THE MAGMA CHAMBER – LED Coco Blumats Airpots T5 stealth cab

[ahhhavalanche!]

Got and installed a 120VAC 4PDT relay to cut power to the cool tube fans, and to the utility room fan when the lights/ballasts are off (thanks bonsai!!)


Had a little more LED drama today, the string that has been nicknamed "the retard string" started flickering again. Luckily I noticed pretty quickly and the culprit LED was right up front and very obvious, it has been removed and the gap it left was filled with copper tape... any ideas as to why this is happening? it appears like the silver (expensive) electrically conductive epoxy burned.

 

[growingcrazy]

Just like a typical engineer, 10lbs of shit in a 5lb bag...lol

Setup looks great. I like the idea of having everything you need in one cab.

 

[raphenilweed]

any ideas as to why this is happening? it appears like the silver (expensive) electrically conductive epoxy burned.

Maybe different metals are reacting and corroding.

 

[bromhexine]

wow this is a dorks dream wrapped in a nerdy geeks nightmare good luck with the harvest its a real cool setup unlike anything ive seen not really sure if the yield will be worth it though perhaps all those hours put in you could have just found a larger space to work with instead.

 

[bonsai]

Got and installed a 120VAC 4PDT relay to cut power to the cool tube fans, and to the utility room fan when the lights/ballasts are off (thanks bonsai!!)

Excellent, glad that suited your needs. I've been using a temp/humidity sensor IC to feed a microcontroller and only run fans when outside a defined temp/humidity range which had been working perfectly for 32 days. Logging the data every 5 minutes 24/7 for that period until the chip freaked out and began reporting 103°C for a couple hours, then dropping to -43°C and staying there overnight during lights on. Found some very warm, very sad plants in the morning and have resorted to more "simple" controls since then. Thermostat controls are fantastic, except when they're not.

any ideas as to why this is happening? it appears like the silver (expensive) electrically conductive epoxy burned.

Ah, nice carbon footprint left by its dying moment. Looks like excessive current. I've not worked with high wattage LED but I've seen it a bit on audio valves. Excessive current draw creates thermal runaway leading to further current draw until something gives -- either a fuse, the power supply or device drawing the current. Probably a faulty LED that went into runaway, and the thing that gave first was the silver epoxy.

 

[ahhhavalanche!]

Sorry it has been so long, I have been really busy. I was thinking that the problem might be high current too. Once when I was trouble shooting I noticed that sometimes the LEDs give off a slight glow when they are not powder on.


I am thinking that the fluorescent lights are inducing a current in the LEDs or possibly the fluorescent ballast is interfering with the LED ballasts.
I moved the ballasts as far away as I could from each other within the electrical room, and did not notice a difference in the light emitted by the unplugged LEDs.
When I was trouble shooting the LEDs I had to plug them into a separate surge protector so that I could easily switch them on and off, while leaving the fluorescents on as work lights. One thing I noticed is that The 660nm string would only light up if It was plugged into the surge protect and the surge protectors switch was off (obviously couldn’t tell when the surge protector and the LEDs were on). The 630nm string would light up without needing to be plugged into anything, but would noticeably change brightness when either prong of the plug was touched.
I used a millimeter and tested across the front row of LEDs and noticed that the Vf across the LEDs increased as I moved from Left to right in the cab (The same way the current moves through that line of the circuit, see diagram below, blue are the fluorescent lights and their current direction. The Vf across a few of the LEDs on the far left side was actually negative even though the LEDs seemed to be all evenly minimally lit (wtf?).
This got me to thinking that the induced current is likely still there when the lights are being powered, and maybe the currents are cumulative causing the connections to fail?
I blindly reduced the current from each driver (I now know down to 110mA and 310mA (rated to 400 and 1000 respectively). And they ran fine for 5 days. I raised the currents up to 300 and 500, and they ran fine for a day. Then I raised the light up a bit and had a connection failure in a heat sink connecting wire (getting pretty good at diagnosing, still hard to repair things in the back).

As of this writing they have been running problem free for about a week, hopeful still as of your reading (knock on wood). One lesson learned is to cut the power to the lamp when you raise it up as to not agitate the circuit while moving it around. Cannot wait until harvest (shooting for mid December) when I can spend a few weeks tinkering with the lamp and reoverredundancing every connection.

Here is some current cab porn:

 

[paOol]

im aiming for a december harvest as well. i look forward to your harvest

 

[Japanfreakier]

Wow, Archibald Tuttle's garden. cool.

 

[SupraSPL]

Thanks for the tip on the air pots I will look into them . I am always trying to squeeze every last gram from a tiny pot. So far my best is 10 grams per liter but I hope I can do better soon. Nice setup BTW! Looks like you really went for it when it comes to cooling the LEDs! From the measurements of your heatsinks looks like they have almost 2000cm2 of surface area each so with KNNAs LEDs a single heatsink could cool 15-20 watts of dissipation lol.

You mentioned shorting out each LED looking for the trouble makers. I noticed that my vegging lamp flickers when I crank it up and one of the LEDs on the string refuses to show a stable vF. Do the troublemaker LEDs usually fluctuate in vF in your case? I will try jumping it and see if the flickering stops.

