Unclecrash
Member
Some damn Frosty Nug's!! 
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Bueno Grows w/ DIY COB LEDs
- Thread starter Bueno Time
- Start date
Day 25 from seed, still vegging for another week or so, maybe 35 days veg from seed tops before I flip. Soon though...
Some are doing better/more vigourous than the others but have all bushed well after topping. I am digging the mulch, never mulched before and Im already seeing results, live clover and dead old fan leaves. Dries out much slower than without and the top of the soil stays nice and moist. Gave them an ACT close to a week ago other than that just straight RO water, new soil mix is doing great so far.
Also I took a cut off each girl last night.
Heres the girls, Chem Cookies 6 on left, 3 on right are 3 different OX clones.
Some mulch shots, live clover growing through the leaf mulch.
Some are doing better/more vigourous than the others but have all bushed well after topping. I am digging the mulch, never mulched before and Im already seeing results, live clover and dead old fan leaves. Dries out much slower than without and the top of the soil stays nice and moist. Gave them an ACT close to a week ago other than that just straight RO water, new soil mix is doing great so far.
Also I took a cut off each girl last night.
Heres the girls, Chem Cookies 6 on left, 3 on right are 3 different OX clones.
Some mulch shots, live clover growing through the leaf mulch.
I went off camping for a few days up in the mountains. Gave the girls a good watering 1qt each before I left and 3 days later, BAM. Overgrown a touch, so tomorrow is day 1 of 12/12 (day 30 from seed).
Heres some pics from day 29 from seed, this new soil mix and my LEDs are really impressing me, so far anyway. Going to need to do a bit of defoliation without a doubt, and trimming of undergrowth.
Chem D Cookies 6 on left, OXs 3 on right.
Heres some pics from day 29 from seed, this new soil mix and my LEDs are really impressing me, so far anyway. Going to need to do a bit of defoliation without a doubt, and trimming of undergrowth.
Chem D Cookies 6 on left, OXs 3 on right.
Day 7 12/12
I am unfamiliar with the heat output of the 3590s but I know at the same driver current they are at a much higher wattage than the 3070s. For budget and effective cooling I like the Alpine 11 Plus CPU Coolers (heatsink/fan combo) they work excellent 1 cooler per COB on 3070s. Probably wouldnt work with 3590 if they even fit on the mounting face of the heatsink unless ran at a real low drive current around 700mA. (Just looked at some charts I had saved, 3070 @ 1400mA ~52w, 3590 @ 700mA ~50w, so half the current, same wattage roughly)
I dont know that it wouldnt work to use a 3500mA driver for 5 COBs but I recommend against it and would get one driver per COB or run a higher voltage driver with lower current and run them in parallel that way I believe.
Something like a Meanwell HLG-185 series driver I believe might run 5 3070s or come damn close to it at 37vF each. 3590s will require higher voltage per COB to run than the 3070s so require different driver specs which again I am not all that familiar with.
What size area are you trying to light with the 5 COBs and what is your target wattage you want to run to cover said area? (total COB forward voltage, vF x drive current in amps)
If you run 5 3070s at 1400mA each that would be ~260w of led dissipation wattage (power at the COBs) 5 3590s at 1400mA each would be ~560w which is a massive difference but also the 3590s are much less efficient at the same current so its not even double the light since its less efficient more power will be wasted in the form of heat running them at that high of a current. Matter of fact I just looked at a spreadsheet I had saved again and the 3070s are significantly more efficient at mid-high drive currents than the 3590s, so I would recommend the 5 3070s setup on Alpine 11 Plus coolers. Drive current then based on area you are covering and wattage needed to light it to your liking (let me know how many sq ft and I will help you decide).
Day 15 12/12 (more pics in thread link in sig)
Embarking on the LED grow journey
Embarking on the LED grow journey
This journey is two-fold for me, because I've never grown plants before either! I just wanted to start out right, fresh, and do the best I can to get setup with the right shit the first time.
Might need to tweak, but currently I'm doing something very similiar to Bueno. 2xCree cxa3070 COBs- one at 5k and one at 3k.
We plan to use these two lights together to sort of cover the widest spectrum possible. Figure it's better than just buying 2 of either temperature. Then, depending on how well those two do together, we may go with supplementation of red and blue.
My plan, personally is to grow in a 3x3 tent more than likely. I will of course start out simply, with a clone, and try to keep a plant alive, maybe get some flowers out of it that are worth smoking.
Anyway, my setup mirrors yours pretty closely (and a few other pioneers), so I'll be posting a thread myself talking about our work on the panel, and then ultimately put to practical use!
Keep up the good work hombre!
Embarking on the LED grow journey
This journey is two-fold for me, because I've never grown plants before either! I just wanted to start out right, fresh, and do the best I can to get setup with the right shit the first time.
Might need to tweak, but currently I'm doing something very similiar to Bueno. 2xCree cxa3070 COBs- one at 5k and one at 3k.
We plan to use these two lights together to sort of cover the widest spectrum possible. Figure it's better than just buying 2 of either temperature. Then, depending on how well those two do together, we may go with supplementation of red and blue.
