Bueno Grows w/ DIY COB LEDs

*****Just a small note for anyone reading this thread, the LEDs used are all a bit outdated by now, so if your going to go through the trouble of building a DIY LED light fixture, do a good bit of research and make sure your getting the latest and greatest models and BINs that are out. It will be worth it, LED tech advances so fast, just want people to build the best fixtures they can so don't get stuck on any particular COB models mentioned in this thread before looking at other (and newer) options, there is better stuff out there on the market already. (The MW HLG drivers are still legit. The COB tech changes fast.)*****


2 CREE CXA3070 3000K Z4 & Z2 bin COBs (1 of each)

***ROUND 1 HARVEST REPORT 1GPW ~104w, 105.7g yield details in post #242***
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=6459489&postcount=242

***Updated grow size to a 2'x3'x5' tent and lighting upgraded to 3 CXA3070 3000K AB Bin COBs each powered by its own JHX LED 1450mA driver, plus 10 660nm, 4 630nm, and 4 450nm 3w LEDs powered by a Fasttech 650mA driver.***

3 CREE CXA3070 3000K AB bin COBs + 18 total 630/660nm red and 450nm blue LEDs on 20mm stars

***ROUND 2 starts on page 16 with default post per page or post #227.***
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=284309&page=16
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=6448371&postcount=227
***ROUND 2 HARVEST REPORT 1.1-1.27GPW ~190W, 209g + 32.3g details in post #340***
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=6596726&postcount=340

***ROUND 3 starts on post #336***
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=6586008&postcount=336
***ROUND 3 HARVEST REPORT 1.03GPW ~190W, 196.5g details in post #454***
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=6745022&postcount=454

***Updated/Changed lighting setup again***

35 Bridgelux Vero 10 4000K COBs + 14 total 630/660nm red LEDs on 20mm stars

***ROUND 4 STARTS ON post #452**** (Round 4 sucked, I didnt finish or weigh results)
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=6735121&postcount=452

***ROUND 5 Starts on post #531***
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=6915188&postcount=531

***ROUND 5 Finished post #667*** Harvested 165.6g, total wattage 162.6w.
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=7031517&postcount=667



So for many runs I have used the trusty 150w HPS and it never did me wrong. But sometimes you get bored and want to try something new. That is where this thread begins.

A couple times of the past few years, I had been looking into making a do-it-yourself (DIY) LED panel. I would do some researching and get turned off by the price of components, searching for the best bins/most efficient LEDs in different wavelengths, etc. I always just ended up deciding it wasnt work the cost and effort.

A couple weeks ago I found out about Chips-on-board(COB) LEDs and how efficient some of them are and the price is somewhat reasonable and I decided thats what I wanted to do was test some of these out for myself. After researching for countless hours over a couple weeks, I made some purchases and assembled my own DIY COB LED modules.

The components I chose are CREE CXA3070 3000k COBs. I picked up one Z2 bin which was the best available at the time unless you ordered a large quantity of 20-100 pieces minimum. I had intended to build a small cab to test the single COB out in but wasnt sure yet about it.

Then after about a week of messing around with the COB, I decided rather than build a small test cab that I would just get a second COB and build another module to run a pair of them in the tent in place of the 150w HPS and see how they stack up. At this time a Z4 bin popped up on ebay which is the top bin most efficient cxa3070 available and I could order in single quantities. So I bought one of those.

Anyway the list of materials I used:
-1 CREE CXA3070 3000k Z2
-1 CREE CXA3070 3000k Z4
-2 Alpine 11 Plus CPU Coolers (heatsink/fan combos)
-2 Meanwell LPC-60-1400 drivers
-12v wall adapter for the fans
-a length of salvageable power cord to power drivers
-thermal paste, kapton tape, solder, various connectors, heatshrink, wires, etc.

Cost for 2 modules was around $180 for everything to build them.

Each COB will be running at 1400mA (1.4A) on its own driver. Each COB runs at about 37V @ 1.4A or ~52w each COB. So 104w together between the two COBs, however some power is wasted by the drivers and the couple watts to run the fans on the heatsinks so realistically total power draw around 120w would be a safe estimate without having a Kill-A-Watt or ensupra to test actual power draw at the wall socket. I plan to get one eventually so I know what Im working with.

Heres some pics of the main components.

The CXA3070 Z2 bin sitting on the heatsink I had around that I was using to test the COB with before I decided to go with 2 modules in the tent.



The CXA3070 Z4 bin chip, you can see how tiny these things are vs the size of my fingers in the pictures, roughly 1" square and very thin, amazing.





One of the drivers



And a pic of some of the parts for building one module.

Heres some pics of a finished module that I am using to veg for this run.

Right now the seeds have been picked and already vegging in my veg cab under a single 3000k COB. They started first 5 days from seed under 2 42w daylight CFLs and were stretching bad by the time I got my CPU coolers in and assembled a COB module to replace the CFLs to veg the seedlings.

