Alibaba COBS and LED

Muskegman

Muskegman

Well-Known Member
anyone tried out any of the cree3590 COBs from Alibaba? They are way cheap and seem like a scam lol anyone have good experiences and are they the real deal? I’m specifically looking at the 100watt plug and play I see on there. WAY cheaper than if I were to buy it from rapidled or anywhere else.
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Muskegman said:
$87 each. Minimum 1 per orderView attachment 4289910
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Before you go and buy those cobs a couple of things:
- Cree isnt really considered top dogs of cobs anymore, especially at 100w each. Vero or citizen would be better for high watt application.
- depending on your space boards might be a much better option. And shopping for them on alibaba gives you a lot of great options. Have a look in the chinese knock of board thread for more info. We run FoTop boards: 800 samsung diodes at 75ish $ per board, you can run it up to 200w with no heatsink and it has a nice 3x1 foot form-factor. Just pay some taxes, shipping and powersupply and your done. Im fairly convinced you could get something better for the price theyre charging. Only real upside on these cobs is that they are nice for uneven cannopies.
 
diggs99

diggs99

Well-Known Member
Rocket Soul said:
Before you go and buy those cobs a couple of things:
- Cree isnt really considered top dogs of cobs anymore, especially at 100w each. Vero or citizen would be better for high watt application.
- depending on your space boards might be a much better option. And shopping for them on alibaba gives you a lot of great options. Have a look in the chinese knock of board thread for more info. We run FoTop boards: 800 samsung diodes at 75ish $ per board, you can run it up to 200w with no heatsink and it has a nice 3x1 foot form-factor. Just pay some taxes, shipping and powersupply and your done. Im fairly convinced you could get something better for the price theyre charging. Only real upside on these cobs is that they are nice for uneven cannopies.
Click to expand...

Do you have any links to the boards your talking about?

I'm interested for sure
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Reading advice:
https://www.rollitup.org/t/the-chinese-quantum-board-knock-off-builds.971560/
Loads of different alibaba builds around here

https://www.rollitup.org/t/diy-fotop-grow-board-280x900x2-0mm-l29-52-xw9-18.960546/
moflos original thread on the fotops, maybe not completely up to date anymore.

My contact at Meijiu - Rita
[email protected]
I found them to be an ok supplier. Dont expect them to be HLG quality but defo good enough for the $, at least S5 bin. Cant quite find the link now.
The way i use these is by running them comparably soft, around nominal or about 150w max per 800 board which means running them about twice as soft as HLG run their diodes. This means you more or less make up for whatever efficiency you gain by using top of the line diodes, but it also comes with more benefits:
- no heatsink necesary, save on shipping.
- much better spread and lower hanging height.
- the cheaper price means that you can make designs that would be too expensive with HLG boards, it opens doors to new ways of lighting your cannopy.

Negative: connectors are a bit cheapish, be carefull with them. As they are china boards they wont pass inspection if youre rhnnjng a legal comercial grow.

My goto advice for large open space grows, based on a 4x4 foot print:
3 Fotops on a hlg480-48 makes a 4 foot wide and 3 foot long mega board, fit 1 of them for each 3.5- 4 foot section.
 
OLD MOTHER SATIVA

OLD MOTHER SATIVA

Well-Known Member
Rocket
if you are running these parallel do you notice that with so many diodes they get less bright at the eand of the line..?

if i had some i think i would run them series ..but its just what i have seen from using panels with a lot of diodes
 
Coalcat

Coalcat

Well-Known Member
Rocket Soul said:
Before you go and buy those cobs a couple of things:
- Cree isnt really considered top dogs of cobs anymore, especially at 100w each. Vero or citizen would be better for high watt application.
- depending on your space boards might be a much better option. And shopping for them on alibaba gives you a lot of great options. Have a look in the chinese knock of board thread for more info. We run FoTop boards: 800 samsung diodes at 75ish $ per board, you can run it up to 200w with no heatsink and it has a nice 3x1 foot form-factor. Just pay some taxes, shipping and powersupply and your done. Im fairly convinced you could get something better for the price theyre charging. Only real upside on these cobs is that they are nice for uneven cannopies.
Click to expand...
How much did they get you for shipping?
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
OLD MOTHER SATIVA said:
Rocket
if you are running these parallel do you notice that with so many diodes they get less bright at the eand of the line..?

