Advice about EBgen2 + 3W LED's build and UVB reptile lamp(T5 fixtures) reflector material.

[Planet Tomato]

Hello.

I am putting together a LED grow light, as it stands now it is planned like this:

[The picture is dimensionally accurate, while using 25mm for the EBgen2 width and 3cm diameter for the 3W LED's which are star boards]
The stated 15min before and after sunrise/sunset isn't a sure thing, I will be experimenting to see how short time I need to trigger flowering.

I have 2 * 60cm T5 fixtures(they are actually 57,5cm total length not including the power connector which sticks out a couple of cm if I don't make a custom plug of some sort which I will do) that look like this:

They will probably stick out slightly outside the aluminium sheet that will be used to mount everything onto.
But the reflector are 6cm wide which makes this very difficult to use in a good way on the panel to be built as the above diagram showed, I am also worried about the reflector in that T5 fixture, why would I think that the plastic material in that reflector is any good for reflecting UV light?

While reading about Solacure's products I read that there tubes have an internal reflector to direct the light in one direction, I have also read that aluminium foil is a surprisingly good reflector for UV, if so might I take some aluminium foil and glue it onto the T5 reptile tube to cover 40-50% of the outside circumference of the tube in order to reflect the light downwards towards the plant(s)?

If people where to think or agree that to be a valid way to reflect the UV light then I could simply remove the reflector from my T5 fixtures which would make them only 2,4cm wide which would make it very easy to fit them onto the grow light panel. In that case I might reduce the design to only 2 rows of 3W LED's and eliminate the 3W UVA LED's since I am going to use these reptile lamps which features 14% UVB and 30% UVA.

I'm not entirely sure that I have covered everything I intended to or need to in order to allow people can give advice but anyway(am I alone in being severely confused 24/7 regarding every aspect of life...?).

Any and all inputs are greatly appreciated.
Regards

 

[Planet Tomato]

Or perhaps I could/should get T5 connectors and mount the reptile tubes directly to the aluminium sheet since the bulbs are only 55cm and then put the ballast or whatever is inside the T5 fixture case on the topside of the sheet.

 

[HydroFood]

You going to grow vegetables under them at all? Your handle had me curious.
Which 3w LEDs are you planning?

I am in the process of adding a bunch of Sunplus20 LEDs to one of my Eb2 builds.

And your pic is not dimensionally accurate. 12 Eb2 strips is only 30cm

 

[KrazyG]

You may be better having the UV bulbs on separate hangers to the Ali sheet.
I had to mount mine through a cut out in my Ali sheet because my LEDs were too close and caused a little stress.

 

[Planet Tomato]

By dimensionally accurate I meant that the lines that mark the alu sheet outline is in proportion to those that mark the tent outline which is 60cm.

And as far as I know the EBgen2 series are ether 280mm*24mm, 560mm*24mm or 1120mm*24mm.

I had previously planned on hanging the UV lights on the side, where I will also add(in due time) a couple of EBgen2 560mm or maybe even 1120mm. My tent is 60*60*170cm and I started out having the carbon filter inside the tent but then I built a small 60*60*60cm grow box(wood frame with walls attached with velcro) that I put on top of my tent and routed the air vent straight from the tent into the grow box and moved the filter into the grow box instead, so now i have room to grow really tall plants and as such I want side lighting anyway to make to lower buds of higher quality than they otherwise would.


I have been thinking about how I would evaluate whether or not it would work to glue on alu foil directly to the bulb and the only thing I can think of is getting a UV sensor, read the value from the bulb without any reflector, with the original reflector and then with the glues on alu foil and observe any change in the output value.

@ KrazyG
Do you mean that your LED's caused stress when you moved the grow light close enough to make the UV bulb actually reach the plant?

The grow light I am building will have it's intensity controlled by a microcontroller between about 6% - 100% so I don't think that any such issue should be a problem but I might be wrong(though I can choose whether or not I want to manually dial in the intensity with a potentiometer, or if I shall let the microcontroller decide the intensity based upon a few sensors within the tent, such as air-temp or plant leaf surface temperature which I hope to measure with a MLX90614).

 

[Chip Green]

EBgen2 series are ether 280mm*24mm, 560mm*24mm or 1120mm*24mm

Indubitably

 

[KrazyG]

Do you mean that your LED's caused stress when you moved the grow light close enough to make the UV bulb actually reach the plant?

Yes, I got stress from the LEDs.
I find I can have the UV about 8" from canopy and have no problems but the other bulbs cause leaf cupping and need to be atleast 12" away.

 

[jarvild]

First use the reptile bulbs for UV don't use LED's to make up the UV.
Second is there a reasoning behind you running IR at only pre and post lights on?

 

[jarvild]

That's also a lot of potential light intensity for such a small area.

