DIY Questions!

Hey all,

I have been browsing the forums and have gotten bits and pieces of information from various threads. I have used the search function but with little progress. I want to try constructing an LED board, I am hoping it will save some money and plus I am interested in the building aspect. I have seen the Cree xlamp 3070 LEDs but I wasn't sure if that in white light is my best option. I have an available space of 2' wide by 3' deep and 2' high. I like the way the UFO LEDs have purples and blues and would prefer them over white and bright.
I guess I am kind of confused about a few things. Would it be more beneficial to have a couple Cree xlamps (about $37 ea) or a vast array of some cheaper color LED options? Are all LEDs created equal? As in, I understand the light spectrum and that certain colors correspond to certain wavelengths, I also understand that the plants only absorb some wavelengths and some are useless. So would ANY LED (which gives off light in a certain spectrum) work, just not as efficient as others which are designed for the ideal spectrum range?
I have been reading and am interested in efficiency. I have seen some threads saying that on average they are getting .5-.9 grams per watt with HPS, in that same thread they were getting 1 gram per watt with LEDs. I was thinking of purchasing a 600W HPS light, but after reading more on the efficiency of LEDs I have decided to start building from the ground up with efficiency as my motto.
Is it better to have a few high powered LEDs running at like 75% power placed strategically to cover the canopy, or a lot more lower powered LEDs running at say 50-60% power? From my understanding the max rating on an LED should not be used since it will drastically decrease the lifespan of the LED, so running it at about 75% power will improve the lifespan. The higher powered LEDs are quite expensive individually, so using the same amount of money would it be logical to think that getting more lower powered LEDs and placing them all around the grow area would be more beneficial?
I would like suggestions from a few larger LEDs to be soldered together to 300 pieces that need soldered to a board to cheap ($) manufactured panels. What is the best and why? I am an electronic hobbyist and enjoy these DIY type of projects. Can I just say that this involves two of my favorite things in life, electronics and .

Can't wait to hear what everyone has to say!

2 feet of height is going to be the main factor in your design.
I'm thinking multiple 1 watt diodes or Illumitex/BML style; http://www.illumitex.com/illumitex-leds/
Lots of training of the plants too. https://www.rollitup.org/stealth-micro-cab-growing/

Plan your design on exisiting builds see the California Lightworks 200w Solarflare.. http://www.californialightworks.com/Products_SolarFlare.htm
and most makers are looking close at the 5w Cree diode

Alright now how about some homemade options. I am really interested in buying my own LEDs and making my own panel(s). Can I have your suggestions on a range (price range) of different LED combinations?

My favorite DIY led light maker ....http://forum.grasscity.com/do-yourself/845346-d-i-y-l-e-d-easy.html

So you want to play around with LED technology but don't want to fork over the big $$$. Well you have come to the right place!

The Plan
LEDs are not a new technology, but they are new to the growing scene and many have been slow to adopt due to the high cost. The small amount of people using LEDs also contributes to the small amount of information we know about them, so I think it's time to change that! By coming up with a design that was easy to make and much cheaper there should be no excuse to not test your own and see what results you get!


Overview
In order to keep the costs as low as I could I resulted to eBay *cringe* but everything is A-OK as far as I can tell. The basic design will be that we mount the LEDs to the bottom of our heatsink, fans on top of the heatsink, and then mount the driver to its best fit on the heatsink. We will be using the 3Watt LED, although watts aren't a good way to describe LED power. This would be because for an LED to function properly it requires a certain Forward Voltage(vF) and Current(amperage). A 3Watt LED usually just means that it requires about 700ma at whatever the vF for that particular color is. All LEDs even ones that are the same color will require a slightly different vF while they all will require the same 700ma, this is where the driver comes in to play. For LEDs a constant current driver is used so that the current will remain the same in each LED while allowing the voltage to fluctuate to accommodate all the different vF required by your LEDs.

Reasoning
In order for people to switch to a new technology, they need a reason right? Well besides some of the already discussed reasons like lower wattage and lower heat there are a few others. For instance, the typical light is omni directional and even with good reflectors there is going to be some light loss. Well LED's produce light in pretty much one direction, thereby not wasting any watts on areas you don't want covered. Also with a normal light there is a lot of the spectrum that is produced that isn't heavily absorbed by the plants, but LEDs emit light in only a tight range utilizing all the watts more efficiently and allowing a targeted spectrum for certain plants. They are also small in size so this increases the places and arrangements can be put in. And the LED emitters themselves can be relatively cheap and easy to replace if a single unit fails.
Check out this page as well


Parts List:
-LED Driver (Note: You will need 10 LEDs minimum more on that later)
-660nm Deep Red LED
-620-630nm Red-Orange LED
-445nm Blue LED
-460-465nm Blue LED
-12,000K White LED
-LED Optics
-DIY Fan
-Male end two pronged cord
-Heatsink

Tools of the Trade:
-Soldering Iron
-Hot Glue Gun
-Electrical Tape
-Heatshrink

Step by Step:
1.) Gather your parts, for the sake of this tutorial we shall go with a 10 LED setup and use the driver listed. At this point this is when you want to decide how to blend your spectrum I encourage people to play around with the ratio themselves. I used 5 Deep Reds, 2 Red-Orange, 2 Blue(445nm), and 1 Blue(460nm).

2.) Follow this generic wiring diagram for your LEDs. You may need to do a different shape but that isn't important, wiring the LEDs serially is important, this ensures that the current is the same throughout all the LEDs and doesn't overdrive/underdrive any. Attach the LEDs to the heatsink with either thermal tape or whatever is at your disposal. I used hot glue because I will probably be modifying it in some way.