I started with:

-3x CSG Cheese n Chaze (only 2 ended up sprouting of the 3)

and the rest are personal creations:
-3x Pineapple Express x Cheese n Chaze
-3x Blackberry Kush x Chemmy Jones
-3x "Chemdawg 91 s1" x SWT#4 IBL.

Here they are at day 7 from sprout (2 days under COB).



Day 11



Day 13



Day 15 (yesterday morning)




My 1/2 gallon grow bags showed up earlier, so they are getting transplanted tonight to 1/2 gallon bags until I can, hopefully sex them by preflower and up pot the females before flowering.


The actual flowering will be done under both COB modules in my tent that I used the 150w HPS in. I plan to see if ~100w of COB LED can match or beat the 150w HPS in the same environment only change is the lighting.

Very cool! I am in a similar boat. I have a single 2700k cxa3050 at 100w.

Why 3000k?

Why run them at half the wattage they can take?

Everything looks healthy!

Good luck!

3dDream said:

Very cool! I am in a similar boat. I have a single 2700k cxa3050 at 100w.

Why 3000k?

Why run them at half the wattage they can take?

Everything looks healthy!

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Cool. One of the grows I saw that helped me decide to try these was a 2 cxa3050 grow.

I decided to use the 3000k because of its efficiency and spectrum coverage.

They are ran at "only" 1400mA for efficiency and because the 1400mA drivers were easy to find and somewhat cheap.

Watching this thread !

Had both veg and flower tents open at the same time and noticed how different the light spectrums look on this 3000k COB vs 150w HPS.




Topped after 4th node and top two fans defoliated on each.


Before




After

Very cool. Those are big LEDs!

Looking forward to seeing how this round turns out!

Hey Bueno!

Long time lurker of your 150w tent. Your thread has helped me more than a few times . Plus it looks like we both grow a rad amount of CSG strains!! (I've grown White Jones and ECSDH & got seeds of candelicous, SSSDH, Chemwreck Kush, and titanium just waiting)

Really excited to see how well your plants do under these COB LEDs.

Like you, I have been itching to DIY a led fixture for some time. I'm thinking of making mine a vertical cob embedded fixture to shine on 270* degrees (3 sides) of my vert cab for max coverage & multi-source points of light.

Reason I haven't built anything yet is whenever I start doing the research, I get lost in the world of drivers and mA and spectrum choices. Don't need to tell you I'm a bit frugal, so trying to make the best choice the first time! Couple that with the ever increasing quality of components driving down prices overtime and you have a recipie for procrastinating.

/end rant

Looking forward to lurking along this grow and wish you the greatest success!!

Cheers,
BeL

count me in for this ride most def! such a stellar line up of genetics. the one that really strikes my eye is the Chemdawg 91 s1" x SWT#4 IBL. Man on Man is she gonna be something and full of spice!

E.C. Haze

Thanks for stopping by everyone.

blynx said:

Very cool. Those are big LEDs!

Looking forward to seeing how this round turns out!

Click to expand...

Ya, they are big for LEDS but still very small for the light output (~50w at half power). Pretty cool units.

budelight said:

Hey Bueno!

Long time lurker of your 150w tent. Your thread has helped me more than a few times . Plus it looks like we both grow a rad amount of CSG strains!! (I've grown White Jones and ECSDH & got seeds of candelicous, SSSDH, Chemwreck Kush, and titanium just waiting)

Really excited to see how well your plants do under these COB LEDs.

Like you, I have been itching to DIY a led fixture for some time. I'm thinking of making mine a vertical cob embedded fixture to shine on 270* degrees (3 sides) of my vert cab for max coverage & multi-source points of light.

Reason I haven't built anything yet is whenever I start doing the research, I get lost in the world of drivers and mA and spectrum choices. Don't need to tell you I'm a bit frugal, so trying to make the best choice the first time! Couple that with the ever increasing quality of components driving down prices overtime and you have a recipie for procrastinating.

/end rant

Looking forward to lurking along this grow and wish you the greatest success!!

Cheers,
BeL

Click to expand...

Sounds like a pretty cool idea and I totally agree with the points you made leading to procrastination. Happened to me too.

Ive only grown Cheese n Chaze and Chemmy Jones from CSG. Bought a pack of Cheese n Chaze and got a free pack of Chemmy Jones a couple years ago, only had one female Cheese n Chaze so far and two female Chemmy Jones from my original packs (have about 4 or 5 of each pack left). Made some CJ F2s already and probably will make of CnC F2s before the pack is gone.

The Chemmy Jones male seems to have done well in my crosses with it.

EastCoastHaze said:

count me in for this ride most def! such a stellar line up of genetics. the one that really strikes my eye is the Chemdawg 91 s1" x SWT#4 IBL. Man on Man is she gonna be something and full of spice!

E.C. Haze

Click to expand...

The "Chemdawg 91 s1" is a RP OG Kush fem and I only had two seeds of it from a buddy, the first one I grew was very pinesol earthy musty chem funk and the second one I grew out that crossed with the SWT#4 IBL males wasnt nearly as good of a pheno as the first. Might have had to do with being so heavily seeded, not sure. Hoping she still brought some of the good chemdawg funk genes over with her to the cross. Should be interesting to see what comes out.

krad elite bro

Loving the lighting man!