 

[Planet Tomato]

You going to grow vegetables under them at all? Your handle had me curious.
Which 3w LEDs are you planning?

I might in a few years time, maybe, but my main interest is Sativa.

The eBay seller who I am going to buy from have a range of LED colours and depending on which colour they might be Epileds, Epistar or some Bridgelux LEDs. This is the add.

@ KrazyG
Mounting the UV such as you did would actually be easier than mounting them directly to the alu sheet(which I haven't even decided on how to do), I'm not sure but right now I think I will go with what you suggest and hang the UV from the alu sheet. Probably just with hooks and a small chain so that I can move it up/down.

First use the reptile bulbs for UV don't use LED's to make up the UV.
Second is there a reasoning behind you running IR at only pre and post lights on?

Yes I have ditched the UV LED's.
About the IR and when I will run them, from the reading I have done I am sure that I can use the IR for the purpose of speeding up the conversion of the prf into pr(I think that's what those compounds(or whatever they are, I will be reading about this stuff for some time to come) where called at least) during the time the lights go off and presumably then from pr into prf when the lights come on, but that is where what I know ends. I know that those wavelengths(Deep-red and IR-red) have other impacts on the plant but I am very uncertain what the effects are and I can recall reading post where people say stuff like "running those deep-red LED's all day long would be a mistake" for whatever reason I can't recall.
So I simply need to know/understand more, which means reading more, probably the same stuff I already have read since these subjects contain to much new info for me to digest in one read, then I may very well run them during other times as well, if you like to tell me what effects it would have during other times I am all ears.

That's also a lot of potential light intensity for such a small area.

Yes, well I actually don't know that from experience but from what I have gathered from what others have told me this is a lot of light for my space. But I made a deliberate choice to build a over dimensioned grow light because in the end I would much rather like to have 50W too much that I can't ever utilize than to find that I could have used 50W more, and due to the dimming it will not hurt to have too much light.

First I decided upon 12 EBgen2 560mm, then I decided to add a low number of 660nm and 730nm LED star PCB's, and I also feel I want to be able to try out if it would make any difference to expose the plant to only blue wavelengths during the last 3 days before harvest so I simply filled out the spaces between the red LED's with blue ones which happened to result in 99W IF I would actually push 3W out of each of the 3W LED's(This is all still on the drawing board but I am getting close to implementing it).
If the "blue light treatment" where to have an effect it would simply result in more fragrant buds, from what I have read, and I have only 1 source for this, and another source taking about eliminating all red wavelengths during the last 3 days, but both sources state that these ideas are nether new nor uncommon but I can't find any other instance of it being mentioned online.

 

[Planet Tomato]

I will be controlling every single device in me tent by means of Solid State Relay's controlled by a microcontroller which keeps an accurate account of time with a Real Time Clock(DS3231), so I don't have to be concerned with different kinds of physical timers plugged into the wall, I can easily control which devices(fans, lights, pumps etc.) are on when so if I want to use the IR all day it's done in a few minutes of writing code.
BTW, I hope I will in the end have created a really useful system that I can share the basics of with anyone whom have an interest in automating there system and/or enabling any sort of timing and timing relations one can think of.

I will have have manual switches for controlling every device on a control panel but I am also developing a system to make judgements based upon sensor readings and user-adjusted parameters to run it all, I am also creating a Android app to be used as a user interface to the tent control system, and of course I'll communicate with the system using wifi or bluetooth and data-logging will also be added.

 

[Renfro]

I will be controlling every single device in me tent by means of Solid State Relay's controlled by a microcontroller which keeps an accurate account of time with a Real Time Clock(DS3231), so I don't have to be concerned with different kinds of physical timers plugged into the wall, I can easily control which devices(fans, lights, pumps etc.) are on when so if I want to use the IR all day it's done in a few minutes of writing code.
BTW, I hope I will in the end have created a really useful system that I can share the basics of with anyone whom have an interest in automating there system and/or enabling any sort of timing and timing relations one can think of.

I will have have manual switches for controlling every device on a control panel but I am also developing a system to make judgements based upon sensor readings and user-adjusted parameters to run it all, I am also creating a Android app to be used as a user interface to the tent control system, and of course I'll communicate with the system using wifi or bluetooth and data-logging will also be added.

Id love to have a reliable system that could read plant moisture levels in soil and water plants ass needed. That would be so freaking awesome.

 

[jarvild]

I might in a few years time, maybe, but my main interest is Sativa.

The eBay seller who I am going to buy from have a range of LED colours and depending on which colour they might be Epileds, Epistar or some Bridgelux LEDs. This is the add.

@ KrazyG
Mounting the UV such as you did would actually be easier than mounting them directly to the alu sheet(which I haven't even decided on how to do), I'm not sure but right now I think I will go with what you suggest and hang the UV from the alu sheet. Probably just with hooks and a small chain so that I can move it up/down.


