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

Is DIY led worth it.

  • No idea never tried and it seems complicated.

    Votes: 3 8.3%
  • No, i tried it and it was just shit/i burnt down my house/im just a negative nelly about it

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No, its too expensive nowadays, can find cheaper than diy growlights

    Votes: 3 8.3%
  • No, it takes up too much time and work for the results it gives

    Votes: 3 8.3%
  • Yes! The time and effort it takes is what actually makes it enjoyable

    Votes: 3 8.3%
  • Yes, with my prices considerations and needs its actually cheaper than bought lights

    Votes: 2 5.6%
  • Yes, its actually safer with me doing the work since i know what im doing and can choose parts

    Votes: 2 5.6%
  • Yes, it means i can repair it myself if it breaks

    Votes: 6 16.7%
  • Yes, it means i can get a light that is perfect for my unique space and needs

    Votes: 8 22.2%
  • Yes, cause i cant get the results i want which i cannot find in any light on the market

    Votes: 1 2.8%
  • All of the above yes answers

    Votes: 9 25.0%
  • I dont know but im leaning yes

    Votes: 6 16.7%
  • I dont know but im leaning no

    Votes: 2 5.6%

  • Total voters
    36

Wolverine97

Well-known member
Veteran
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.
315w LEC are super nice. Better penetration than anything besides a de hps, awesome CRI, real uv, and moderate heat. And you can really pack them in if you want. Just saying.
 

jonesfam7715

Well-known member
For parallel wiring, maybe it's an idea to wire like this for a more even distribution of power:
Parallel.jpg

Just like when wiring parallel batteries.
I didn't worry much about amperage being a problem these at max will barely reach the typical 350ma and the circuits can handle much more than the 1400ma , I should check each diodes amperage to make sure they're even tho.
 

Ttystikk

Well-known member
Veteran
I’ve learned that elevated levels of oxygen are healthy and elevated levels of CO2 are not. It isn’t going to burn the world down or anything, I just feel better when I walk through the woods.
The key is prolonged/chronic exposure. Avoid that and you're fine. Remember that it's a byproduct of all animal life, including us filthy animals.
 

Ttystikk

Well-known member
Veteran
315w LEC are super nice. Better penetration than anything besides a de hps, awesome CRI, real uv, and moderate heat. And you can really pack them in if you want. Just saying.
They come in different color temperatures; which was your preference? They weren't merely metal halide; they were ceramic metal halide, which were a lot more stable and lasted a couple of years vs standard metal halide lifespan of maybe 6 months for growing.

Also, they were about 30% efficient on magnetic ballast and 40% efficient on LFSW, that's Low Frequency Square Wave ballast, the kind that has to have 240V. They sold cheap low frequency electronic ballasts too, for those who didn't know the difference.

Now, here's where this gets interesting and relevant to the current conversation; they may only be 40% efficient at delivering PAR but functionally the rest of the output was heat in one wavelength or another. Lots of IR relative to PAR. I think that's why they work so well.

Personally, having grown with both (and many others), I prefer LED but as discussed earlier, I run 37.5W/ft² of COB LED light AND I use 80 degree lenses to focus the light onto the canopy. I really think light intensity is important and not having enough light on the plants is a big part of why people end up questioning the efficacy (as opposed to efficiency) of LED lighting.
 

Ca++

Well-known member
It's changed it's name to LEC. It's new again
TBH, in a 4x4 the 315 (2.1umol/w iirc) with 100w of LED in each corner, might be alright. However, @Aristoned just physically saw, and had to react, to what the plants actually think about high energy photons. The plants had to employ avoidance. The opposite of shade response. The UV cancelling the FR's signalling.

iirc the high energy photons (shorter wavelength) undo the work of the lower energy one's effectively. It's a more important survival instinct, to not have oxidation like problems. It seems our plants like a lot of light, but want it in reasonable sized mouthfuls. So oxygen production and thus disposal is manageable. That's the oxygen from the h2o, released during photosynthesis. Perhaps making seed becomes pointless, if oxidation products are getting in them.
This seems rather negative, but such effects can be leveraged. The inverse relationship between yield and potency perhaps. More immediate use, is to limit stretch. If that were a problem worth suppressing growth over. Or the hunt for the holy grail. A plant that produces more sticky icky as sunscreen.