3.) Solder all the wiring for your LEDs together as well as shrink wrapping them afterwards. You should be left with one positive wire and negative wire on two separate LEDs and then proceed to solder that to the respective wires on your driver(LED out). Now if you wanted this is where you would want to add your lenses onto the LEDs to increase penetration while losing a bit of coverage.

4.) Attach your driver to the heatsink in whichever spot will suit your set-up the best, and now take the other two wires hanging from the driver(AC in) and wire them to your 120V standard two pronged cord that plugs into any outlet in the U.S. It doesn't matter which color wire goes to which because Alternating Current isn't flowing in a single direction.

5.) This is where you would attach a fan to the top of your heatsink, but I haven't done so on mine yet. All that is required is this tutorial.

6.) Plug it in and post a grow log! You can see my (Nearly) Finished D.I.Y. L.E.D. at the very bottom. To see how it performs compared to CFLs check out this thread!


I hope this tutorial has enough information in it so that anyone could assemble their own very similar to mine. Anything that you feel is missing or wrong let me know I do a lot of the so I forget little things. Enjoy!

That is exactly what I am talking about! I want to do a project just like that. What do you guys think about this? 30 x 3W red LED (16.29 ea = $49) , 5 x 3W blue LED (9.38 ea = $9.3 for a total of 90 red LED's and 15 blue LED's. 105 LED's 3W each so 310W theoretical, so real power is what 70%-80%? so 310W * (.70 or .80) = 217W to 248W real power? Does this sound like it would be a nice board for an autoflower or two that I have?

Red LED's


Package Type: 3W Bead
Lens: Clear
Wavelength: ~630nm (Red)
Quantity: 10x
Voltage: 2.5V - 3.0V
Current: >700ma
Intensity: 120 LM
Viewing Angle: 140 degrees

Blue LED's


Package Type: 3W Bead
Lens: Clear
Wavelength: ~465nm (Blue)
Quantity: 5x
Voltage: 3.6V - 4.2V
Current: >700ma
Intensity: 80 LM
Viewing Angle: 140 degrees

The total cost for the 105 LED's would be $58.25

apoulin said:

The total cost for the 105 LED's would be $58.25

Click to expand...

I can't think of anything worse than soldering that many LEDs, lol. You must be a glutton for the smell of molten solder. haha.

seriously though, that is a lot of work compared to assembly of a 2-4 cob panel. There's not a lot of love on here for the generic Chinese emitters, most people figure to get only the best if you're putting it together. Lots of live on here for cheap generic drivers - Satisled especially. Do post up your experience if you go generic emitter - always interesting to see what people are doing.



Anyway, before you dive on in, do take a read:

This thread here has a good analysis of the new white cobs - https://www.rollitup.org/led-other-lighting/743645-cree-cxa-analysis.html


my thoughts -

The white LEDs have had the most r&d spending - things have come a long way. I honestly have no idea how the whites versus discrete coloured led is going to pan out - people seem to get decent results with both. But the big high-power cob chips (50-100w in power) only come in white.
Bridgelux are a lot cheaper than cree, so price a build with them too if you're po. You can get 4 bridgelux Vero 18 for $72 which is around 120-240W, depending on how hard you run your setup. And it involves connecting four LEDs.

Alright, what you said does make sense and after reading up a bit on what the 2 Cree 3050's were able to do I think you have me sold on the simplicity and quality of the LED's. You were saying 4 bridgelux Vero 18 for $72 would give me 120-240W. Were these the LED's you were talking about? I also looked up the Cree 3050's and they are $36 each, so 2 of those gives me $72 as well. If you had your choice would you go with the 4 bridgelux or the 2 Cree 3050's?

Whatever is best for you bro. Lol, trite but true. I honestly haven't compared those two models.

Just take a look at the canopy you want to light, then roughly figure out now many ballpark watts you want to try and pump into it.

Go check out the data sheets on the manufacturer website - it'll have all the graphs for different drive currents and the full range of emitters. You can use them to understand how the LED will perform running off the outputs from a couple of drivers you think might work at Satisled. That CXA analysis thread has scored these emitters efficiency - letting you compare 100W of some Cree CXA light v 100W of Bridelux light. Keep in mind the harder you run a LED the more waste it produces - more efficient and cooler to run leds with lower current and make up the difference by using more leds overall.

Seriously, the data sheets for both those models are real easy to understand and are super useful for planning this stuff. Cooling and drivers add to the cost (even if you're getting the budget kind) - something to keep in mind as your planned emitter numbers increase.

I have two bridgelux in a 2.5 square foot micro cab. Not quite enough light spread - I'm going to need to add more emitter sources I think.

Search for these on here, not google:

And I will dig up links:

Astir panels [do use generic Chinese diodes]
stardustsailor
picograv
gaius
chronikool
supraSPL
Mr. Flux
guod

All of those members have top quality DIY builds and comments all over the board. I would recommend trying to soak up as much as possible from those members writings/photo's and then think about what build you might want!

Here is a comparison of cost vs efficiency for Vero29 CXA3050 and CXA3070. The CXA3070 is cheapest and most efficient, but the Vero and CXA3050 offer more color temps.



So for example if you are planning on building a 39% efficient lamp, the CXA3070 can do it for $1.13/W, the CXA3050 is $1.57/W and the Vero29 is $2.17/W. This chart also tells you what current you have to run at to achieve that level of efficiency so you know what driver to get. The Vero would be .7A, the CXA3050 would be .7A and the CXA3070 would be 1A.

Another thing to notice on the chart is that as you run each LED harder, the cost savings decreases quite a bit (because of reduced efficiency). Running them hard also decreases the cost savings in another way, you need more drivers and more heatsinks to get the same job done.