My many designs and experiments.

[Safe Gardener]

China COB led's

China COB led's

Hey man, I think I remember you using cheap China COB led's. Did they work for you? I made two of the pictured panel each runs 60 watts of ebay drivers currently. I'm thinking of getting 100 watt drivers to push the chips up from 10 watts a piece to 16.66 watts. The area I want to use them in is just under three square feet. Any suggestions you might have would be much appreciated. Thanks

SG

 

[Killkingkong]

Hey man, I think I remember you using cheap China COB led's. Did they work for you? I made two of the pictured panel each runs 60 watts of ebay drivers currently. I'm thinking of getting 100 watt drivers to push the chips up from 10 watts a piece to 16.66 watts. The area I want to use them in is just under three square feet. Any suggestions you might have would be much appreciated. Thanks

SG

Hey safe gardener, I remember you, I liked your designs. I actually still use cheap LEDs in my clone/mother/veg PC case, but I wouldn't flower with those, however they're better than that diy blurple I tried to make. Nowadays quality LED strips from digikey cost like $2.80/each and I put 5 of them on those 300mm x140mm heatsinks that you showed in your pic which I also use and get from china for like $13.50 each (free shipping up to 3 of them, then shipping skyrockets). I also use cheap SiLs which are also cheap LEDs, but so cheap/easy to buy/replace.

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/bridgelux/BXEB-L0280Z-35E1000-C-B3/976-1736-ND/7907665

 

[Killkingkong]

Oh yeah, i forgot to mention. Those LED strips run 19.5v, which coincidentally is the same voltage that most laptops take, so you can get almost any laptop charger to power these LED strips if you run them in parallel. they'll be much more efficient and on par price wise then those "100 watt (lol)" chinese leds. The only reason I still use those cheap leds in my veg case is because they're permanently glued onto heatsinks that cost me money in the past. also the hinges and magnets cost me money. for me to continue to use them justifies the money spent lol. Last weekend when I got 12 more of those led strips I took 2 and thermal glued them directly to the former blurple pc case. that worked great with a laptop adapter, but then I tried to overclock with a 38v adapter and blew out most of the LEDs. luckily it was only 2 and I didn't let the thermal glue completely dry so i could still pry them off and just put the 300x140mm heatsink with 5 strips over the top of that area and run them at 19v and no more than that.

 

[Safe Gardener]

It's funny, the 6 chip panels I made I've not used for anything but work lights in a room I'm remodeling. I did have one of them on some tomato starters last year but only at 30 watts.

I appreciate your recommendation to not use them on flower, but if my luck with clones gets better I'm going to give them a shot solely because I have the lights and they fit perfectly in the space.

The pic I attached is my most recent creation. It has $5 worth of bases, about $10 of SIL's and some scrap material I had around the house. Currently it has a mix of 9 watt 3000k and 5000k and two 14.5 watt 3000k SIL's. This fixture also fits perfectly in the cab I'll be using.

To this point I've only used SIL bulbs in a .8sq/ft medicine cabinet turned seed run can. 3 SIL's across the top has worked very well for this. I'm looking forward to seeing what the new fixture can do for me. Where I'll be using it I have previously used an older Mars Hydro 96 reflector with plenty good enough results for me. So, this won't be an apples to apples comparison but we'll see how it turns out.

 

[Safe Gardener]

Sorry the pic is upsidedown, but it does give a good representation of what the light will look like in action. Haha

A question about digikey. I like the strips you added the link to, but I'm looking for something that is 24 volts so I can use a driver I already have (I added a pic of it). I was looking at some samsung strips (lm561C) that I can run 4 inseries and parallel to get the voltage down and a nice easy current for all 4. Does digikey have these or something similar? Again, I want to use the driver because I have it already. Thanks again for your input.

SG

 

[Killkingkong]

Sorry the pic is upsidedown, but it does give a good representation of what the light will look like in action. Haha

A question about digikey. I like the strips you added the link to, but I'm looking for something that is 24 volts so I can use a driver I already have (I added a pic of it). I was looking at some samsung strips (lm561C) that I can run 4 inseries and parallel to get the voltage down and a nice easy current for all 4. Does digikey have these or something similar? Again, I want to use the driver because I have it already. Thanks again for your input.

SG

Buy these samsung LED strips instead, they take 25v. However you can easily run the bridgelux strips that i bought at 25v you would just be overdriving them. me hooking up a 36v adapter fried 2 strips when I was testing things, so don't go too high in voltage. You can also fit 6 samsung strips instead of 5 bridgelux strips on that 300x140mm heatsink.

https://www.digikey.com/product-det...uctor-inc/SI-B8T08128CWW/1510-2138-ND/6569386

 

[Killkingkong]

I redesigned my case with all COBs to be a hybrid of cob & sil. It's currently using 65w with the SILs and 36w with the COBs for 101w in total lights and 15w for 2 12v exhaust fans and 2 12v airpumps. Should be pretty efficient. I defiinitely expect to see over 1g/w, hopefully over 1.5g/w and close to 2 (which is a pipe dream). I'm still waiting for more thermal glue so I can do the same to my other big case. In the end both cases should have 3 side lights. I still have to find a way to mount a heatsink to the back that's made from flimsy cardboard. I'm thinking I can nail a solid piece of wood across the back to give me something to drill into.

