so, you just felt absolutely compelled to intrude in a thread about building your own led lighting to drop an emotion-filled and immature statement about your love for hid lighting?HID for life
DIY leds Discussion Thread for all your how tos and doubts and anything related
- Thread starter Thread starter Rocket Soul
- Start date Start date
Smoke a joint dude, it’s not that serious
Neferhotep
Active member
Well I think we all know that HID worked very well. The technique developed for 40 years or so. LED is not nearly there at least for me that is. I have to learn to grow grass all over.
How will you solder these? Are they available on stars?
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For the record, I do build LED’s. Here is the latest fixture I built. 2100k, I made this one radiate enough heat so I don’t need to run a space heater in July to keep my room at 84 degrees. It works great !!
jonesfam7715
Well-known member
Ready and waiting, I got a few of these and others but these are favorite, I'm not above using a clothing iron works great but I have a nice hot plate I use normally
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Neferhotep
Active member
Jesus man that is high tech. You are balling them?
Please shoot some pics while making those things to show us.
Aristoned
Active member
HID was good, I miss my HPS.
BUT, I wouldn’t trade my Bridgelux LED’s to go back. I’m getting ridiculous ppfd with minimal wattage and I’m able to produce IR/UVA supplementation which puts my builds in another class when compared to my old HID’s.
It is just wild what we can do with spectrums these days, I’m close to completing my testing and I’m fairly certain I’ve figured out a way to get everything I need in a single build.
But how's the weed? Isn't that what all this is for? Show me them trichomes.
Aristoned
Active member
She’s coming, a few clones in the bucket and dirt as well.
Then, we have the Haze and Blueberry coming in, all of the veg was done with Bridgelux 4000K 80 CRI with ~50W.
I have another fixture that produces 150W of the same spectrum, I used that to begin flowering the Kush. When I ran that luminaire to 240W I had over 1,000 ppfd. So, put the 150W back in there.
For that one fixture I can use three different drivers to achieve any goal. Now, I have the new Vero’s in 97 CRI that will be finishing this girl. I’m beside myself, my old HPS never did this.
@Ttystikk due to the colour accuracy the ppfd has decreased from the testing with the 4000K 80 CRI; reflectors have been ordered from RapidLED to pull some light back. The 4000K do not need focusing, good lord no, but the reds not only need focusing but I’m looking to drive them up to 1.4A over 1.05A.
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jonesfam7715
Well-known member
Will do, I'll break out the clothing iron to show anyone could do it at home, it's easy, ive never had one go out, well not from anything that wasn't my fault completely.
Aristoned
Active member
I have a heat gun.
Neferhotep
Active member
@Aristoned I see many leaves have only three fingers but the green color is beautiful 
A heat gun will probably burn the lens no?
A heat gun will probably burn the lens no?
Aristoned
Active member
@Aristoned I see many leaves have only three fingers but the green color is beautiful
A heat gun will probably burn the lens no?
Some with two, some with one, after I put the IR in there she went crazy. I’ve been fasting her for about half of a week, I have her way too much nitrogen and she is finally starting to thin out a bit. I’ll see how she is feeling next watering to see if I should add bloom or not.
I’m not sure, I’d have to check the operating temp of the chip and the out-put of the gun. If I can get the hi-lo and distance to work it should be oki dok.
I’ve seen it done with other type of silicon chips, perhaps these are more sensitive. I’m not sure.
Heck, I just ordered reflectors after telling @Ttystikk not to.
The 4000K @ 80 CRI dumps PAR, while the 2700K 97 CRI struggles to get through the phosphorus. No doubt the 90 CRI will produce more PAR than the 97 CRI, but it will have more green and blue.
I’m going to use reflectors to start, then get a 320W driver and three active-cooled CPU coolers with heat pipes to run each COB @ 1.4A to make up the difference if the reflectors aren’t enough @ 1.05A.
Exciting times!
Also, it looks like the IR side of the plant is thicker than the UVA side!
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jonesfam7715
Well-known member
Never tried that one lol, I seen someone do it on a frying pan on a gas stove.
jonesfam7715
Well-known member
Gonna be running these cxb3590 3200k 92cri cobs + xpg3 4000K soon here goes a few running on the LRS 600 36v, still have a few to assemble then fans.
This is dimmed nearly all the way
Reds will be added and on other circuit
This is dimmed nearly all the way
Reds will be added and on other circuit
Ca++
Well-known member
Anyone opened a HLG driver?
