 

[Ttystikk]

I grabbed up a pile of cobs off arrow those cmu2287 cobs are usually $20-30 us, but they got em on arrow for dirt cheap, like $3.50, I got cxb 3590 for $2.50 a few times and bridgelux cob even cheaper. I believe there is potential in cobs especially high cri, and having enough to under drive them like we do these strips.

The CXB 3590 in the modules above cost $40 each back in the day, and I had to buy 100 at a time to get that price.

I think there's a great deal of unrealized potential in COB LED, especially in combination with glass lenses.