Growing my own: Chloemobile's Micro Cab

[TexMex McDirt]

Hey Chloemobile - Good to see you still playing in the dirt! Do you think you'll stick with those LED bulbs or switch back to the HID? I posted this in Blynx's LED bulb thread too, but...

Something I have been thinking about is figuring out a fixture that sort of sits on top of my flower cab. So that there are round openings in the top of the cab for each bulb to sink into, but keeping the bulb on the outside, above the cab. Sort of the same concept as remote ballast. I think this would be easier with these LED bulbs than with CFLs, just by the nature of how the LED bulbs sort of shoot light down from the bulb. I don't see any reason you need to have the whole led bulb in the cab. I have not brainstormed this enough to figure it out yet. But I am toying with the thought. Might be worth playing with.

Anyways, keep it up man, good to see ya!

 

[Chloemobile]

Hey Tex - I'll stick with these for at least the rest of this grow but I've typically changed up the lights each grow. I've been thinking of going with the vertical PLL again just because i liked the growth I got from the plants from top to bottom and the bulbs stayed cool enough that the entire plant can get right next to them really maximizing the light

That is a really good idea - I was thinking of doing the same thing but a bit differently. Keeping them the same way now but adding a faux cieling with cutouts for the lights but I managed to control the heat by moving them closer to the ventilation. I think you could definitely do a cab design based around this concept. I still think for just a little more $ you can make a much better LED array ( more efficient and cooler overall) using COB's. If I do continue down the LED route it will be in that direction.

I think these are great to easily pick up from the store and screw in though for better quality light than CFL's. But $ for $ and a little bit of reading the COB's are a much better route because you get a choice in heat sink for cooling and run them at lower power for better efficiency. Don't mean to preach lol but these screw in bulbs are almost there but if I had to do it over I would just build it with a COB. I generally like to tinker though and have enjoyed learning about the nuances of electricity

 

[TexMex McDirt]

I've been reading up on the COBs too. They don't seem nearly as complicated as the LED arrays that use a ton of the small red and blue LEDs. Just a COB, thermal paste, heatsink & fan and what looks like some pretty simple wiring. One of my concerns with them though is how close can the girls get before burning or bleaching, can't really give up much space for that. I was also considering if a couple of COBs could sit on top of the cab, keeping the heatsink and fan, and theoretically the heat, on the outside. Definitely food for thought. I think I could probably run each of my cabs on 2 COBs maybe 3 for the flower cab. Really thinking about that.

 

[Chloemobile]

More progress on the mom/clone cab:

Added the door some paint and some louvers. I need some more carbon and a socket and this thing will be ready to go.

 

[Chloemobile]

I've been reading up on the COBs too. They don't seem nearly as complicated as the LED arrays that use a ton of the small red and blue LEDs. Just a COB, thermal paste, heatsink & fan and what looks like some pretty simple wiring. One of my concerns with them though is how close can the girls get before burning or bleaching, can't really give up much space for that. I was also considering if a couple of COBs could sit on top of the cab, keeping the heatsink and fan, and theoretically the heat, on the outside. Definitely food for thought. I think I could probably run each of my cabs on 2 COBs maybe 3 for the flower cab. Really thinking about that.

I have my 2 drivers left over from when I made one of those painful arrays with 3w chips. They are meanwell 35 lpc and run at 700 ma. I am going to get 4 Vero 13 chips and run them at 350ma each. so two on each driver in parallel so that the amps are split between the two chips. According to the spec sheet that will put them at ~11w and 1528 lumens a piece for a total ~44w 6112 lumens for ~139 lumens per watt.

Still trying to figure out if that is enough light for my 11x11 space or if more would mean more yield or if at this point non light factors ( pot size , hydro vs soil etc.) are more meaningful to yield.

 

[Chloemobile]

My mom cab I was building turned out OK. actually it was an eye sore and some shitty shoddy craftsmanship that really just kinda made me pissed off every time I looked at it for some reason. So I bought/made a new slightly bigger cab for flowering and will use the 11x11 now for moms/veg/clone etc. the new cab is 15x12 going to stick with the led scew ins for now since I've exhausted my hobby budget for a while. Not that I am complaining though these suckers are bright. My only nit pick is the heat. That issue may go away if I add a PC fan blowing on them though.