I noticed induced currents in my lamps also. One thing that crossed my mind was maybe I was switching the neutral wire before the driver instead of the hot wire. I made sure to remedy that and after reconstructing my new lamps the problem is gone. On the other hand I have strings that run parallel so when I run one string and not the other I can see the slight glow which must be caused by EMF? It does not seem to be harmful they have been operating continually for about 9 months.

 

[Darth Fader]

Can't wait to see the flowers produced in here. Amazing setup amigo! Subbed!

 

[ahhhavalanche!]

Thanks for the tip on the air pots I will look into them . I am always trying to squeeze every last gram from a tiny pot. So far my best is 10 grams per liter but I hope I can do better soon. Nice setup BTW! Looks like you really went for it when it comes to cooling the LEDs! From the measurements of your heatsinks looks like they have almost 2000cm2 of surface area each so with KNNAs LEDs a single heatsink could cool 15-20 watts of dissipation lol.

You mentioned shorting out each LED looking for the trouble makers. I noticed that my vegging lamp flickers when I crank it up and one of the LEDs on the string refuses to show a stable vF. Do the troublemaker LEDs usually fluctuate in vF in your case? I will try jumping it and see if the flickering stops.

I noticed induced currents in my lamps also. One thing that crossed my mind was maybe I was switching the neutral wire before the driver instead of the hot wire. I made sure to remedy that and after reconstructing my new lamps the problem is gone. On the other hand I have strings that run parallel so when I run one string and not the other I can see the slight glow which must be caused by EMF? It does not seem to be harmful they have been operating continually for about 9 months.

Thanks for calculating the size of my heatsinks for me, Its hard to say what the real cooling potential is though because it is copper and aluminum with a heat pipe. All i know for sure is they lie somewhere on the cooling spectrum between inadequate to cool an Xbox, and overkill for my LEDs.

The LEDs have been stable for about a month now, so I am trying to keep my hands off of them (still some cuz i am addicted to growing and love to play around in my cab). I never tested the vF's while my lamp was flickering, I tried to minimize the time I was abusing them. I would assume since the brightness is flickering all the vF's are jumping around. When I harvest I will have some time and space to test and report back.

Enjoy some early bud shots:

 

[ahhhavalanche!]

I made it into the Link-o-rama!!! Life goal= check!!

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=40637

Stole a little taste on sunday, vaped it soaking wet, tasted planty... Going to begin a 2 week flush wednesdayish, then preparing for a long triming session.


Check out that solid root bulge that has climbed all the way up to the blumat! I am really excited to see what my root balls look like, I am imagining a solid cylinder of pure white!

 

[raphenilweed]

Well, well. Looking good there 'mate!
How are you holding up with the BluMat things? Do you find yourself adjusting them frequently?
What is that white "mushroom" at the base of Tatyana's stem/blumat/bic?

 

[MrSterling]

This is an awesome thread! I really like the framework you've worked out for alternating T5 and LEDs.

Kinda off-topic to the grow itself, but how in the world did you end up getting so many heat sinks - if you did a rebuild would you go that route again?

 

[ahhhavalanche!]

Well, well. Looking good there 'mate!
How are you holding up with the BluMat things? Do you find yourself adjusting them frequently?
What is that white "mushroom" at the base of Tatyana's stem/blumat/bic?

I have had really good luck with the blumats, they have not required much adjustment. That being said, I did almost have my first accident with them about 2 days ago, I am not sure what happened, but there was about 2 inches of standing water in the bottom of Lillys bowl. The blumat had stopped dripping by the time I found it, but if it hadn't it might have spilled the remaining gallon or 2 on the floor. The "mushroom" at Tatyana's base is a solid root ball that has broken through the surface and has grown all the way up to the dripper!

This is an awesome thread! I really like the framework you've worked out for alternating T5 and LEDs.

Kinda off-topic to the grow itself, but how in the world did you end up getting so many heat sinks - if you did a rebuild would you go that route again?

I picked up the heat sinks on the bay, turns out there are a lot of broken xboxs out there! I am planning on expanding the grow in the future, and will use the same heat sinks (they were surprisingly cheap, usually costing about $1 each!

 

[MrSterling]

.

 

[t33to]

IN LOVE with your attention to detail. You can see the engineering side of you really shine through.

I also love the fact that you used as much green salvage as possible. The world needs more people like you. Sucks that you aren't able to find work, but perhaps that's when the most ingenuity arrives in oneself.

Where'djoo get them LEDS?

 

[ahhhavalanche!]

@MrSterling: I do eventually plan on putting in LEDs in place of the T5's. This is going to be a long way off though, because I am back in school and super broke. I will probably go with white LEDs over blue ones. I will have to see how Supras thread goes 1st: http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=193689

@t33to: thanks for the kind words, they went straight to my head! I got the LEDs from knna

 

[dymaxion grow]

That rootball is A-MAZING! i've seen roots fill up the volume of hydro containers but never a rootball ACTUALLY COMING UP OUT THE SURFACE OF THE MEDIUM.

CONGRATS!

 

[Mind Grenade]

This is unbelievable, that root ball is unreal i cant believe my eyes. Really really nice job. I love the cab. Keep the good work, Ive been enjoying the show.