It's low power lighting choices that make individual plant or even branch lighting possible. So we can run a few scenarios in a small space, and if something is really that bad we stop doing it, then it's a good thing we didn't have 1000w of it.


I should really think about some UV, as I just had an RH fail with the weather, at 2 weeks, and put an extra foot on that I didn't want. I'm actually tempted to get the scissors out, rather than net it down into a 2D grow. If only I had some UV I could of held them down with..
 

Aristoned

Active member
The key is prolonged/chronic exposure. Avoid that and you're fine. Remember that it's a byproduct of all animal life, including us filthy animals.

I won’t get into this here, I’m no animal. I’m an organic sentient being, The Creator has plans for me.

The issue with CO2 is what it does to your body and cells, elevated CO2 will encourage cancer where elevated levels of oxygen kill cancer cells. Also, large amounts of sugar do the same.
 

Aristoned

Active member
Because I think the comparison is useful, especially in this conversation.

I thought this was for LED and not HID.

Either way, I’m not interested in HID if I can get IR from incandescent and halogen. Even the UVA can be supplemented by LED’s now. Based on what I’ve seen you don’t need much at all.

This Kush hates UVA.
 

jonesfam7715

Well-known member
Anyone opened a HLG driver?
Yes, I had to know what made it tick lol. The casing is your heatsink that's why hlg work so much better than the xlg. And you should be able to mount them on that qb style heatsink to manage the heat better, the light I've been working on taking apart was built like this, 2, 320 watt drivers bolted to the heatsink.
20250307_204302.jpg
20250307_174435.jpg
 

Aristoned

Active member
Yes, I had to know what made it tick lol. The casing is your heatsink that's why hlg work so much better than the xlg. And you should be able to mount them on that qb style heatsink to manage the heat better, the light I've been working on taking apart was built like this, 2, 320 watt drivers bolted to the heatsink. View attachment 19173813 View attachment 19173814

The XLG is out-performing the HLG for me.

Even the XLG-320 is more efficient than the HLG-320 on 120V.

The only XLG I don’t like is the 100W, that thing sucks @ 100%. So, the answer is to get the 75W or the 150W or find another 100W driver that doesn’t lose efficiency @ 100% load like the HLG-320/XLG-100.

I’ve built the XLG’s to be “hot-swappable” so I can plug-in multiple drivers to a single luminaire independently. I’m using the same drivers on my EB3 Slim’s as my Gen 8/7 Vero’s.

Cheers!
 

Aristoned

Active member
Raised the temperature to 86°F last night, no signs of heat related stress with 150W of incandescent IR.

The UVA has been pulled, that side looked very scant compared to the other side. The UVA bulbs will only be used in the last weeks, if at all.
 

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Rocket Soul

Well-known member
D
Would you know which brands of uv diodes are quality and which are trash. Goy my eye on these king bride uv diodes here go the datasheet

Look at the datasheet id say. Output vrs power (id prefer more than 50% in that top top seems to be around 70%) and low thermal resistance coefficient, this last one helps you figure out how much hotter the diode is compared to the heatsink.

Generally, if its been made in the last couple of years and in a cree 3535 footprint its likely to be at least decent enough for the around 1$ people seem to charging.

Another thing you can do its to check the fluxbins: are they generally quite tight in that low/mid/high flux bin is reasonably close? Again a good sign.
Ive used viosys, LG and yin feng with good results.
 

Drop That Sound

Well-known member
Veteran
I said nothing of the sort.

I suggested a comparison of IR lighting vs warmer ambient temperatures for the plants. What difference would it make if the rest of the house is warmer?
Thats true, My bad man, like I was putting words in your mouth.. I try my best not to assume, or listen to the voices that only tell me what I "expect" to hear, but still get caught up sometimes..

