"Home made" LED grow lights...

MajorCoco

Well-Known Member
What sizes pots are those...look like 1 gallon or less.
The littlest one is in a 7.5 litre pot. Too small for a big yield I know, but I have very limited height, and hadn't grown this strain before, so it's better that they're too small than too big.

The larger ones are in 10l pots.
 

MajorCoco

Well-Known Member
Haven't updated for a while, as I've been bed-bound for the past 2 weeks. A drinking injury which turned bad, and I'm now probably going to be suffering for the next few weeks more. So my girls have been left pretty much untended for 2 weeks, with just a bit of water here and there. They have suffered a little, but they're doing ok.

I actually think that there may be longer to go than expected. I think the amber I'm seeing is a false positive, so I'm leaving them all at least another week more, probably two for the largest, which are still sending out foxtails and new pistils.

I picked a few small buds a week ago, but after trying a few taster buds and getting nothing off them at all I definitely thought that more time was needed. I probably dried them all a bit too quickly, but I should still have got something.
I've got a few small buds left that have been hanging for 5 days but are still pretty wet. Even though the test buds are tiny, they're very dense. I've got some room temp quick dry, which is nearly ready to test. But I reckon they were just picked way too early to be potent.

The bud in the last pic is from the plant in the left back corner, which was vegged for only 3 weeks, so has fewer branches, but has some decent looking buds fattening up now...

IMG_1331.jpgIMG_1329.jpgIMG_1328.jpg
IMG_1330.jpg
 

PSUAGRO.

Well-Known Member
Looking good brother cocco.............started to flush??..........free smoke coming your way soon grower:leaf:
 

MajorCoco

Well-Known Member
Looking good brother cocco.............started to flush??..........free smoke coming your way soon grower:leaf:
Cheers bud! It's been a long slow wait, but I'm happy to wait that little bit longer to do it right!!

Flushing-wise...I was wondering about that. Yesterday I gave them a soak in a very mild worm tea, and I was thinking I might still give them one more before the end. With a mild organic fertiliser like that I'm not even sure a flush is needed is it? I plan to pull the smallest one a week before the others without any flush, but flush the others for a week. That way I'll be able to test if I can taste or see anything nasty when I burn the one cut sooner.
 

MajorCoco

Well-Known Member
Not really much of an update for you, but I still haven't chopped yet, so not much new progress to report.

What I can report is that the test buds off the smallest and frostiest have so far been very disappointing, so I'm starting to think that it looks better than it is. The last tester was taken 2 days ago (59 days into 12/12) and I should have got something off it...!! :(

Although I'm not going to be starting straight away, I have started thinking about what beans to try next. Does anyone have any comment, positive or negative about the following strains..?
- AK47 - Serious Seeds
- Diesel - Dinafem
- Chernobyl - TGA Subcool
- Hashplant Haze - DNA genetics
- Lemon OG Kush - DNA Genetics
- Sweet Deep Graperuit - Dinafem (1 regular seed only)

Was trying to get NL#5xHaze, but I couldn't find anywhere with decent genetics in stock..I also have a few random mostly indica seeds which I bought from Sensi back in 2003, some of which may still be viable. (I got a great G13 Mr Nice plant out of them when I grew them back in 03! There could be some other great genetics in there)
My plan next time is for one Indica dom plant and 2 sativa dom plants...
 

Endur0xX

Well-Known Member
I love grapefruit pot, I had a very successful run a grapefruit strain and it's been one of my best smoke ever
 

Gastanker

Well-Known Member
I'm a believer in DNA but I personally might look for a keeper Mr Nice. Damn do I miss my Mr Nice cuts.
 

MajorCoco

Well-Known Member
I'm a believer in DNA but I personally might look for a keeper Mr Nice. Damn do I miss my Mr Nice cuts.
Looks like the Chernobyls and Lemon OG might get a run at some point then. :)
I had heard good things about the other breeders too, but everyone just seems to be most enthusiastic about TGA, and the lemon OG is a bit of an unknown which I'm just dying to try.

