Can 700 watts of LED strips grow trees???

Big Green Thumb

Big Green Thumb

Well-Known Member
Sorry about the blurry cell phone pics! As you can see, one strip is above the overhead lighting. The side strips are 7" apart for about 22" of height. Once the plants grown a bit, I will raise the overhead lights which will expose that top side strip to be used by the plants.
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
Big Green Thumb said:
So I am limited to 6 plants in order to stay on the misdemeanor side of felony where I live and have built some 2' x 4' LED strip light setups. Currently my grow area is 4' x 4' but can easily be expanded to 4' x 6'. Right now I have my 6 plants vegging in a 2' x 4' section and have 1 2x4 led over it at around 210 watts. Each of these light fixtures can produce 360 watts after the power supply, or around 420 watts at the wall each. As of right now, I have 2 lights built with everything to build 2 more on hand, so 720 (840 at the wall) watts ready to go and 1420 (1680 at the wall) potentially available.

My goal here is a huge, quality yield growing 6 plants under my LEDs. So my question is how do I maximize my yield with what I have on hand? My plants are 3 platinum blue dreams and 3 animal cookies. The plants are being heavily trained into manifold/mainlines now with 8-12 colas each. Should I veg longer and double the number of colas? Sorry, I don't have any pics yet to show what's going on. I am just looking for direction on how to proceed. I am not in a huge rush and can veg a while but quicker is always better (that's what I tell my wife!).

Any advice is greatly appreciated!!!!
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I don't see why 700W of LED couldn't grow at least one tree. I ran 900W for each of mine and they got 6' tall and pulled up to 2lb. Each.
20161008_135646.jpg
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
Big Green Thumb said:
Are strip lights better than cobs? That's a tough one. I think both are great but the $20 price of each heat sink turned me off.
When I built my cob setup, I didn't use passive heatsinks. Instead I used square aluminum tubing and water cooled it using a bucket, some vinyl tubing, and a fountain pump. That's cheaper than 2 pin heat sinks and I can add more cobs to the tubing if I want without needing more heatsinks or cooling. If I was still doing cob builds, I would do it that way again using a buttload of the cheap 1212 cobs at 500 mah or so. 16 citizen cobs at $9 each = $144 + ~$40 for water cooling + ~$200 for driver(s) would be a pretty formidable light. But my strip lights are cheaper and hopefully as good.
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I'd sure like to see pics of your water cooled setup.
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
Big Green Thumb said:
View attachment 3997966 View attachment 3997967
4 Vero 29 cobs. I used a fountain pump that I had on hand, a 1 gallon bucket and extra vinyl tubing laying under my cabinet on the cooler cement floor to dissipate heat.
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Sexy! I do think I remember seeing these pics before, now that you've posted them.

Would you happen to know if the chips would survive if the pump stopped working, assuming the water didn't drain out of the rails?

I deliberately overbuilt my modules to be able to do just that, as a failsafe. It saved my ass more than a few times lol. My modules were a bit more densely packed; four CXB3590 running at 56W each on a 28" long chunk of 2"x4"x3/16” think square section aluminum bar stock. Total draw per module was 225W;
20160228_122249.jpg
 
Big Green Thumb

Big Green Thumb

Well-Known Member
I'm not sure if they would survive without water flow. I had the light as the highest part of the cooling system so I don't know if any "heated water rising auto circulation" would work. Lol. Not sure of the correct terminology for what I am trying to explain. My Veros were running at 1.4 amps, around 50 watts each and the system cooled the cobs fine even without a real heat exchanger. My plan was to add 2 or 4 more cobs for my 2x3 growing area but I moved up to a 4x4 and it was cheaper to build strips than buy more cobs and build 1 more row of cobs.

I feel my light was simple, cheap, and effective. If I would have been more informed when I began that build, I would have just used 1" square tubing (instead of 3/4" + 2" aluminum strap) and used thermal epoxy to attach a bunch of cheap Citizen cobs for a more cost effective build while being close on efficiency to the $27 Veros.
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
Big Green Thumb said:
I'm not sure if they would survive without water flow. I had the light as the highest part of the cooling system so I don't know if any "heated water rising auto circulation" would work. Lol. Not sure of the correct terminology for what I am trying to explain. My Veros were running at 1.4 amps, around 50 watts each and the system cooled the cobs fine even without a real heat exchanger. My plan was to add 2 or 4 more cobs for my 2x3 growing area but I moved up to a 4x4 and it was cheaper to build strips than buy more cobs and build 1 more row of cobs.

