Chronikool’z LED + Organic + SOG + Party cup perpetual ‘boxes of fun’ grow!™

those are just wicked...

There was a gap...so more LED's had to be added...

They blend in with the whites well...so i can still see whats going on with the plants....didnt like the idea of pinking it out...

Chronikool's Floodlight Pontoon?

HA! Yeah....hope Indagrow dont sue me.....

hey chron,

you are walking on thin ice with 10 leds on that driver.
if you have a voltmeter check the voltage over all leds.
reading ~ 24V will be OK. trouble starts near 26V.

Oh yip....can i somehow check with a multimeter?

Chronikool said:

Oh yip....can i somehow check with a multimeter?

Click to expand...

yes, switch to VDC and you have a voltmeter
set it to something greater then 26V most cheap multis have ranges like 2V; 20V; 200V
200V is right here.

That makes sense..... (My brain has melted...may have been those shroomz i took earlier... )

More silly questions...do i take the reading(s) with the lights going? (plugged in)?

Chronikool said:

That makes sense..... (My brain has melted...may have been those shroomz i took earlier... )

More silly questions...do i take the reading(s) with the lights going? (plugged in)?

Click to expand...

Yes ....
CC driver will "read" the voltage drop and adjust it's voltage output in order for current to remain constant .

Place multimeters black probe to led driver ( - ) output and the red probe on the (+) led driver output ..
(mind the right connection of probes onto the multimeter ! )

Voltage is measured at parallel connection of multimeter's probes with the circuit-in-test .Always .
...

Then see the reading ....
Hope everything is going to be ok ...
Else ......

...... May Guod be with you !



Edit : I'm guessing you're gettin' the 10 leds to work ,because they get to heat-up,
pretty quick -this aint cooling you have there ...But also those are tough asian leds - ....
So their total Vf drops pretty much .....And falls within driver's abilities ....
Maybe..
But hey ! They do work ! But better to "examine" it a bit deeper .....
Just to make sure !

More silly questions...do i take the reading(s) with the lights going? (plugged in)?

Click to expand...

lol, of course if the light is not on you will read 0V.

also if you test the driver without leds you will read a voltage slightly above 26V.
normally 10-15% more then the max. Voltage of the driver.

Thanks Team.....I will check tomorrow...lights out in a bit....

Its amazing how much this grow has taught me...and continues to do so....the road is long...

So, do you play it safe and get a different power supply for the 10x reds? or knock it down to 8x red until you have a "safe" power supply to run the 10?

I'll probably just take 1 off (so have 9) if the diagnosis comes back that im running at maximum voltage...no biggie...

let us go a little bit deeper into driving leds with constant current drivers...

drivers of this kind have a working range, for this driver we see a min. voltage of 17V and a max Voltage of 26V.
leds on the other side have a Voltage drop called Vf* which depends on the current and temperatur.
the influence of the temperatur is about -8mV per 1°C.
If a led starts with a Vf of 2.4V at Room-temp.and heats up 20°C over it,
then the vf is now 2.24V.
for the current we have the following numbers
at 350mA the Vf of a red Leds is about 2.2V, at 700mA about 2.4V.
but there are also some on the market that needs higher voltage, mostly chinese ones.... weak ones or second choice in my êyes.

with all this numbers let as do an example with some weak ones
Vf for each red led is 2.6V at room temp, 10 of them 26V.
we are at the limit of the driver!, but with a little more Temp.(+20°C) we need only 22.4V and the drivers works as he should.

with 9 Leds each at 2.6V we need 23.6V and we are always in the working range of this driver.

*forward Voltage

weak ones or second choice in my êyes.

True ...But still they do the job ...At least for their price ...
( Never buy Asians,that cost more than $ 0.8 - 1 EACH...
It's a steal ...)

So lights on....multimeter in hand....got a reading of 24.8v...so i think im good...Thanks to Guod and Stardust on teaching me on how to use my multimeter properly.

I also took down my powermeter to see what my flowering enclosure was pulling...230watts over 45 plants...hahahaha....soundz impressive!

This number should fall as i replace 3 of my floods with the Crees XPG's.....progress....

Thought i would update how the plants are responding to the: Cree XPG panel....

Well after a week under the XPG's i would have to say that these 9 plants look the best out of any that have passed under the 'weeks 2-4' section.

These are currently 22 days into 12/12




Good Bud site formations

Sorry about the crappy photos....

Looking good!

Thats bad ass!!!

my XPGs should get here tomorrow. I'm intending to run them @ 900ma and am thinking of slapping 1 X Cree xp-e Red and 2 X rebel 660nm on the remaining lip of the Arctic 11 Plus CPU cooler and run them on a separate 700ma driver. Ya ya, I'm sure it's a bad idea, but don't we like to do that which we are not supposed to do? The heatsink/fan is rated to cool 100W CPU (to what temp I'm not sure) and I'll likely only be around 50W of LED.