DiY LEDs - How to Power Them

Rider509

Rider509

Well-Known Member
coreywebster said:
Good to have the power if you need it and not use it if you don't want to.
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That was the thought. 2100ma is still way under the design specs for the 3590 and allows for driving each of the four COBs/driver to 80W for a system total of 320W. Driver efficiency increases at a 70% to 80% load and only drops 1% at a 50% load (1050ma).

I thought maybe I was missing something since so many DIYers and manufacturers run the same four COBs with lower amperage drivers.
It has made me wonder what design criteria led to those choices and if I missed the boat somewhere.
 
Rider509

Rider509

Well-Known Member
sixstring2112 said:
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.
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I'm running some at 40W/COB (@1050ma?) over transitioning plants and have an even 40K lux spread. Canopy temps are +/-70F.
Others I'm running at 80W/COB (@2100ma) over fully flowering plants and have an even 70K lux spread. Canopy is +/- 76F.
Overkill? I'm new to LED so I don't know. No light bleaching though, which I heard was a possibility. I don't have a PAR meter but from rough calculations I'm near 640 and 1100ppfd.
 
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sixstring2112

sixstring2112

Well-Known Member
Im running Cree 3590 @ 34-35w per cob (1050ma) over 5 foot tall plants in flower with most fixtures @ 11 inch spacing some being as far as 14 inches.
I also have fixtures at 50w ,62w and 75w same cobs,i.just dont see the advantages of anything over 50w in my setup.
 
A

Ariesstoner91

New Member
coreywebster said:
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.
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I believe you had a mixup my veg rooms has 30 4K cobs and 5 5k cobs 36v my flower room has 20 3k cobs and 10 3500k cobs. So I did little bit of research and came up with this for veg room mean well hlg 320- 2100 for 5k cobs and 6 240-1400 for 4K cobs. 5 320-1750 for 3k 2 320-1400 for 3500k. Just realized had wrong numbers in original post. I'm shooting for 820-950ppfd for each room. Anyone running similar setup?
 
Rider509

Rider509

Well-Known Member
Ariesstoner91 said:
...Mean well hlg 320- 2100 for (5) 5k cobs
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5x36V=180V. The 320H-C2100 won't run five 3590s. The 1750 would be a good fit.
HLG320x.jpg

For the veg room you'll be running five 5Ks, and six systems of five 4Ks. Each of those systems would run on a 320-1750B and allow you to dim to better efficiency.
For the flower room you could also run groups of 5 COBs on the 1750s or go with four COBs per group and run the 2100s.
Both the drivers and COBs run more efficiently when dimmed 70 to 80%.
You should be able to negotiate a killer bulk discount.
 
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K

Krynn

Well-Known Member
Hi all, finally decided for this model to run 12 at 1050mA, is the best way?

bxrc-35e10k0-b-73SE

What driver would be better for this config?

Thanks!
 
BostonPuff

BostonPuff

Member
whats up guys, i was planning to do a roleadro blurple conversion to cobs, but thinking i may just jump in and do a straight DIY build...

im a tad limited to this site:

http://www.digikey.de/en

as I have not found many others that carry most or all of the products needed to complete a build.. but I still need some help and recommendations planning.

Will be using a 4x4 tent set up, and not sure how many of which Chip to use. Plan on using the light for both veg and flower, so 3500k most likely, I think the components are somewhat more expensive here in Germany then you guys in the states, but I pay an additional 20% on orders coming from outside the EU.

so need some recommendations for which chip, have 0 experience with DIY lighting, so the simpler the better, but I may have access to have a master electrician help me with the build.

any info would be appreciated guys, was looking at CXB3590s but im not sure if something newer and more efficient is out already.