I feel my light was simple, cheap, and effective. If I would have been more informed when I began that build, I would have just used 1" square tubing (instead of 3/4" + 2" aluminum strap) and used thermal epoxy to attach a bunch of cheap Citizen cobs for a more cost effective build while being close on efficiency to the $27 Veros.
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Convection cooling? That's what mine use when I'm not actively pushing water through them.

The tech is moving so fast that a state of the art build today is obsolete tomorrow lol
 
InTheValley

InTheValley

Well-Known Member
Yo BGT, wonder if i could ask for help on something.

I have 50pc of these 1W diodes with PCB, here is the needs to work.

DC Forward Voltage:3.2V~3.6V Forward Current: 350mA

I plan on running 20 of them, and in paralle , and i have this adaptor im not using anymore,

output is:

4.8Volts ==0.4a

will this work?
 
Big Green Thumb

Big Green Thumb

Well-Known Member
That adapter you have only provides ~1.92 watts. The voltage is too high to run a single LED but probably too low to light 2 of those LEDs in series. It *may* run 1 single LED really bright and hot, but will probably fry the LED.

Do you have just 1 PCB with all 50 LEDs on it or each LED is on it's own board. Either way it doesn't look too promising to use the adapter you are talking about. Find a higher output adapter like a laptop power supply, printer power supply, etc. At least 12v, and we can come up with something that will work. I'm looking at my laptop power supply and it is 15.6 volts at 7 amp (15.6x7=109.2 watts). With something like that, we could light a bunch of those LEDs, but it would be a somewhat complicated series/parallel circuit.
 
InTheValley

InTheValley

Well-Known Member
Hey man, I have an xbox power supply. Its a 12v==9.6 amp ---120watts

But might just buy this one from Zon, then i can use it for anything and add some if i want.

The diodes are on star pcbs,



LETOUR DC 5V 30A Power Supply 150W AC 110V/220V Converter DC 5Volt 150 Watt Adapter LED Power Supply for LED Lighting,LED Strip,CCTV
 
Big Green Thumb

Big Green Thumb

Well-Known Member
InTheValley

InTheValley

Well-Known Member
Hey man, hope your day is going good, thanks for your input.

Im ordering my strips thursday, 20pc of the doubles i posted earlier. Cant wait. and that controler you posted some time back. I have to go diggin, been busy latley,

Thanks again for your input, and hope the grow is going swell, LOL.
 
InTheValley

InTheValley

Well-Known Member
Oh, and I actually have 3 PC power supplies sitting here now from scaveragin the house. all range from 150w to 550w.
 
Big Green Thumb

Big Green Thumb

Well-Known Member
My first cob driver was an old ATX power supply with one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B019W4C5IE/ref=mp_s_a_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1503439332&sr=8-15&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=dc+dc+converter&dpPl=1&dpID=51KelDnU4DL&ref=plSrch&th=1&psc=1

Using that little boost converter you can vary voltage and control the current. I connected it to the 12v wires from the PC p/s (Yellow and Black wires) and upped the voltage to 36, then set the current at 1.4 amps. That would make a great power supply for you to drive your LEDs. Most PC power supplies are not real efficient though.

Tell me more about these LEDs...
Are they individual LEDs or all on one board? What are your plans for these lights? Play lights, or are you going to run them permanently in the grow room?
 
Big Green Thumb

Big Green Thumb

Well-Known Member
Oh, THOSE again! I thought you had some individual LEDs. Go back to Amazon and get that 12 volt power supply we discussed before. Done. Easy.
 
InTheValley

InTheValley

Well-Known Member
Big Green Thumb said:
Oh, THOSE again! I thought you had some individual LEDs. Go back to Amazon and get that 12 volt power supply we discussed before. Done. Easy.
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LOL, oooh, yeah, I got the diodes adhered to the cookie sheet, then got to the cutting wires part, annnnnnnnnnnnd, thats a wrap, LOL.. "NEXTTTTTTT"

So, after I trashed that idea, I soon found something on Ebay "aluminum blank PCBs" and could easiely connect the diodes without wires, for $4.. So, if I ever go down that road to make these again, I have PCB boards to use.

Im just going to make these simple panels with these strips and call it a day. was just looking for something to eat up free time.

I really also wanted to see what 1W diodes do with lenses.

sorry for the confusion, I wonder a bunch at times,..

" Im the wonderer, Yeahhhhh, the wonderer, I rooommmeeee around around around around around""

LOL, sorry, flashback, I used to play the sax.
 
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