DiY LEDs - How to Power Them
- Thread starter SupraSPL
- Start date
@GBAUTO Thank you for the reply to my post/questions! I think that was the last assurance-check I needed and I submitted a few preliminary orders to source out some materials for my build. Hopefully I can report back in with success 
@TF9 I have begun sourcing the materials and I should have them all delivered over the next few weeks. I'm hoping to complete the build within the next month and I'll do my best to take some pictures of the process.
@TF9 I have begun sourcing the materials and I should have them all delivered over the next few weeks. I'm hoping to complete the build within the next month and I'll do my best to take some pictures of the process.
pop22
Well-Known Member
Most meanwell drivers are both constant current and constant voltage, so no, you don't have to drive the driver to its max. Read the data sheet, it tell you the minimum voltage that it will run as some drivers won't run a single cob
pop22
Well-Known Member
if you need super low profile, you should look into Quantum boards. about 2 inches thick WITH the heatsink! Its basically a cob on a larger platform, better spread, and great specs. I just built a 4 board light:
swiftkillpapa
Well-Known Member
Very nice. What's its coverage?
I have 4x CXB-3590s in series on an HLG-185H-C1400B driver. This morning I noticed that the light was much dimmer than it should be. Looking at the LEDs I saw that one of them had exploded.
Considering that Meanwell drivers are constant current/constant voltage, is it safe to remove the malfunctioning LED and just run the remaining 3 LEDs on this driver? What effect will it have? Will they be running at a higher wattage? Just worried about overheating in that case.
klx
Well-Known Member
That is a constant current driver so yes you can just remove it and run 3 as long as you are within the fV range listed on the driver. I would be looking into why that COB exploded before I did anything though tbh.
Thanks. All I can find is that the max output is 143v. Cannot find a minimum. However, this is apparently a constant current/constant voltage driver, so does that mean the output is always 200w @ 143v? Would that mean that instead driving 4 COBs at ~50w each, it would drive 3 COBs at ~66w each? I believe my heatsinks are rated for about 65w. I could use the dimmer to lower the current however.
Also, pretty hard to say why the COB failed. I would say that either it was faulty, or more likely I may have over tightened the fastener, or not had good contact with the thermal tape/heatsink.
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coreywebster
Well-Known Member
The voltage range on that driver is 71v-143v http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/260/HLG-185H-C-SPEC-806161.pdf
It doesn't share the wattage the way you thought, its constant current so it runs each COB at 1400mA, so if you have 4 cobs it will run them at that current and have a wattage of 195w and have a fv of 140, it will run at 205.26w at the wall due to drivers not been 100% efficient.
Running 3 will just reduce the wattage and forward voltage, 147w on the cobs (154.74w at the wall) and fv of 105. The driver doesn't need to use all the power it can, it has to run within the forward voltage and not over the wattage of the driver.
coreywebster
Well-Known Member
BTW I don't think it would be a good idea to leave your light with a dead chip in series still connected. You would be better to unsolder it and reconnect the wires. If there was a break in the circuit then none of the cobs would light up so its obviously conducting electricity but if its damaged who knows how long it will stay that way.
Right of course. I've already removed it and replaced it with another COB. I'm building another fixture but only have 3 COBs left at the moment so wanted to make sure it would be safe to run only 3 on my driver temporarily. Actually, I was surprised it was actually still emitting some light and not breaking the circuit. Cheers.
Ariesstoner91
New Member
Hello everyone I'm new to the forums and wanted some insight with my build plan I have two spaces one 8x8 flower room and 8x6 veg room
I have 11 foot ceiling. Using cxb3590 20 4K cobs and 5 5k cobs and for the flower room 20 3k cobs and 10 3500k cobs. I'm in need of help choosing between mean well 320-2100 or 240-1400 drivers. Any help would be great and if anyone knows if with setup I can maybe get 60% efficiency? Can I run five cobs on either driver?