 

[Charon96]

This sativa though had been under 12/12 for more than two weeks now and hasn't shown a single pistil!

I'm glad to know it's not me doing something wrong, but instead it sounds like a long-flowering sativa strain trait. Not even my males were gender-identifiable after 2 weeks. Girls took 3+ at least. I'm growing some pure landrace sativas and I knew they took a long time to flower but I was worried I was doing something wrong when pre-flowering was so slow.

 

[Charon96]

PS: I love cab/micro grows and this thread is awesome. I've been growing not in a cab but in a small tent in a small shed and now in a small shed, so people growing in even smaller spaces impresses me.

 

[Chloemobile]

PS: I love cab/micro grows and this thread is awesome. I've been growing not in a cab but in a small tent in a small shed and now in a small shed, so people growing in even smaller spaces impresses me.

Thanks buddy. I enjoy growing micro. Hard mode.

 

[Chloemobile]

Little update on the grow. Looks like my auto is fading fast or hungry .....I'm leaning towards hungry. She's looking frosty though.




The super haze started showing pistils about a week ago and has really come on strong since then.

 

[Sforza]

I've been reading up on the COBs too. They don't seem nearly as complicated as the LED arrays that use a ton of the small red and blue LEDs. Just a COB, thermal paste, heatsink & fan and what looks like some pretty simple wiring. One of my concerns with them though is how close can the girls get before burning or bleaching, can't really give up much space for that. I was also considering if a couple of COBs could sit on top of the cab, keeping the heatsink and fan, and theoretically the heat, on the outside. Definitely food for thought. I think I could probably run each of my cabs on 2 COBs maybe 3 for the flower cab. Really thinking about that.

COBs are excellent for small spaces. You could certainly build a cabinet with holes in the top for just the COBs while leaving the heatsink, fan, and driver outside of the cabinet. Since you have been reading up on COBs, you know that the way to go is to spend the money to get some large efficient COB lights, then run them at low amps, so that the total watts of electricity used is low, but the lights are very efficient, thus putting out relatively little heat, and the last a long time when driven soft.

This evening I just slapped together a light consisting of five CXB3590 COBs with all five COBs driven by a single Meanwell .5 amp, 400 volt driver. I put the COBs on a one foot by one foot sheet of copper and stuck five copper heat sinks on the backside and one large fan 120MM or so, I had pulled it out of my computer case.

I have one COB in each corner and one in the middle. It puts out a lot of light.

I have made about 5 different COB lights, using first a DIY Chinese purple led kit, then I did basically the same light, but I bought the parts separately. Then I did a light with a 200 Watt Cree in the middle with some white Chinese COBs on the corners, one driver for the 200 watt Cree and another for the four cheap Chinese COBs in the corner. I did a single Cree CXA3590 on a CPU heatsink and fan. I did two Vero 29 Cobs mounted on a piece of expanded aluminum with the edges turned up and the drivers for the Veros and the fans for the CPU coolers mounted on the top of the aluminum and I cut two holes in the middle of expanded aluminum and mounted the Vero COBs with reflectors below the aluminum. That method was basically the same as how you could mount the drivers, heatsinks, and fans about the cabinet and the COBS in the ceiling.

Last week I bought a two foot section of aluminum downspout at Home Depot. I undid the seam, cut three holes for the CXB3590 COBs, but three copper heatsinks in the tube, closed up the tube, the put a fan in each end of the tube each blowing in the same direction to cool off the heat sinks. Everything is running cool.

I don't know much about electricity and I am no craftsman, but I have found that you do not have to be real perfect or have everything dialed in to have lights that work well and put out a lot of light. I have found that rather than try to plan everything out and have the lights be perfect from the start, it is better to get your hands dirty and see what works and what does not work.

I had to go away for Thanksgiving for a week. I had plants under the COBs and when I came back from being away, one plant had grown right up into the reflector. The bud at the tip was dead and dried out, but the rest of the plant was fine. I have never had any burning or bleaching of plants and I am growing in a space with very little head space with very bright lights.

