Diary PCBuds mini-grow

[Rocket Soul]

This is the diy thread. Please post your favorite pics from the grow aswell, its builds and pics of DIY build grown buds

See the flagg looking thing above my marking? This will book mark a post, so that you can always come back to it later, under your profile as bookmarks somewhere.

 

[PCBuds]

OK, I'll see you over there unless I get lost.

The big menu wasn't any help either,.

I'm officially bitching to @exploziv

Why is this so damn difficult?

Where the Hell is that thread hiding?
Why is it hiding?

It's not very stoner friendly.

 

[PCBuds]

This is the diy thread. Please post your favorite pics from the grow aswell, its builds and pics of DIY build grown buds

Apparently Postimg.cc has deleted a bunch of my pictures.

Once I could upload the pictures directly to this site, I started doing that.
I find it much easier.

 

[exploziv]

Can I help with anything or you jist wanna bitch about it?

 

[PCBuds]

Can I help with anything or you jist wanna bitch about it?

Well, I'd like it if I could find a thread by searching.

This is how I searched,..

And I got this,..

And a title only search,..

I reversed searched it to find out where it was hiding,..

EDIT:
I think I found it??

It's still kinda hiding.

It's not exactly what I was searching for, so It's easy to miss,..

 

[Rocket Soul]

DIY led growlights - Builds and Results

As the title says, post your builds here if you'd like to show them off, even better with some harvest results. You can give as much or as little info on the build as you like but more is always better, especially if it explains why and how you built it in the way you did :) Ill start with my...

www.icmag.com

This is the diy thread. Please post your favorite pics from the grow aswell, its builds and pics of DIY build grown buds

See the flagg looking thing above my marking? This will book mark a post, so that you can always come back to it later, under your profile as bookmarks somewhere.
View attachment 19087121

I made the title to "growlights" not "grow lights" (its the correct way, right?) so maybe you should bitch to me about my spelling ,lol.

 

[Rocket Soul]

@PCBuds
If you want to talk uv here i can help you out. Since you already solder fine its really an easy thing to do even with aliexpress diodes. Since you have a large area to cover you dont really have to worry too much about efficiency of diodes; modern 3535 available are more than enough. I got a good idea of how you can do it nicely and stick it to your walls, and typing it out here would be a mice resurce for anyone wanting to try. But youd need a proper cc power supply, no way of doing it cv reliably youll end up frying plant: not a lot of distance between buds and leds. The nice thing with doing uv in this "oven style" is that you get full penetration and no early finishing on top with lowers taking more time.

 

[Rocket Soul]

Ok, so lets throw some info up i hope youre like means ok. Ask me to remove if you dont want it here ;

Budget uv: in order to get a decent amount of watts but spread out id do it in 4 levels, with maybe some on top for good measure. There are several deal on aliexpress, ill show some examples later on what to get and what not.

Well use alu u extrusions, can you find a good source of that locally. You can get it cut or cut it yourself. Id try using something like 40cm, 16 inches long sections, a total of 4x3= 12.
Id try for at least 1.5 mm thickness but 2 would be super fine. One inch to 30mm wide with 10mm fins. Fins double as attachment for shield.

Set them up like this: divide the profile in 3 sections an one led in the middle of each section. You can do a bit tighter aswell. Tighter means more intense but also more mixed since youd be using 400/365 in 2:1 sections. Up to you, if going tight you can prolly go with less alu length but width and fins you need to keed the same unless you wanna go bigger. With 12 profiles id have you buying 36 diodes, seems a lot but it aint, theyll run nice and soft and only cost around 1 $.