if i had some i think i would run them series ..but its just what i have seen from using panels with a lot of diodes
Click to expand...
I dont daisychain for parallel, i wago. For this setup a 4way wago works fine. I also did 5 boards + 3 drivers on a 8 way wago. Works nice, you control light levels by just adding and subtracting drivers. I saw some slight flickering once with 3 drivers but fine after reconnecting the driver. Just one of those things...

Im surprised you havent tried these ones, your thinking about lighting was what made me try these
Coalcat said:
How much did they get you for shipping?
Click to expand...
In Eurolandia it was around 100 for the package. The shipping is not based on weight, its based on size so you get similar shipping on 1 to 6 boards. After 6 boards its another package another 100ish. But if you go with lm561c i think the boards are around 75 each so still very viable. The thing is that with the strategy of trying to almost completly cover your cannopy with boards you can pretty much dial in your ppfd to whatever you want by raising or lowering your fixture. Doesnt matter if you get lm301b cause the difference is just an inch and lm301b is almost double the price. Also with this kinda fixture the drop off in ppfd in depth is very low. But drop off on the sides is steeper, try to cover your cannopy with board to avoid it. Thx to OMS for these insights...
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Fishbulb said:
I bought to big panels for a 600watt build
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I got one of them for testing it out. But generally i go for straight lm561cs instead of these lm301b + 660nm epis. Pricewise (but also not perfectly convinced about those epi-reds) i think its more benefit to get 2 cheaper boards and drive them upto 150w each than getting 1 board with heatsink and driving it to around 300w. For red supplement i go for better brand diodes, cree or osram and put them on a separate driver.
If youre space limited in can see these ones as better.

Edit: this discussion is getting further and further away from the original thread subject and out of respect for OP im not posting anymore about these boards here, hit me up on the china knock-off qb thread and ill answer anything.
 
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OLD MOTHER SATIVA

OLD MOTHER SATIVA

Well-Known Member
Rocket Soul said:
I dont daisychain for parallel, i wago. For this setup a 4way wago works fine. I also did 5 boards + 3 drivers on a 8 way wago. Works nice, you control light levels by just adding and subtracting drivers. I saw some slight flickering once with 3 drivers but fine after reconnecting the driver. Just one of those things...

Im surprised you havent tried these ones, your thinking about lighting was what made me try these

In Eurolandia it was around 100 for the package. The shipping is not based on weight, its based on size so you get similar shipping on 1 to 6 boards. After 6 boards its another package another 100ish. But if you go with lm561c i think the boards are around 75 each so still very viable. The thing is that with the strategy of trying to almost completly cover your cannopy with boards you can pretty much dial in your ppfd to whatever you want by raising or lowering your fixture. Doesnt matter if you get lm301b cause the difference is just an inch and lm301b is almost double the price. Also with this kinda fixture the drop off in ppfd in depth is very low. But drop off on the sides is steeper, try to cover your cannopy with board to avoid it. Thx to OMS for these insights...
Click to expand...
you may have missed what i said..wagos..got em it not relevant to my question

i mean ONE of those high diode boards may have too many to adequately power parallel and have you tried series,,

ps i like the design and may get some..just my kinda light coverage
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
OLD MOTHER SATIVA said:
you may have missed what i said..wagos..got em it not relevant to my question

i mean ONE of those high diode boards may have too many to adequately power parallel and have you tried series,,

ps i like the design and may get some..just my kinda light coverage
Click to expand...
ok, what you mean is some diodes in the board being dimmer, sorta in the end of the chain? nope. if so, im not sure that a cc driver would change anything, the board architecture is still going to be the same: 50 strings of 16 diodes for 48 V. if it was 16 strings of 50 i could see that happen. but im no engineer.
 
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