The NL5 x Haze I wanted was the shantibaba version from mr Nice, but they were out...sadly, I do like the classics too!
 

Rasser

Active Member
MajorCoco
Ideas on building a cheap 100W current-control LED driver would be welcome.


Don't know if this is beyond what effort you are planning to put into this but I think it's a really cheap and interesting way of controlling a serious amount of power LED's.

Demo on a PC controlled LED dimmer.
https://www.rollitup.org/led-other-lighting/534724-how-do-you-install-50w.html#post7554388

In this thread: https://www.rollitup.org/led-other-lighting/535438-apollo-6-photon-90-look.html
I wrote:
"I think I will use 3 PC PSU with there 12V 32A each connected i series to get 36V and 32A
from a unheard of cheap price, my local HW pc shop take 32$ for a 420W 120mm silent fan PSU,
so thats 96$ for a 1100 watt LED driver"


A bit over kill for "only" 100 watt, but if both LED is running in parallel then using 200W from 3 PC PSU's don't seams like overkill at least in my book.

The Velleman 8055 board has 2 PWM outputs and up to 4 board can be connected to a PC and interfaced with.

The PC PSU could be used as a 36V 32A DC power base, supplying different kinds of loads controlled by windows software
off curse some kind of protection is required so a windows crash doesn't results in a burned off 60£ LED array.
 

Rasser

Active Member
I was just looking at what amps a 640 Watt PC PSU can deliver, and it looks like it has 4 rails of 12V with 18A each
So that is 72 amps connected together and with 3 PSU we get 36V
36V * 72A = 2592 watt - but 3*650 = 1950W
So it's properly not designed for that kind of punishment on the 12 volt rails only
but ~1950 Watt of 36V DC for £75 is so ridiculous cheap, when you know what that kind of DC power cost

1200 Watt of 48V DC on faranell
AC DC FRONT END, 1200W 48VDC - £690,-

http://dk.farnell.com/ge-energy/car1248fpbc-z01a/ac-dc-front-end-1200w-48vdc/dp/2076839?in_merch=New Products&in_merch=Nye produkter&MER=i-9b10-00002068

PSU, ENCLOSED, 36V, 29A, 1055W - £650,-
http://dk.farnell.com/tdk-lambda/hws1000-36/psu-enclosed-36v-29a-1055w/dp/1574481
 

MajorCoco

Well-Known Member
Hey Rasser. That looks like some serious power. I did see that PWM comment on your thread, but it looked a bit advanced for me...I'm not to worried about dimming my LEDs at the moment. I always need more watts, not less. So I didn't look into it too closely..

How do PC power supplies limit the power they put out? I've been told that LEDs need to have current controlled drivers, and I'm not very good at electronics...the reasons for avoiding voltage controlled power seem pretty solid though. Do you know about that and whether all PC power supplies would work? You sound like someone who knows about electronics!!
 

bassclef

Active Member
Hey Rasser. That looks like some serious power. I did see that PWM comment on your thread, but it looked a bit advanced for me...I'm not to worried about dimming my LEDs at the moment. I always need more watts, not less. So I didn't look into it too closely..

How do PC power supplies limit the power they put out? I've been told that LEDs need to have current controlled drivers, and I'm not very good at electronics...the reasons for avoiding voltage controlled power seem pretty solid though. Do you know about that and whether all PC power supplies would work? You sound like someone who knows about electronics!!
I would not recommend driving LEDs with PC power supplies. I looked into it before building mine and it was just too much of a hassle. You only have a few rails of 12V which would only drive 3-4 lights each. Also you have to install a voltage regulator as LEDs are current controlled devices. Too much current will fry them real fast, generally a PC motherboard does all that work. I think. Anyway it's not a good idea unless you really know your stuff.

If you're building LEDs I recommend Meanwell drivers. They have plenty (dimmable & non dimmable) all the way up to 48V at a variety of currents. You can also run strings in parallel to half the current. They are rock solid with overvoltage protection using zener diodes. And they're cheap.
 
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