But youll also need a spare guide pcb in same size, just get one spare for this, infact get a few spares anyways for replacing any future breakage. Youll spend a little now on leds but it will all be worth it, youll see. If you wanna go even further you could also pick up some reds, id suggest a an even splitt of 630 and 660. It can be really nice to compensate the added uv/blue response with some red. Put them on same circuit or a separate one but be sure your number is divideable by 12 so that it works out symmetrically for 2 leds per bar. Try to get same size pcb reds as uv then you can reuse the same guide pcb. Get your metal drill out and place your alus on a wooden surface that can get some holes with no issue. Or even better, fasten the ends in something so you got nothing underneath. Trick here is to just hand fit them, dont worry about marking holes and then drilling on the right spot, its easier to just grab the guide, put it on the alu and drill a hole in the alu aligned with one of the holes/notches. Drop a screw thru it, i use m3 its usually standard but by all means double check. Hold down the guide so it fits snuggly with the screw and then drill the next hole, two is enough. Then go on to the next and next. If you do this by marking it will take ages and youre likely to get the holes a bit missaligned. Sacrifice one pcb and diode to gain an hour or so of working time cause that diode and pcb is likely to short and give problems. All of this can be done without accessing the grow space. Once you have all your holes you wait until harvest time and start installing these with fins facing towards plant space. Use a 2 mm drill to drill thru into the wood, make sure you only drill the minimal needed. Then using short m3 screws you both mount diodes and fasten the alu unchannel with the same m3 screw. You dont need to be extra hard for the diodes, enough tightening so that youll only need wrist strength, not your whole arm or shoulder. If you want extra credit then get some solution so there is air between the wall and the alu, for better dissipation. Coin or similar should do. It will also give you a nice gap to fit in any shielding you may want. Dont do plastic or glass, you want some chicken fence looking thing or similar, fine mesh.

Oops i think i made a misstake. How are you going to solder vertically?

No, youll have to mount the diodes, use screws to hold them in place, no nut needed. Solder diodes, id suggest solid core, 0.75 mm or so. What ever your electric shop can give you but dont do standard 1mm its too thick to be practical. For those who dont know how to solder check a youtube vid; presolder bot pad and wire and then oush them together with your hot point. Measure out wire distance to next diode nice and exactly so that you dont have any slack between. And then solder the next. Once going this shouldnt take more time than a minute per diode with hotpoint solder warm. Its a good idea to leave plenty of extra on each end of the circuit of 3 per alu channel, enough so you can wire each level as a string of 3 channels. That makes 9 (3x 2- 400s and 1 365) diodes to a string (or more if you mix with reds, id suggest budgeting voltage to 4 per uv and 2.2 per red). some of this maybe obvious to you but ill bookmark this post and refer people to it for any needs of instructions.

Now you remove your diodes and screws and now you do the shallow mounting holes with 2mm wooden drill, or just anything a little thinner than m3 screws (i think theyre like 1/8"). Start screwing in screws thru the alu, get some space between alu and wooden wall if you like as mentioned above. Start by attaching the end diodes properly and go over each screw until all is snug but dont use excessive force. Rinse repeat for your 4 levels, you can out the 4 string ontop of everything in the ceiling. Its gonna be ther worst ones cause youll have to set slu to ceiling while the whole solder string wants to fall of. Again, attach the screws of the very ends, to the wood but dont tighten just yet. Get your end diodes and push them into place against the screws already in place and attach the other screw and tighten properly, and finish the middle one last. Obvioulsy take care that you get your string series right, minus to plus with in each alu and also minus to plus between the alus. Dont get yourself into a situation of having fastened down and finished everything only to see that youve got one element where you have minus to minus and have to do it all over again reversing.
You should now have 3 or 4 different levels of right side, back and left. Attach the strings together each ot the levels again from minus to plus so you end up with 3-4 strings. My guess is that the distance from plant dictates a maximum of 350mA per string for short bursts and a fair bit softer for all day or 3-4 hours midday.
For driver: use a proper meanwell cc driver with max current of (numbers of levels) x 350mA. Xlg-m range may be good for this. Or even a hlg50-36B for 4 levels, its cv/cc but it will work as long as dialed down a bit.

Does this make sense to you or have i been wall of texting again without rhinking of comprehension? Quote me on anything unclear. You can of course do a full series setup and snake the connections around but i dont recommend it, anything fails and youll have a hard time finding where and all the uv will go at the same time.

