Building a Home Made LED

tenthirty · Sep 12, 2012

High All!!!

This will be a foray into my first adventure in building and hopefully tuning a home made LED light bar.
Imagine EVO 5 (For those that don't know, here is a picture of a knock off. http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/503317672/90W_LED_Grow_light_EVO_light.html)
Note that it has 90 1w diodes.
I don't know about you, but I've got better things to do with my life then to solder 90 diodes.

Also note that the page says 90w, well it draws only 70 or so.
This is the first thing that made my ears perk up.
The second is a grow by Mr.X (google it if you haven't seen it!)

Now to get you on the same page.
If you haven't read through this thread, please do. Made my head explode a few times.
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=184932

Now to what we are going to build.

All the parts below are sourced from rapidled.com I could get some of the stuff cheaper else where, but service and support mean something to me and they have been very helpful.
I have not ordered anything yet, but will very soon........comments!

This is not the ultimate total cost, but there is 190 bucks here already.

As-is Drilled/tapped 1.4" x 36" Aluminum Heatsink $25.00
10 ea. CREE XM-L Neutral White LED $9.00 $90.00
8 ea. Philips Rebel ES 660nm Deep Red LED $3.50 $28.00
Mean Well LPC-60-1750 constant current driver $26.00
Mean Well LPC-35-700 constant current driver 16.00 $16.00
Thermal Grease (5g) $5.50

Based off of Mr. calculator, we should be driving about 70w. Now MR.X was able to get some unreal yield numbers with very low wattage draw.
Alright, here is a link to the grow...https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=215147
With the advent of 10w chips and them already on stars. Hey I'll solder this together in 10 minutes, maybe 20.

What I'm looking for is a nice even spectrum across the board with some 660 supplement, because the XM-L neutral whites drop off there.

Pics coming when parts arrive.

vukman · Sep 12, 2012

NICE GOING!!!! I was reading some of your posts in ..errr..cough..cough...another forum..

Wishing you all the best and let us know ASAP ,,,here first!!!! LOL,,,,,about how it all turns out....

tenthirty · Sep 12, 2012

The trigger has been pulled with Rapidled. The total was $216.41.

Now all I need is a couple of 2 pin AMP CPC connectors and 240v power cords and that should cover everything, though I have enough parts to power the thing up when the parts arrive.

The order from rapid led should be here by Saturday I hope.

analogue · Sep 12, 2012

Looking forward to seeing this :thank you:

.

medmaker420 · Sep 13, 2012

sounds like fun, can't wait to see the updates and pics once your gear arrives.

hempfield · Sep 13, 2012

As a DIY LED grower I am subbed into this :lurk:

Good luck !

PetFlora · Sep 13, 2012

Awesome. Did you order the hanger kit too?

Though I have been a proponent of 660, but only during flower & on a separate o/o switch, the more I reread what SX said (see below), the more I think he is saying that more 660 brings nothing unique to the party. Certainly nothing to warrant adding more than 10-20% of total output.

I view its use based on how natural sunlight red spectrums increases during flower. Looks like the NW has more than enough 610-660 until the last ~ 4 weeks of flower/harvest, where a 660 boost might be beneficial.

In my last grow (which was my best yet), I used 1/8 660 HO T5s this way, the other 7 covering 280- 600, so it's more than a theory

Of course, I could be wrong about this with led. Can't wait to put my money where my mouth is. Soon I hope

SX said about NWs: and more that 1/3 of which (i.e. the area under the curve) is over ~580nm or so (which has a Photosynthetic RS of over 90%!)"

but best to be safe until someones does a complete grow using only NWs

I would do one main board/rail with 100% NWS + 2 ~ 1.5" wide rails/heat sinks with 660s on a separate driver/timer just in case

tenthirty · Sep 13, 2012

PetFlora said:
Awesome. Did you order the hanger kit too?

No hangar kit, but I don't have a lot of head room either.
What I am going to do is drill a couple of #40 holes and use safety wire to be able to connect the standard rope ratchets to the luminaire.

The testing setup already has a grid of piping above the grow area for easy placement of what ever is getting hung.

siddhartha · Sep 13, 2012

Can you post pics when you are done.
And can you do a thread or journal of the grow. I have really wanted to build my own for a while now. Maybe ten of these same units over one tray
Sidd

tenthirty · Sep 14, 2012

siddartha, I will be posting up the assembly of the fixture with pic and instruction. As far as the grow goes, I run a perpetual with the same strain I've been running for a while, so I know what to expect for my existing methodology. The grow is big enough to have a large enough control group to have a relatively small standard deviation. Because of the perpetual, I will be able to run through tests pretty quickly, relatively speaking. So yes the pertinent parts of the grow will be journaled.

