Lap Does LEDs - My DIY Quantum Board Cabinet

[bucketswithsoil]

Hey Laps.....glad to see ya back up and going...and like ya were saying fuck that dude and keep on posting...
Looks like ya gotten some love with tje strains...since last time we chatted..
Be good my friend....

 

[Brother Bear]

Whilst trying to educate myself on the current LED scene, what do I find ? A Lappy thread !
Nice build, nice buds on the way too.
My ladies always have the lighter green at new growth as well. Yours looked fine to me too.
Glad ya came back to the thread.

A question. How ya making the compost tea ? I been looking up plans for building a bootleg vortex.

 

[antheis]

bump for flower pics!

 

[Lapides]

They're doing ok, could be better. A lot of the colas are literally a half inch away from the diodes. The '91 isn't liking being so close at all.

The plants vegged in there for about 2 weeks longer than I would have liked so they got damn close but I pulled it off, just barely.

The next light I make will have more diodes per watt and run softer but be more efficient.

All in all I'm super happy. At the end I'm gonna have 8-10" colas with rock hard buds all the way down. And the few lowers that I left on below that don't look like they're going to be too shabby either.

38 days in -

 

[Lapides]

A few more -

 

[AvidLerner]

nice i love ingenuity

 

[antheis]

looks nice and packed in there. nice heavy flowers by any standard.
leaves are showing you they need chelated iron and zink... you shoulda listened.

 

[scarecrow33]

leaves are showing you they need chelated iron and zink... you shoulda listened.

actually that is a sign of too much light

 

[Lapides]

Crazy that there are still like 3.5 weeks left to go with the way these things are looking...more and more pleased every day..

 

[saitama]

Fucking wow.

I think an iron foliar would really help you here

 

[Lapides]

They are looking a little fried. I think they would be ok if they were a little further away from the lights. This was a stress test of sorts and I'm really not bummed even kind of with the way things are looking.

 

[saitama]

They are looking a little fried. I think they would be ok if they were a little further away from the lights. This was a stress test of sorts and I'm really not bummed even kind of with the way things are looking.

I would not be bummed about it either.

 

[AvidLerner]

that is great your leaves have a slight curl because you are providing so much usable light the plants can absorb, they don't know what to do. I get that now with Samsung diodes too. I also get tomato leaves that get all wrinkly because of so many photons of usable energy. You are killin it bro. love it. show em how it is done.

 

[Lapides]

New build. My plan was to have 15 - 4ft strips but I fucked up my measurements and ended up with only 14 and I didn't want to waste any metal. So it's 1008 diodes instead of 1080 like I wanted on a 2'x4' frame. Slightly less efficient than what I was going for, but more efficient than my first one and I have a few meters extra to play around with.

4000K S6 bin Samsung LM561Cs on convenient 3M tape for $.12 per diode shipped from China. It took barely over a week to get them once I decided on my order. Driver comes Saturday and I have some nerve wracking soldering to do in the meantime.

I want to do my whole house in these things!

 

[saitama]

Excited to see the results. Did you go with more diodes so you could gain efficiency by having them turned down? I ask because it seems you had too much light already and now you have like 2.2 times more.

Would love to see the numbers compared and what you're planning.

Good luck! I'm subbed for life

 

[Lapides]

Yes that is exactly what I was going for, more efficiency. With the diodes being so cheap it makes total sense to do it this way.

The numbers from Samsung's calculator for my original 576 diode setup are 440731 lumens output, 243.6 watts draw making efficacy 180.9 lumens per watt.
The numbers for this new setup are great. 1008 diodes giving 45067 lumens drawing just 222.5 watts yielding 202.6 lumens per watt.
The big difference in the numbers mainly comes from the different color temperatures of the diodes. The 4000K ones put out a little more lumens.

But had I used the same color diodes (comparing apples to apples), I would get just slightly less lumen output over all with more diodes but over 20 watts less consumption. And all that light is more evenly spread.

I have too much light right now because my cabinet ceiling is 4 feet high and my plants vegged 2 weeks longer than I had originally planned. 4 to 5 inches away from the lights seems ok, .5 inches is just pushing it.

 

[saitama]

4 to 5 inches away from the lights seems ok, .5 inches is just pushing it.

 

[Brother Bear]

Feckin schweet !
Can't wait to see em up and running.
BTW, this is the first thread I've been more interested in the lights over the plants !
Inspiration !!!

If you were to do a larger room, say 8' x 8'.
Same technique, just larger boards to cover the room ? Say four 4x4 ? Or 2 4x8 ?

 

[Dislexus]

The big difference in the numbers mainly comes from the different color temperatures of the diodes. The 4000K ones put out a little more lumens.

More blue light = leafier flowers/more trimming though? Will you be running the same clones to see any difference? What will give better flowering results, more overall lumens from the extra blue or a greater red/blue ratio at comparable lumens? hmm I can't wait to find out.

If you want the new build to be as efficient as possible you could oversize the wire as much as you judge practical. Are there quick-connects that can be soldered on the strip so larger wire can easily be used? Also if you're going to drill any holes to run the wire kinda hidden you can get some bushings or grommets to protect the wire from the edges of the hole and just make it look sexy too. I was looking at other builds and they weren't bothering but bushings/grommets are so cheap why not. And "cable tie mounting pads" to stick inside the c-channel to tiewrap the wire to.

I'm holding myself back from such purchases/builds until 2018 but damn its tempting. Is there a way to confirm diodes from China aren't counterfeit? Like does Samsung have a list of resellers, or something?

Lastly I am thinking Psychotron legitimately has a mild form of color blindness, forgive him if he genuinely thought the new growth was a sickly neon yellow when it was a vibrant light green, he might actually have a slight disability. Just a thought, its possible.

 

[Dislexus]

If you were to do a larger room, say 8' x 8'.
Same technique, just larger boards to cover the room ? Say four 4x4 ? Or 2 4x8 ?

There was a crazy Canadian on Overgrow who had a small warehouse space full of shelves floor to ceiling with thousands of plantlets SOG'n under 8ft fluoros crammed tight together. He was getting pretty good results, easily trimmed little footballs of bud. I think they were in flood tables but I'm not sure. I wish I could remember his username.

I think something like that strategy would be an amazing application for these LED strips/ribbons/boards. To keep plant numbers below the feds' 100, one could do modular ScrOGlets, each small plant spread under its own 1ftx1ft rigid screen for example, plenty of veg time to do that in between harvest cycles.

The tipping point for LEDs is here. I'm so excited.