First time grower experimenting with cheap LEDs
- Thread starter Panelata
- Start date
heckler73
Well-Known Member
Yup... it's working now... and
using the empty 18yr Glenfiddich... I've used something similar for reference before. But nowhere near as expensive.
SnotBoogie
Well-Known Member
Heckler, LOL om nom nom
Looks damn good for the lights it was under panelata, Not sure you'll pull 2oz off the THC bomb though.
Looks damn good for the lights it was under panelata, Not sure you'll pull 2oz off the THC bomb though.
caretak3r
Well-Known Member
Chronikool
Well-Known Member
Hey Panelata.....havent seen you round for a while....would love to see some progress on these SMD panels....and what you are doing now... 
Hi folks, just getting into the grow your own fan club, after much research, I seem to lean towards the fact that Leds offer the best conditions for optimal plant growth without too much wasted spectrum.
I am currently 10 days into a grow,as I said its my first ever ,hoping to gain some knowledge ,but also hoping I can actually see my babies all the way through.
I have decided to build a very rustic LED grow light , using some cheap LED strips (the kind people would use on Xmas trees and the like) They are SMD 5050 strips, which come in rolls of 300 lights (5 metres), I bought 2 Red and 1 Blue and broke the roll down into smaller manageable strips which I could lay out on a surface which would make the panel.
View attachment 2478985View attachment 2478986View attachment 2478987View attachment 2478988
10 days into the grow and plants are looking good, I have 7 plants in total , and noticed some bleaching on 3 of the taller ones, so I have moved the panel to 2 feet above canopy.
In total these leds (about 1000 of them ,I threw a couple of whites purely for me to be able to monitor the plants better) draw 8.5 amps at 12v meaning about 104Watts, I am not concerned with lumens being lower than HPS and MH lights , because what really matters to plants is PAR ,and lumens are just brightness perceived by the human eye. A classic example is right here on this panel, the few white leds you see are in actual fact blue leds with a lens thats covered in a compound that turns that blue into white, yet the specs state that each blue LED emits only 4 lumens, but the white LED emits 20 lumens, so lumens are irrelevant really.
One of plants that I believe to be showing early signs of LED bleaching
View attachment 2479014
Anyways , I have another 6 rolls of these LEDs which will make a total in excess of 250 watts which I hope to assemble a little later as plants grow in order to accommodate their needs.
I know this is kind of a long shot, but from what I have researched on plant photosynthesis , I have no reason to doubt that this will work just fine and the myth that you need to spend ridiculous amounts of money on lighting is overated.
So here goes the beginning of my learning curve and hopefully others can also learn a thing or 2 as well , I plan to experiment later doing controlled tests with plants under different ratios of blue to red ,but for now I am going with 2R:1B.
Heat produced is mainly from resistors and very minimal, a single pc fan blowing onto the lights takes care of any heat.
I will be upgrading the cupboard I am using for this little project later, but for now the specs are :
Converted cupboard measuring in feet W:L:H 2:3:6
Lined with cheap emergency blanket reflective material , I will replace this with light proof white pvc in the next few days
Intake and extract fans will be 3 120mm pc fans
Will build some kind of DIY contraption to deal with odors when the time comes , but no filters for now.
Oh and lights are on a 20/4 schedule, I have 3 autos in there so need to give them as much as possible.
Seedlings are :
3 Barneys farm Pinneaple Express auto fem
2 THC BOMB
2 Slesstack x Skunk#1
All 7 germinated simultaneously 2 days after being soaked in warm water for 24 hrs and then planted directly into soil
Anyways here's hoping this does actually work lol.
Hi There!
First time grower here. I know this is an older thread, but I'm trying something similar and having a little bit of difficulty with the wiring. Couple of questions:
Did you wire the blue and red strips together? If so, did you do parallel connections (+ to + and - to -) or series connections (- to +)?
What voltage power supply(s) did you use?