I would do one main board/rail with 100% NWS + 2 ~ 1.5" wide rails/heat sinks with 660s on a separate driver/timer just in case

Petflora, The first whack will be a single line alternating 10w whites to 1w 660 reds. so it will be 10 to 8 LEDs respectively. I believe that the whites will drive at about 1700ma and the reds somewhere around 350ma. I agree that the whites should be able to do it alone. I also agree with SX that the whites should be all that you need. Remember this is a first swath at this, so engineering constraints are weighed a little heavier than if I really knew what I was doing. The 660s sounded like a good idea, they were relatively inexpensive as was the driver, and a single driver for the whites will only drive 10 LEDs max. So I had 8 spaces left in the heat sink, so lets fill them with 660 reds. The 660 reds will accentuate the spectrum where the whites fall of dramatically according to the data sheet. There will be separate drivers with switches and/or plugs to be able to control what is on at any given point in time.

Tracking confirmation has arrived!!

repuk · Sep 14, 2012

Hi tenthirty!

The aliexpress page you mention specs 45 2W LEDs.. current draw is 70W because they don't run the LEDs at 100%...

I'm also into building my own LED lamp and considering RapidLED for convenience, did you see their Ultra Premium Retrofit kits? why did you prefer to get the components and not a kit? The deep red LEDs are 3W?

repuk · Sep 14, 2012

After some research and tinkering with the shopping cart I see why

No use in adding royal blues when one can cover that with XM-L NW

Are your sure those Deep RED are just 1W?? I also checked the spectral coverage and adding far red looks sound ... though what PetFlora said also...

I'm thinking on taking also the RapidLED route but with just NW LEDs, so far nobody has tried that? (I will be using it just for flowering)

vukman · Sep 14, 2012

The fantastic thing about using the whites whether it is WW, CW or NW is that it covers a broad spectrum and I know I'm not saying anything we don't already know but the heat given of is almost negligible compared to HID's so you can really pack in the lux/lumens and with the right optics (30-60degree)...all things being equal....you should be able to do some damn heavy duty growing and not have the heat issues. So the savings in electrical costs would add up real quick.

I am not speaking from experience mind you but a light band spectrum is a light band spectrum whether it's MH compared to the CW LED or the WW and HPS..

I may be way off but it really does sound spot on. I'm sure someone has this going already and like everyone else, I would really be interested in the results...

tenthirty · Sep 14, 2012

repuk, Good, fast, cheap. pick 2. I went with rapid led because of known quality name brand top bin leds....The spec sheets for the LEDs are your friend as well as ohms law!
The LED manufacturing process is not super consistent.

Right now we're running 2 pro-grow led panels as well as HPS. It will be interesting to see the difference between the pro-grows and the first test model.

I'm working on access to a good multi-thousand dollar quantum meter as well, while I wait patiently at the front door for my package to arrive.

repuk · Sep 14, 2012

I'm going the all NW route. Will use them for flower, the cab will be 60x50x120cm, (23"x19"x47") 18 XM-L.

At 80% power that would mean 144W or like 45w per sq feet, which lens would be better in my scenario? 60 or 80 degrees??

repuk · Sep 14, 2012

I see tenthirty!!

(didn'r see your reply)
Well, I'm going the all NW so we will see how it goes!

tenthirty · Sep 14, 2012

repuk said:
I'm going the all NW route. Will use them for flower, the cab will be 60x50x120cm, (23"x19"x47") 18 XM-L.

At 80% power that would mean 144W or like 45w per sq feet, which lens would be better in my scenario? 60 or 80 degrees??

144w for the 1.5" heat sink hits me as being a bit much. I would go with the 4" wide one, though your real power draw at the LEDs will probably be closer to 100w. It's going to take 2 of the Mean Well drivers, each maxing out at 60w per driver.
Check out the spec sheets and do the math.
http://www.rapidled.com/mean-well-lpc-60-1750-constant-current-driver/

As far as lenses go, I'm starting out with none. So that is a "we'll see". The spec sheet for the LEDs calls out a 120 degree angle, but the graph shows that they really start to drop off at about 90.

This also brings up the viability/usability of diffuse light.
IMHO, I'm thinking that we want to share the light from all of the leds, apposed to having 18 little spot lights. The cumulative advantages to having multiple HPSs' is well know.

Just say'in.

medmaker420 · Sep 14, 2012

once built and tested time will tell what works best indeed

a ton of different ideas flowing in the led threads lately and I'm diggin it.

Anyone who was around a few years ago during the led debates compared to NOW would realize how far led grow lights have actually progressed and in a POSITIVE WAY especially for the DIY types.

can't wait for the pics and grow show!

rives · Sep 14, 2012

I'm very interested to see how the various flavors of white work out. I'm still on the fence regarding their usage vs, for instance, PL-L fluorescent lamps. I was definitely impressed with the way that mine vegged this last run, but the cost is substantially more, and there is no comparison in the complexity of assembling the two. Fun to play with, though!

medmaker420 · Sep 14, 2012

Rives I too am a pl-l lover as I have used them 100% for ALL my vegging for YEARS and when I first got started I used them for both veg and flower ( those 55w biaxes are AWESOME ).

They do have many uses and last a damn long time

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