I have some 240w one's which iirc have a temperature test point (tp) on the front. I'm interested just where the hot bits are though. I'm guessing the base of these could be made with an expectation of sitting on a metal box, but it not being a necessity.
Where I'm aiming, is should I line up my drivers on a QB'esk heatsink, instead of a block of wood. Or should I be thinking about their sides. I do tend to put a fan on them, which is a massive improvement, but I'm always interested in better ideas. The bit of wood is shit, but keeps them together. So a shared heatsink suits me.
Moving forward, I would likely use a flat plate, and put a few heatsinks driver side, to suit fan positioning. These are worth extending their lives.
I'm using AB HLG's, meaning I have a wire from them for dimming. Also two individual controls on the cases, for presetting volts and amps. I presume these presets, simply cap what the external dimmer can do. I have never used them, so should I stop buying them, and just get the type B. External only.
I presume the external dimming on the AB and B types, will track one-another. When I use a single VR for multiple drivers. I know ELG won't track as 0-1v exists of those. Which I don't want.
Why don't I want that? It's because I like to pull a plug on one driver, which makes all those sharing the same VR, drop to 10%.
The 240w (260w wall) AB is £50 and the B is £39.
People did speak of alternative brands, but I just can't see where. I reckon I'm tied into meanwell now though. I'm even working in 240w multiples, for repetition.
Changing tack, HID never gave us decent small lamps. We could have 150lm/w from a 600, but this efficiency dropped with lamp sizes. The 150 club, had 100lm/w which is T5 territory. The 70w hps was abysmal. But still common. Under 70w we were looking at MH lamps, for shop fittings. Nice out a skip, but you wouldn't want to pay for one.
LED opened up that whole low wattage sector. Taking it from fluorescent, which generally sucked before the T5HO. Though some of us used plenty of the years, as what else was there.
Even the die hard 600w grower with a 4x4 tent, should see the total win of a household lamp (or two) in each corner. Bringing the light up to usable levels.
I have some 240w one's which iirc have a temperature test point (tp) on the front. I'm interested just where the hot bits are though. I'm guessing the base of these could be made with an expectation of sitting on a metal box, but it not being a necessity.
Where I'm aiming, is should I line up my drivers on a QB'esk heatsink, instead of a block of wood. Or should I be thinking about their sides. I do tend to put a fan on them, which is a massive improvement, but I'm always interested in better ideas. The bit of wood is shit, but keeps them together. So a shared heatsink suits me.
Moving forward, I would likely use a flat plate, and put a few heatsinks driver side, to suit fan positioning. These are worth extending their lives.
I'm using AB HLG's, meaning I have a wire from them for dimming. Also two individual controls on the cases, for presetting volts and amps. I presume these presets, simply cap what the external dimmer can do. I have never used them, so should I stop buying them, and just get the type B. External only.
I presume the external dimming on the AB and B types, will track one-another. When I use a single VR for multiple drivers. I know ELG won't track as 0-1v exists of those. Which I don't want.
Why don't I want that? It's because I like to pull a plug on one driver, which makes all those sharing the same VR, drop to 10%.
The 240w (260w wall) AB is £50 and the B is £39.
People did speak of alternative brands, but I just can't see where. I reckon I'm tied into meanwell now though. I'm even working in 240w multiples, for repetition.
Changing tack, HID never gave us decent small lamps. We could have 150lm/w from a 600, but this efficiency dropped with lamp sizes. The 150 club, had 100lm/w which is T5 territory. The 70w hps was abysmal. But still common. Under 70w we were looking at MH lamps, for shop fittings. Nice out a skip, but you wouldn't want to pay for one.
LED opened up that whole low wattage sector. Taking it from fluorescent, which generally sucked before the T5HO. Though some of us used plenty of the years, as what else was there.
Even the die hard 600w grower with a 4x4 tent, should see the total win of a household lamp (or two) in each corner. Bringing the light up to usable levels.
Neferhotep
Active member
For parallel wiring, maybe it's an idea to wire like this for a more even distribution of power:
Just like when wiring parallel batteries.
Just like when wiring parallel batteries.
My drivers I mounted on wood on stand offs so air can move behind them. They are cooled with a computer fan on 6 V. The ELG-200 behaves like the others; all of them dim to zero with one pot. Although the ELG-200 takes a little longer to dim to zero. Probably some capacitor that needs to empty.
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