Thanks for any help!
you are doing it wrong, side lighting needs to come from next to the primary light source. you don't want multiple light sources ESPECIALLY if you're planning SCROG bc you want your plants to grow straight up. So ditch out the cash and get a decent LED light like a K5 or something. so you have one primary light source.
and if you want to add supplemental lighting, i recommend 2 t5's on each side of the k5 or 2 UFO LED grow lights on each side of the k5 (either at the SAME height as the k5)
and if you want to add supplemental lighting, i recommend 2 t5's on each side of the k5 or 2 UFO LED grow lights on each side of the k5 (either at the SAME height as the k5)
JorgeGonzales
Well-Known Member
PuffnDragon
Member
How are the plants growing under the 5050s? I'm planning the same setup once I get a home grow application complete. Do you know what the spectrum nm of your red/blue lights is? Have you used a PAR meter on your setup? I'm not 100% sure if this is better, but I'd suggest a 3-1 ratio Red/Blue lights. That's what I'm going to be using. I saw this ratio in a professional grow company's video so seems like a good plan to follow for me. Just looked at your first photo and it seems you already have a 3:1 ratio. Also saw you're using wool to hold it up lol. Might be worth adding a curved reflective canopy to the sides of the panel? What did you use for your panel material? I'm thinking a 1/2" of white plexiglass. Thanks for posting. I have been debating if the LED project would be worth the soldering effort, but it seems your plants are doing well.
caretak3r
Well-Known Member
really old thread -- Panelata hasn't been around in years. I would go with Samsung hard strips instead of the 5050s or other flexi-strip lighting.
Joined up to read this thread, mainly because I did something similar.
Long and short of it is 5m of 4 red:1 blue strip bought from China for under 12 euros arranged in a 20x25cm panel cut from an old pc side panel which was then bent in a trapezoidal shape to cover a single plant. This is connected to an old pc power supply, 20 pin ATX is the easiest to convert, and the shape of the panel concentrates more light on the plant than plain "flat".
It's a total Heath Robinson effort, suspended with string so it can be raised/lowered easily and hangs around 6 inches above an Autobomb autoflower on an 18/6 light cycle.
Am looking forward to the results, especially as a second roll should arrive next week which will get the same treatment on another old pc side panel which I hope will work on a photo Acapulco Gold which has just come through the dirt and is currently under a 5w 2500k led bulb, which will be changed to a 10w blurple spot once it grows a bit more.
From what I see here, it's more encouraging than what other forums say as they have tried to say it simply won't work even though I'm only looking at small grows to keep myself vaguely legal here. And bearing in mind we're looking at an outlay of €25 in led strip, pot, compost and solder, plus maybe a euro or so per week in electricity per panel, then getting even 1 ounce is a win when compared to buying at €10 per gram over in Holland, and that doesn't include using leaves for edibles or making vaping fluid.
Will keep you posted as things progress.
Edit: For clarity, the flat "top" of the panel is 6" above the top of the plant so the sides are coming down onto the sides, the idea is to maximise the light hitting the plant, think of the top of the plant being inside a high-bay reflector you would have with a metal halide fitting.
Long and short of it is 5m of 4 red:1 blue strip bought from China for under 12 euros arranged in a 20x25cm panel cut from an old pc side panel which was then bent in a trapezoidal shape to cover a single plant. This is connected to an old pc power supply, 20 pin ATX is the easiest to convert, and the shape of the panel concentrates more light on the plant than plain "flat".
It's a total Heath Robinson effort, suspended with string so it can be raised/lowered easily and hangs around 6 inches above an Autobomb autoflower on an 18/6 light cycle.
Am looking forward to the results, especially as a second roll should arrive next week which will get the same treatment on another old pc side panel which I hope will work on a photo Acapulco Gold which has just come through the dirt and is currently under a 5w 2500k led bulb, which will be changed to a 10w blurple spot once it grows a bit more.
From what I see here, it's more encouraging than what other forums say as they have tried to say it simply won't work even though I'm only looking at small grows to keep myself vaguely legal here. And bearing in mind we're looking at an outlay of €25 in led strip, pot, compost and solder, plus maybe a euro or so per week in electricity per panel, then getting even 1 ounce is a win when compared to buying at €10 per gram over in Holland, and that doesn't include using leaves for edibles or making vaping fluid.
Will keep you posted as things progress.
Edit: For clarity, the flat "top" of the panel is 6" above the top of the plant so the sides are coming down onto the sides, the idea is to maximise the light hitting the plant, think of the top of the plant being inside a high-bay reflector you would have with a metal halide fitting.
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