My plan, personally is to grow in a 3x3 tent more than likely. I will of course start out simply, with a clone, and try to keep a plant alive, maybe get some flowers out of it that are worth smoking.
Anyway, my setup mirrors yours pretty closely (and a few other pioneers), so I'll be posting a thread myself talking about our work on the panel, and then ultimately put to practical use!
Keep up the good work hombre!
Attachments
Nice first post, welcome to ICMAG. I would like to watch your thread if you want to drop me a link when you get it started. Im curious to see how your plants grow under 5k and 3k to see the differences.
Im actually thinking about switching up my lighting setup again for better light spread but undecided so far. Pretty sure I want to build a different setup specifically for lighting the 2x3 footprint of my tent.
Day 20 12/12, more pics in thread linked in sig
DaBeaverFunk
New member
I just wanted to jump in a clarify this. You would want to run a higher voltage with the LED's in series. Parallel could fry them from a single driver
I also agree that it's a good idea to run the LEDs on separate drivers. Specifically constant current drivers like the meanwell's Beuno is using. If you use one driver for many LEDs in parallel you run the risk of a single LED hogging current and overheating. The LEDs will vary their Vf (voltage they operate) with temperature and manufacturing differences. So the same Vf applied to many different LEDs could cause unbalanced currents.
If you ran a string of LEDs (series) to a higher voltage then you run a constant current through the entire string and let the voltage fluctuation of each LED balance themselves out. They can take whatever voltage they need (so long as the driver can supply that much) and run the same current.
Beuno, I haven't checked up on the LED growing progress in a while and I'm very excited that you've been able to pull of such great results. I have a series of LED lamps that I've built that I've experimented in the past with andnot had great results. I now know that the poor results from the last trial I did was due to something in the soil and am eager to run again. I don't toke a lot and I've been moving around over the last year and a half so I'm finally in a place to circle back on this and I'm very excited to try some LEDs again!
Great work man, keep it up!
DaBeaverFunk
New member
Talked about the light spread, have you thought about placing rail mounted lamps (like your blue and red supplemental lights) vertically in the corners?
This is an area that I always thought LEDs would be innovative in. Since they run so much cooler, you can place them closer to the plants without worry, doing things like underside or side lighting.
This is an area that I always thought LEDs would be innovative in. Since they run so much cooler, you can place them closer to the plants without worry, doing things like underside or side lighting.
Your right, my bad, that would be in series vF would add together and current would remain the same theoretically but I agree with everything you said on why not to do it with differences in vF between COBs could lead to issues.
That would be cool to make side lighting but I always pack my tent full from wall to wall so I have no gaps on the sides for side lighting.
I have been considering building a new light setup though but would take a loss in efficiency but would also spread the light out much more evenly over the canopy. Still undecided but I got a few Vero 10s and 2 drivers to play with and see what I think about them before I commit to a new build.
The idea is possibly 24x Vero 10 4000K @ ~290mA each on 4x 32" long heatsink bars, 6 Veros per bar. Spacing would be ~5" on center between each COB and also 5" on center from the reflective side walls of the tent. The distance between the bars would be able to be adjusted.
Hi Bueno.
I've been scanning your venture on this work and I am pretty impressed, so much that i signed up just to post here. i will definitely be following your journal. it looks like you have definitely found the right path with COB LEDs.
Are you still using only 3000k on your lights? What are your thoughts on using that for Vegging out? should the LEDs be swappedd out for 6500K? I remember coming across your graphs for the different values and it looked like 3000K had the best spectrum (correct me if i'm wrong).
I am looking into "copycating" your build was wondering if you had tested out the 3000K during veg.
congrats on the progress.
I've been scanning your venture on this work and I am pretty impressed, so much that i signed up just to post here. i will definitely be following your journal. it looks like you have definitely found the right path with COB LEDs.
Are you still using only 3000k on your lights? What are your thoughts on using that for Vegging out? should the LEDs be swappedd out for 6500K? I remember coming across your graphs for the different values and it looked like 3000K had the best spectrum (correct me if i'm wrong).
I am looking into "copycating" your build was wondering if you had tested out the 3000K during veg.
congrats on the progress.
I have used the CREE 3000K to veg and it works pretty good, fast growth and branches well but has a little stretch still between nodes, which I like to some extent. They seem to veg better (more compact and branchy) than HPS, not quite as much stretch but a better veg spectrum can definitely be used. I dont know what is optimal, so many different spectrums and combinations to try but 6500k would probably keep things more compact with little stretch. I am running CREE 4250-4500K (I think) XML2s in veg and they do allow some stretch but veg pretty good and are really efficient.
You can build a fixture with 3000K to use for veg and flower until you decide if you want to add more blue for veg or build a seperate fixture with a spectrum more suited to strictly vegging.
I personally like the CREE 3000K and Vero 4000K spectrums at least based off the charts they are my picks.
Unclecrash
Member
Bueno I know your running 3 seperate heat sinks on 3 cobbs, but what are you running on the long heat sink in your last pic? Thank's UC
Theres two of those 24" long heatsink bars you see in the pic one in the front that you can see and one in the back, each has 9x LEDs 2 450nm, 2 630nm, 5 660nm.