They are telling me the electric bill would go through the roof though, If I was growing up here in the house in a tent or wherever, and had to keep an entire bedroom or the living space upwards of 85+ degrees to also keep the LED lit grow space the same temp, instead of just using strategically placed incandescent spot lamps that only heat the footprint I want it to, and uses far less energy.. That, or the cost to completely remodel parts of the house. Adding more insulation & sealing it off, which is out of the question for most hobby growers or renters. I don't grow in the house though, or share the same space with plants (just reptiles, thanks to incandescent flood lamps and UVB bulbs), so I do have the option of cranking the heat up if needed to test my new LEDs, but rather just run more HIDs if it comes down to it..
 

Aristoned

Active member
Thats true, My bad man, like I was putting words in your mouth.. I try my best not to assume, or listen to the voices that only tell me what I "expect" to hear, but still get caught up sometimes..

They are telling me the electric bill would go through the roof though, If I was growing up here in the house in a tent or wherever, and had to keep an entire bedroom or the living space upwards of 85+ degrees to also keep the LED lit grow space the same temp, instead of just using strategically placed incandescent spot lamps that only heat the footprint I want it to, and uses far less energy.. That, or the cost to completely remodel parts of the house. Adding more insulation & sealing it off, which is out of the question for most hobby growers or renters. I don't grow in the house though, or share the same space with plants (just reptiles, thanks to incandescent flood lamps and UVB bulbs), so I do have the option of cranking the heat up if needed to test my new LEDs, but rather just run more HIDs if it comes down to it..


I pulled the UVA, she was growing around it.

150W of IR:
 

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Drop That Sound

Well-known member
Veteran
I'm really not all that big a fan of sealed gardens either (or even a closed off room) , unless there is the proper equipment to scrub the stale air, which cost another small fortune to setup the right way, in my book anyway.

No offense to anyones products, but yeah..
I prefer fresh incoming filtered air at all times (just like outside, where 400ppm co2 grows huge monsters no problem), even at the cost of heating the atmosphere to some extent ( which is no where near as bad if utilizing HRV/ERV, or geothermal\heatpump tech!), for the freshest product, free from all the particulates that otherwise contaminate the air in most houses/structures. The air is always multiple times worse inside buildings, unless your maintaining a high class clean room.

I'm the guy that always has his window down when driving, even in the winter down the freeway. I was also somewhat forced to work entire winters out of a metal shop with no insulation in the past, and relied on propane burners that were probably pushing the levels up to 30-40k ppm c02, and had to breath it in for 8 hrs or more a day, so yeah I probably am a little biased. I'm not closing up the doors and windows to a room and being claustrophobic when working just so LEDs will work. Not without that warm golden inefficient glow to supplement them anyway, which is kind of inviting actually. Almost like some long lost natural instinct, to crawl down in a cave with torches on the walls.. That I can do ;)
 

Wolverine97

Well-known member
Veteran
They come in different color temperatures; which was your preference? They weren't merely metal halide; they were ceramic metal halide, which were a lot more stable and lasted a couple of years vs standard metal halide lifespan of maybe 6 months for growing.

Also, they were about 30% efficient on magnetic ballast and 40% efficient on LFSW, that's Low Frequency Square Wave ballast, the kind that has to have 240V. They sold cheap low frequency electronic ballasts too, for those who didn't know the difference.

Now, here's where this gets interesting and relevant to the current conversation; they may only be 40% efficient at delivering PAR but functionally the rest of the output was heat in one wavelength or another. Lots of IR relative to PAR. I think that's why they work so well.

Personally, having grown with both (and many others), I prefer LED but as discussed earlier, I run 37.5W/ft² of COB LED light AND I use 80 degree lenses to focus the light onto the canopy. I really think light intensity is important and not having enough light on the plants is a big part of why people end up questioning the efficacy (as opposed to efficiency) of LED lighting.
The newer LEC lighting is not the same as CMH
 
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