 

[Rocket Soul]

Search terms to play around with
Uv led 3535 and whatever nanometer youd like. I rec 400 amd 365 in 2:1 proportions but you always throw more in, but make sure not ro use anything very extreme. THIS IS A MISSTAKE MANY PEOPLE DONE! You wanna go for more of the near uvs (400 or higher, 420-430 is really nice aswell and alos very photosynthetic) than your deep uvas (365) but you defo want a bit of 365 in the mix. Its the most bioreactive or all uvas.

For help on driver .atching im your man just let me know what is your desired combo and i can figure something out for you.

 

[Rocket Soul]

Dont go for this type:


Old shitty and likely to burnout.

If you want to find decent reds try the same ali dealer as your uv rhey usually have a bunch of different diodes ro play with

Hope you take the step and enjoy the process, every little extra of investment in time will pay off and getting reds at rhe same time is a really good idea. It will take your build from single white to fully horticentric and will give you results youll notice if you can do blind tests. Potency is hard to say but flavor is completely new and improved, you will for sure enjoy your smoke more and wonder why you never did this before.

Edit: sorry to mods, didnt know links to aliexpress was a no no. Ill try or screencapture to get pics of what type to a avoid and what works well, my guess thx to @exploziv for keeping me right

 

[PCBuds]

Edit: sorry to mods, didnt know links to aliexpress was a no no. Ill try or screencapture to get pics of what type to a avoid and what works well, my guess thx to @exploziv for keeping me right

I was wondering what that was about??

I buy lots of suff on AliExpress so all I need to know is what to search for.

 

[PCBuds]

thx to @exploziv for keeping me right

He's tried keep me straight too, but I like doing dumb shit, and he hasn't been able to stop me.

 

[exploziv]

my guess thx to @exploziv for keeping me right

I gave your post a like not a clean-up. But yeah, we are better off without chinese links on here

 

[PCBuds]

He's tried keep me straight too, but I like doing dumb shit, and he hasn't been able to stop me.

Like this experiment,..
I drilled a hole in my plant stump and planted a seed in it.

 

[Rocket Soul]

I gave your post a like not a clean-up. But yeah, we are better off without chinese links on here

It was more for the pic of what type of diode one should look for and what to avoid if going the ali way. Its going for modern format diodes, and driving them soft its actually not a bad thing to try out, my buddy has several years worth of diodes running like this in order to be able to get all wavelengths he wanted for his blue channel and not had a failure yet. You can go for less but higher quality ran hard or more but cheaper ran soft, imho the later has some real benefits over the former. AliExpress is also a very good way to get gear shipped for less as a small order from regular outlets (even other places with nice quality like japan and corea) can get really unaffordable, with goods being less cost than shipping. But i shall refrain from now on

Would pics be allright though? Ill do whatever is kosher with the site, just trying to help out so peeps dont get trash cause god theres a lot, lol

 

[Rocket Soul]

I was wondering what that was about??

I buy lots of suff on AliExpress so all I need to know is what to search for.

Ill pm you later. Its more about what modern smds look like so you dont get old tech: theres still stock of 2005-2010 diodes laying around there.

 

[PCBuds]

Ill pm you later. Its more about what modern smds look like so you dont get old tech: theres still stock of 2005-2010 diodes laying around there.

It's fine to post it here if you want.
I'm more inclined to be able to find it if it's here on my thread.

There's no rush.
I'm not sure if I'm even going to grow a plant this year or not.

I've kinda lost interest in growing and I've got 2-3 years worth of weed in storage.

If I could get a UV light that I can use to sterilize water as well as help my plant, then I can justify the expense.

Of course I'll need to take the necessary precautions so I don't blind myself or give myself cancer.

If I know everything that I need to about UV lighting, then I can find safe ways of doing dumb shit with them.

I don't care if I kill a plant, it's kinda fun, as long as I'm not laying dead beside it.

 

[Hasch]

Like this experiment,..
I drilled a hole in my plant stump and planted a seed in it.

View attachment 19087478

And, what's this experiment come to?

 

[exploziv]

Yeah pics are good.

 

[PCBuds]

And, what's this experiment come to?

It didn't work.
I forget exactly why, but I found it in my thread,..

Diary - PCBuds mini-grow

You are right! Sorry, it's probably a forum bug. Will report it to the webmaster.

www.icmag.com