 

[Chloemobile]

Thanks for sharing your COB experience dude!

 

[Chloemobile]

Been crunching some numbers for creating my COB array to determine cost of components etc and made a few tables to help my analysis. I have 2 Meanwell 35 LPC drivers on hand then are 48V @ 700ma. So this first chart I made was to see what I could make with $0 Driver Cost.

all of my calcs are based on running the COB's in parallel. High voltage drivers make me cringe.... once you start getting in the 280+ range of DC voltage its a little scary because that amount of voltage can carry a decent amount of current through your body even with calculating the supposed resistance of skin etc.

Here are the VERO Specs I am basing my Calcs on:

All of the costs are calculated with $24.36 for a 14" X 5.886" Heat sink from heat sink USA. I think this should be enough but please feel free to chime in...this is the one part of the equation I am still a little hazy on.

I like the idea of having more chips driven lower to help even out the light spread and gain efficiency... with that being said, option 2 looks good...but then im paying $14 for ~500 extra lumens and the ability to spread the light around. Option 1 is pretty economical. But in General i really would like more light. Maybe I don't need that much light though and I can get away with doing this really cheap and upgrade the drivers later if i really want/need to.

For some reason I have this magic number of 10,000 lumens in my 12" x 15" space. Still not a lot of info on what is the right amount of light in a space for LED's because wattage can vary by the efficacy of the Chip. So it's hard to say X number of watts per square foot is how much you should have. Lumens isn't really the best way either to measure the light output of LED's apparently from reading about them, but without a lux meter its my best gauge of amount of light...I would have to assume that more lumens = more lux.


The next table I did was substituting or adding in two cheap Chinese drives from Ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LED-SMD-Chi...1862858?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368#shpCntId

These are $8.28 per 50W Driver. 35V @1500ma - rounded up to $18 for the two drivers.

Pption 1 and 2 on this chart look really good to me. With Option 1 and 3 on here I can subtract $9 to sub out 1 of the 1500mA drivers for my 2 700mA Drivers on Hand...that gives me 3 drivers which is annoying but...economical! In all the Vero 13's really look like the best bang for the buck in my space. From 4-8 in any configuration would do well I think...

Now I am narrowing down how much spread do i really need in 12" X 15"...
The Chip configurations I am looking at are

4 Chips- [o o o o] (700mA)

6 Chips- [% % %] (500mA )

8 Chips- [: : : :] (350mA)


It really comes down to...how much do you want to pay for efficiency?



Just as a cost comparison to my current setup...

6 Screw in LED bulbs 14.5W @1500 lumens each roughly $8 per bulb.....$56.00 + 6 Cleats at roughly $3.00/per.. = $74..

87w @ 9000 lumens = 103 l/w. Not that efficient and the bases of the bulbs indicate that....they are hot.

there are incidental costs with each setup I am not including like thermal paste and wire harness etc for the LED's and Wire, wood etc for the screw in bases. I think the incidental costs are a little higher on the COB LED's but not by a lot.

 

[Chloemobile]

Grow update.

Climax Auto:

It started showing flowers on 11/13 so this is starting week 5 for the auto. The info on the strain says 8-9 weeks from seed but this thing still has plenty of white hair left. I also have been growing it under 12/12 so I'm not sure what effect hat has on an auto strain.




The Super Haze is looking awesome. It started showing flowers around 12/3 so this is the middle of week 2 and it is already looking beefy.

 

[TexMex McDirt]

The girls look great. Good luck on planning the COB array. I haven't given up, I'll figure it out eventually. I like the idea you gave me for running like 8 smaller COBs instead of 3 bigger ones. I've been looking at the Veros too, they are priced so much better than the Crees. I also like the idea of the heatsinkUSA heatsink instead of individual sinks for each COB. I think that might require drilling/tapping the sink though. Not sure about that. Also wondering how to attach fans to the top of the sink to cool it. Maybe it cn just rest on top without being actually attached permanently.