Hybrid design Day 0 Flower:

 

[q3corn]

I still have to find a way to mount a heatsink to the back that's made from flimsy cardboard. I'm thinking I can nail a solid piece of wood across the back to give me something to drill into.

If it's that same flimsy cardboard that they use for the backs of ready-made cabinets, not a lot will mount to it without potentially ripping in the long-run. you could just get a thin piece of melamine cut to size to add back there. That would add a lot of structural integrity to the cabinet, too.

 

[Killkingkong]

If it's that same flimsy cardboard that they use for the backs of ready-made cabinets, not a lot will mount to it without potentially ripping in the long-run. you could just get a thin piece of melamine cut to size to add back there. That would add a lot of structural integrity to the cabinet, too.

I was thinking a plastic (lightweight & moisture proof) composite board it comes in 8feet length so I can have them cut it up into 4 2 foot sections. I can either use 1 plank per case and just have the heatsink screwed in the top but loose on the bottom or screw 2 boards in to screw the top and bottom down so it's sturdy. I changed the power supply for my hybrid case that I just built and now am drawing 120w in total light and 135w in total power for that 1 case. If i feel like it needs more power I can change the top bulbs from 13w to 15.5w for a 12.5w increase, but i doubt I can use that much power without burning the plant.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Veranda...ft-White-Cellular-PVC-Trim-H190HWS3/100275037

 

[q3corn]

^That would probably work just fine, and is probably cheaper than replacing the entire back panel.

 

[Killkingkong]

Week 4 or 5 Diy Quantum Board With Side Lighting Cab

This plant came out to 83.9, so pretty much just shy of 3 ounces, which is disappointing, but that's over 1g/w since I was running the cob case at 70w because it burned my plants at 100w in the summer and I forgot to turn the power back up for winter. To get to 2g/w I'm really gonna have to max out these cases power, direction of light & perfect veg time to fill the case without overgrowing. The next plant to be chopped is that very balanced plant and I think that will be more than that 84g, but I think still around 1g/w since that case uses 115w.

 

[Killkingkong]

I redesigned my case with all COBs to be a hybrid of cob & sil. It's currently using 65w with the SILs and 36w with the COBs for 101w in total lights and 15w for 2 12v exhaust fans and 2 12v airpumps. Should be pretty efficient. I defiinitely expect to see over 1g/w, hopefully over 1.5g/w and close to 2 (which is a pipe dream). I'm still waiting for more thermal glue so I can do the same to my other big case. In the end both cases should have 3 side lights. I still have to find a way to mount a heatsink to the back that's made from flimsy cardboard. I'm thinking I can nail a solid piece of wood across the back to give me something to drill into.

Hybrid design Day 0 Flower:

So that COB/SiL Cab I designed is really coming along nicely. I can't run this strawberry dogshit x nevilles haze in years because it was always outgrowing my PC grow boxes, but I kept a clone around as a mother plant. So I had a really sturdy clone with a huge amount of branching ready to go. This plant started out small but I'm super impressed for how much growth there's been in 3 weeks of flowering. In these bigger cases I usually have 20-25 big branches, but in this current design I have easily over 40 solid branches, close to 50. I think gpw for this grow gonna be great based on prior grows.

 

[q3corn]

Wow that plant blew up!

 

[Killkingkong]

Wow that plant blew up!

Yeah, I've kept it around for years because I was impressed with the growth from that strain, but I grow micro lol. I recently decided to give it another run because my gelat.og clones needed a few more weeks, but the dogshit plant was a mother and ready to go. I recently put another dogshit clone into a pc to spray with colloidal silver and get pollen so I can cross gelat.og x (strawberry dogshit x critical neville's haze).

Plant being reverse sexed:

 

[Killkingkong]

Built some new boxes and an example of my last run in my old boxes which are still in use. How the hell do I insert a pic directly into my message now? lol

 

[xet]

Subbed

Good stuff

 

[NeDank]

Man this thread is awesome. All the technical stuff went over my head but still a good read

 

[brickweeder]

Good to see you back...gotta love wago connectors!

 

[Killkingkong]

Nice to see this thread is still helping people. I don't update much anymore here, but I'm in the process of starting a youtube page with grow tutorials to go along with a grow box business I'm starting check out my instagram for more pics. https://www.instagram.com/stealthgrowsny/

 

[xet]

Nice to see this thread is still helping people. I don't update much anymore here, but I'm in the process of starting a youtube page with grow tutorials to go along with a grow box business I'm starting check out my instagram for more pics. https://www.instagram.com/stealthgrowsny/

Very nice! Very Professor-like of you.

I cast my vote to keep posting here because YouTube will eventually hit the big DELETE button on your work.