Cheers,
Joe
 
Rider509

Rider509

Well-Known Member
Krynn said:
Hi all, finally decided for this model to run 12 at 1050mA, is the best way?

bxrc-35e10k0-b-73SE

What driver would be better for this config?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Sorry for the delay in responding. Running 6 of those Vero COBs on a 1050mA driver would give you about 50W per COB, so that works out well. To get up to 70W each you'd have to run groups of four on a 1400mA driver.
 
GBAUTO

GBAUTO

Well-Known Member
BostonPuff said:
whats up guys, i was planning to do a roleadro blurple conversion to cobs, but thinking i may just jump in and do a straight DIY build...

im a tad limited to this site:

http://www.digikey.de/en

as I have not found many others that carry most or all of the products needed to complete a build.. but I still need some help and recommendations planning.

Will be using a 4x4 tent set up, and not sure how many of which Chip to use. Plan on using the light for both veg and flower, so 3500k most likely, I think the components are somewhat more expensive here in Germany then you guys in the states, but I pay an additional 20% on orders coming from outside the EU.

so need some recommendations for which chip, have 0 experience with DIY lighting, so the simpler the better, but I may have access to have a master electrician help me with the build.

any info would be appreciated guys, was looking at CXB3590s but im not sure if something newer and more efficient is out already.

Cheers,
Joe
Click to expand...
When I started to investigate how to build these things, I looked really closely at the CXB's until I started to read about the newest version of the Vero's or the Citizen arrays. One of the drawbacks of technology advance is becoming obsolete, virtually overnight. I ended up using the Vero SE because they were about 50% cheaper than the CXB and had better numbers-ain't progress wonderful...they all hook up the same so find the driver you want to use and fit the chips to that.
 
shiva71

shiva71

Well-Known Member
GBAUTO said:
When I started to investigate how to build these things, I looked really closely at the CXB's until I started to read about the newest version of the Vero's or the Citizen arrays. One of the drawbacks of technology advance is becoming obsolete, virtually overnight. I ended up using the Vero SE because they were about 50% cheaper than the CXB and had better numbers-ain't progress wonderful...they all hook up the same so find the driver you want to use and fit the chips to that.
Click to expand...
Gbauto, Im curious about Cree alternatives, could you please provide links to the Vero/Citizen cobs you mentioned? How many mA are you pumping through them?
Cheers!!
 
GBAUTO

GBAUTO

Well-Known Member
I use the Vero 29SE(36v) versions with a Meanwell 'B' type dimming driver-4 arrays/driver so it can do up to 320w/bar. I run them up to 2100 mA on my configuration. I know that it's possible to get better efficacy under-driving the arrays-that's why I dim when I don't need the penetration/best of both worlds for me.
 
shiva71

shiva71

Well-Known Member
Cheers GB, much appreciated. Just had a look at the Kingbrite page and wow, there's a lot of different cobs...are people going for the 3 - 3500k range? What about CRI? I have built a nice small set up with 4 cxa2530s (fasttech have them super cheap at $10 a pop) which works well but still have a LOT to learn! Cheers :)
 
CobKits

CobKits

Well-Known Member
DA has a the Dali dimming interface i beleive

ELGs only run efficiently on 240V, are derated for 120V input
 
GBAUTO

GBAUTO

Well-Known Member
KonopCh said:
What means that? It's still good for 6x 1212 or I would need something else with that driver?
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What it means is that the driver can only produce ~180 watts when supplied with under 180v A/C. 180w @1.05A=171V forward voltage the driver can supply @120VAC vs 228V@ 220VAC. So the short answer is-it depends. If you have 220AC it will work-if you have 120VAC, it wont.
 
KonopCh

KonopCh

Well-Known Member
GBAUTO said:
What it means is that the driver can only produce ~180 watts when supplied with under 180v A/C. 180w @1.05A=171V forward voltage the driver can supply @120VAC vs 228V@ 220VAC. So the short answer is-it depends. If you have 220AC it will work-if you have 120VAC, it wont.
Click to expand...
I live in EU, I think we have 230V at wall. Correct?
 
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