Yes I have ditched the UV LED's.
About the IR and when I will run them, from the reading I have done I am sure that I can use the IR for the purpose of speeding up the conversion of the prf into pr(I think that's what those compounds(or whatever they are, I will be reading about this stuff for some time to come) where called at least) during the time the lights go off and presumably then from pr into prf when the lights come on, but that is where what I know ends. I know that those wavelengths(Deep-red and IR-red) have other impacts on the plant but I am very uncertain what the effects are and I can recall reading post where people say stuff like "running those deep-red LED's all day long would be a mistake" for whatever reason I can't recall.
So I simply need to know/understand more, which means reading more, probably the same stuff I already have read since these subjects contain to much new info for me to digest in one read, then I may very well run them during other times as well, if you like to tell me what effects it would have during other times I am all ears.




Yes, well I actually don't know that from experience but from what I have gathered from what others have told me this is a lot of light for my space. But I made a deliberate choice to build a over dimensioned grow light because in the end I would much rather like to have 50W too much that I can't ever utilize than to find that I could have used 50W more, and due to the dimming it will not hurt to have too much light.

First I decided upon 12 EBgen2 560mm, then I decided to add a low number of 660nm and 730nm LED star PCB's, and I also feel I want to be able to try out if it would make any difference to expose the plant to only blue wavelengths during the last 3 days before harvest so I simply filled out the spaces between the red LED's with blue ones which happened to result in 99W IF I would actually push 3W out of each of the 3W LED's(This is all still on the drawing board but I am getting close to implementing it).
If the "blue light treatment" where to have an effect it would simply result in more fragrant buds, from what I have read, and I have only 1 source for this, and another source taking about eliminating all red wavelengths during the last 3 days, but both sources state that these ideas are nether new nor uncommon but I can't find any other instance of it being mentioned online.

My IR and Far-red stars run the whole 12/12. This is 270 wall watts in a 91 cm x 131 cm area I supplement heavier on the reds.

 

[whytewidow]

Id love to have a reliable system that could read plant moisture levels in soil and water plants ass needed. That would be so freaking awesome.

I'm making plates that run off of weight sensors. Like a limit switch. When the pot gets light it raises just enough to release the limit switch that runs normally closed. So it's open when pots are heavy. As the plant drinks it get lighter raising opening the switch which would be closed in circuit. And can send a warning to let me know when it needs watered. Or even turn on a pump to automatically feed. Then as it feeds the weight presses the sensor back closed opening the circuit.

 

[jarvild]

I'm making plates that run off of weight sensors. Like a limit switch. When the pot gets light it raises just enough to release the limit switch that runs normally closed. So it's open when pots are heavy. As the plant drinks it get lighter raising opening the switch which would be closed in circuit. And can send a warning to let me know when it needs watered. Or even turn on a pump to automatically feed. Then as it feeds the weight presses the sensor back closed opening the circuit.

Seems like it would be a never ending adjustment as plant matter growth would raise the total weight as it grows.

 

[whytewidow]

Seems like it would be a never ending adjustment as plant matter growth would raise the total weight as it grows.

They have pressure sensing adjustment. I'll figure it out.

 

[Renfro]

I'm making plates that run off of weight sensors. Like a limit switch. When the pot gets light it raises just enough to release the limit switch that runs normally closed. So it's open when pots are heavy. As the plant drinks it get lighter raising opening the switch which would be closed in circuit. And can send a warning to let me know when it needs watered. Or even turn on a pump to automatically feed. Then as it feeds the weight presses the sensor back closed opening the circuit.

Thats cool and all, but it wouldn't work for my situation. I hope someone comes up with a reliable moisture level probe.

 

[jarvild]

They have pressure sensing adjustment. I'll figure it out.

Yes, just bringing up some possible scenarios for you to think about as you go. I applaud your energy for experimentation.

You might think about using an ras-pie or other mean to help the curve of plant matter to weight.

 

[whytewidow]

Yes, just bringing up some possible scenarios for you to think about as you go. I applaud your energy for experimentation.

You might think about using an ras-pie or other mean to help the curve of plant matter to weight.

Yeah I'll have to figure out way to adjust by grams per day. Depending on how much it would grow. I imagine the stretch on some will be difficult to dial in. It's just a hobby really. Not set in stone and trying to go into production. Jus something to make it a tad easier on myself. But you're right plant growth would affect tremendously. Especially when flowers start to form.

 

[whytewidow]

Thats cool and all, but it wouldn't work for my situation. I hope someone comes up with a reliable moisture level probe.

Theres several moisture probes that work with rasp-pie or audrino and the like. Simple 3v or 5v setup. Run through a relay or something.