Ive got a 30w and 100w diy multichips running for seedlings...both cannabis and otherwise.

Ive actually been pricing out cobs similar to yours for a 400w hps replacement. Would much rather spend the money on power leds that HPS.

How are the cobs in comparison to your 150 HPS heat output?

Where did you purchase your chips and drivers?

Im along for the ride!

chowdan said:

Loving the lighting man!

Ive got a 30w and 100w diy multichips running for seedlings...both cannabis and otherwise.

Ive actually been pricing out cobs similar to yours for a 400w hps replacement. Would much rather spend the money on power leds that HPS.

How are the cobs in comparison to your 150 HPS heat output?

Where did you purchase your chips and drivers?

Im along for the ride!

Click to expand...

Im not sure about the heat output since I never ran both at the same time yet and havent ran any of them in the flowering tent at all yet but I assume less heat since they are only 104w instead of 150 for the hps.

I got the chips from digikey and ebay and the drivers from jameco.

COB
http://www.digikey.com/product-deta...0N00Z230F/CXA3070-0000-000N00Z230F-ND/4386666

Driver
http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/st...Id=10001&ddkey=http:StoreCatalogDrillDownView

Heatsink/fan combo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186070

Bueno Time said:

The components I chose are CREE CXA3070 3000k COBs. I picked up one Z2 bin which was the best available at the time unless you ordered a large quantity of 20-100 pieces minimum
...
At this time a Z4 bin popped up on ebay which is the top bin most efficient cxa3070 available and I could order in single quantities. So I bought one of those.

Click to expand...

Hey Bueno,

Can you help me understand what the Z2 vs Z4 means in terms of leds? Cant find much info online about it, but there seems to be a big price difference.

Thanks,
BeL

budelight,

check out the binning pdf:

http://www.cree.com/LED-Components-and-Modules/Products/XLamp/Arrays-NonDirectional/XLamp-CXA3070

The z2 and z4 are luminous flux bins.
z2 = 7390 min to 7945 max
z4 = 7945 min to 8500 max

This is if you run them at 85C to 25C.

budelight said:

Hey Bueno,

Can you help me understand what the Z2 vs Z4 means in terms of leds? Cant find much info online about it, but there seems to be a big price difference.

Thanks,
BeL

Click to expand...

Z2 and Z4 are bin codes. Z4 is a bit more efficient and is the most efficient available for the Cree CXA 3000k spectrum so it is considered the top bin, Z2 is just barely behind it and is the mid bin and most commonly available, where you dont have to buy 20 or 100 pieces to even order them like you do with the Z4s.

Im running my 3070s at 1.4A each and at 1.4 amps the Z2 puts out 6,200 lumens at 50 degrees celcius, dissipating 52 watts of power, creating roughly 119 lumens per watt used which is 36.24% efficiency meaning of the 52 watts of power 18.84 watts are converted to photons (light) and the remaining 33.15 watts are wasted in the form of heat.

At 1.4A the Z4 puts out 6,673 lumens at 50 celcius, dissipates 52W creating 127.8 lumens per watt used which is 38.96% efficient creating 20.26 watts of photons and 31.74 watts of heat.

So if you just took the numbers that I posted, at 1.4A the Z4 puts out 475 more lumens and is about 3% more efficient roughly than the Z2 at 36%. Doesnt seem like much difference between 36% and 39%, a difference of 3% efficiency, but when you take 39 divided by 36 you get 1.083 or 108.3% of the output. So the extra 3% efficiency is really getting your 8.3% more light which is a fairly substantial gain.

The Cree CXA 3000k Z2 bin are perfectly good and already quite efficient though, if I didnt end up getting a Z4 for $1.50 more than I paid for the Z2, I would have just went with both Z2s. If you can get Z4s at a good price great otherwise dont sweat it and just get Z2s.

Thanks for the description. I found it also posted on a mtnbkng website.

If i wanted 6 points of light, 2 on each side of 3 sides for my vertical grow. Would you use a different model or run them on a lower Amp to control the strength and heat of the cob's?

Think i can make a setup for >$100? (dont have any parts yet)

Cheers,
BeL

budelight said:

Thanks for the description. I found it also posted on a mtnbkng website.

If i wanted 6 points of light, 2 on each side of 3 sides for my vertical grow. Would you use a different model or run them on a lower Amp to control the strength and heat of the cob's?

Think i can make a setup for >$100? (dont have any parts yet)

Cheers,
BeL

Click to expand...

You could use multiple smaller cobs to spread the light out better and to each side for your vertical grow.

How much wattage are you trying to run? $100 will go fast in an LED project.

Day 24 from seed, two days after defoliating all fan leaves off the main stem. These would be ready to flower if the tent was empty, but they have to wait almost 2 more weeks but I plan to take 2 clones off each before flowering.