I have 11 foot ceiling. Using cxb3590 20 4K cobs and 5 5k cobs and for the flower room 20 3k cobs and 10 3500k cobs. I'm in need of help choosing between mean well 320-2100 or 240-1400 drivers. Any help would be great and if anyone knows if with setup I can maybe get 60% efficiency? Can I run five cobs on either driver?
coreywebster
Well-Known Member
The efficiency will come down to how hard you run them, @ 2100mA they will be around 49% and @ 1400mA 56%, those figures are from the cob calculator and there is some debate on how accurate they are. I will have to look at the driver specs to work out which fits best. But I'm about to go out. You can google the specs for each driver and look at the ranges. Download the diy cob calc from the thread on here and run the numbers to tell you the forward voltages, power consumption and efficiency and then cross reference them to the meanwell pdfs to see how many of each would fit best. The main thing is running the right amount of cobs so the forward voltage and power consumption fit best into the driver specs.
sixstring2112
Well-Known Member
coreywebster
Well-Known Member
You can run 5x cxb3590 on the hlg 240h-c1400 wattage is 250.06w you would be using 244w, voltage is 89-179v you would be using 174v.
With the hlg 320h-c2100b you could only run 4 3590s each driver.
So 30 x cxb3590s @ 1400mA would give you a ppfd of 581 in your 64ft square flower room. That's a bit low, @2100mA you would be getting a ppfd of 793 which is pretty good. To give a comparison, a top end HPS 600w in a 4x4 gives a ppfd of 690.
So you would be lighting your flower room pretty good with the 2100mA set up, Plus your getting the benefits of multi light source and a better spectrum to boot.
For your veg room you would be smashing it with the 1400mA drivers on 25 cobs over 48 square feet.
Since you would need 7.5 x 2100mA drivers for your flower room you could go with 5x 320-2100 for the 3k cobs plus run the 10 3500k cobs on 2 240-1400 drivers, losing some light intensity of course.
Rider509
Well-Known Member
Does my design make sense?
I built a modular system with 4 36V 3500K CXB3590s driven by an HLG-320H-C2100B driver per light bar. Sixteen COBs and four drivers for a system of one COB per ft2 in a 4x4. My thinking was that I could drive a single bar to 320 watts to cover a 2x4 space or dial them down for better efficiency when using all four in a 4x4 space. I'm using 140mm pinned heatsinks from Cutter and when the lights are driven to max the heatsinks are stable at 49 degrees C.
I ask because I see so many four COB 3590 builds using lower amperage drivers.
I built a modular system with 4 36V 3500K CXB3590s driven by an HLG-320H-C2100B driver per light bar. Sixteen COBs and four drivers for a system of one COB per ft2 in a 4x4. My thinking was that I could drive a single bar to 320 watts to cover a 2x4 space or dial them down for better efficiency when using all four in a 4x4 space. I'm using 140mm pinned heatsinks from Cutter and when the lights are driven to max the heatsinks are stable at 49 degrees C.
I ask because I see so many four COB 3590 builds using lower amperage drivers.
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coreywebster
Well-Known Member
That's a breast load of light dude. A whole bag of tits worth. Possibly too many tits in one bag.
There is a point where more light is not producing more bud.
The reason folks run the cxbs at lower amps is for the efficiency, the lower mA the better, but obviously more cobs are needed, although 16 cobs @ 1050mA is plenty so at 2100mA you may well be over egging the pudding. Be interesting to see how it works when you do a crop at half power and a crop at full power ect. Good to have the power if you need it and not use it if you don't want to.
pop22
Well-Known Member
4'x4' Just fired it up yesterday. Will be growing canna with it soon and I'll post a journal.
sixstring2112
Well-Known Member
To answer your first question...nope ,overkill imo.sounds cool on paper.its going to be like running a de lamp in there @1250w which people just dont do.too many ponies not enough track.16 x 36v cobs @ 1750ma would be p l e n t y of light and you will probably want to dim those even.