Cheers!
Tex

 

[zalimam]

Awesome looking spiky bucket you got there

 

[Chloemobile]

The girls look great. Good luck on planning the COB array. I haven't given up, I'll figure it out eventually. I like the idea you gave me for running like 8 smaller COBs instead of 3 bigger ones. I've been looking at the Veros too, they are priced so much better than the Crees. I also like the idea of the heatsinkUSA heatsink instead of individual sinks for each COB. I think that might require drilling/tapping the sink though. Not sure about that. Also wondering how to attach fans to the top of the sink to cool it. Maybe it cn just rest on top without being actually attached permanently.

Cheers!
Tex

Hey Tex - glad you are finding this info useful. You don't have to tap the heatsink if you don't want to. You can just use thermal paste and stick them down....or even kapton tape and thermal grease until you want to stick them down with the paste. I don't plan on tapping my heat sink when I get it. you could just set the fan on top of the heat sink nothing wrong with that at all. My setup has the exhaust in the top center of the cab and I am going to put the heat sink right below that to act as the fan. The more I think about it the more I like the idea of under driving the vero 18's @ 700. Probably going to go 4 right down the middle [o o o o]. Since your space is a bit longer and wider you can probably do the same thing but with two bars and space them out a bit. Since you have to run 8 though it might be better to go with the vero 13' @ 350mA .

[o o o o]

[o o o o]

55.28 for the chips
18 for the drivers

Probably $35.00 for each heat sink bar (4.9" x 20" @ heat sink USA). If you make them long enough you may be able to get a good amount of passive cooling. So anywhere from 145 - 175 depending on how you go with the heat sinks and thermal paste etc. that would give you over 12k lumens with the option to upgrade driver later if you want and push them at 500mA or 700mA

 

[Chloemobile]

Awesome looking spiky bucket you got there

Thanks zalimam! It's called an airpot.


http://www.amazon.com/Superoots-Air-pot-3-Gallon-Equivalent/dp/B00HZULXT0

 

[TexMex McDirt]

Hey Tex - glad you are finding this info useful. You don't have to tap the heatsink if you don't want to. You can just use thermal paste and stick them down....or even kapton tape and thermal grease until you want to stick them down with the paste. I don't plan on tapping my heat sink when I get it. you could just set the fan on top of the heat sink nothing wrong with that at all. My setup has the exhaust in the top center of the cab and I am going to put the heat sink right below that to act as the fan. The more I think about it the more I like the idea of under driving the vero 18's @ 700. Probably going to go 4 right down the middle [o o o o]. Since your space is a bit longer and wider you can probably do the same thing but with two bars and space them out a bit. Since you have to run 8 though it might be better to go with the vero 13' @ 350mA .

[o o o o]

[o o o o]

55.28 for the chips
18 for the drivers

Probably $35.00 for each heat sink bar (4.9" x 20" @ heat sink USA). If you make them long enough you may be able to get a good amount of passive cooling. So anywhere from 145 - 175 depending on how you go with the heat sinks and thermal paste etc. that would give you over 12k lumens with the option to upgrade driver later if you want and push them at 500mA or 700mA

Yea, you just about nailed my plan. I am looking at both the vero 13's and 18's. Leaning towards 8 of the 13's like you showed. If I went with this one here it looks like @ 500ma x 8 COBs I should get about 15,000 lumens. So, maybe something like that. Haven't figured out exactly which COBs or drivers or how to do the heatsinks, but at least it is making sense now. I'm wondering if I could run them on 1 5.886" heatsink. 4 down each edge. If my cab is 16" deep, with that sink centered, there'd be about 5" of gap between the sink and the front and back of the cab. I wonder if that would provide good coverage or if that isn't spaced evenly enough? Anyways, the planning continues. Sorry to hijack your thread with my LED rambling brainstorm. Thanks for the feedback though,

Cheers,
Tex

 

[Dion]

data data data i have supras spreadsheet so here are some bits u may like

including the eff% which u can use to calculate heat watts(for heatsink sizing) and par watts for better comparason

also take a look at the micro link in my sig

i put together some ideas there