"Home made" LED grow lights...

It's internal liquid cooled, even a non liquid cooled would work. It's an idea ecause you can pick those up for cheap and they already come with the heats ink and fans

DO3SHA said:

It's internal liquid cooled, even a non liquid cooled would work. It's an idea ecause you can pick those up for cheap and they already come with the heats ink and fans

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When you say cheap, what price range are you talking about DO3SHA? I've priced some heatsinks to replace the fans in my BS240s, but to do it right it costs quite a bit. Now that's a little different from what you're talking about but same ballpark. I like the idea, but 10 watters are a bit weak, so you'll need a few and that would up the cost. And 20+ watters get hot, so you'll want real cooling, which will up the costs too. So I'm curious as to what your budget would be for something like you're talking about? For a micro grow it could be very effective.

I'll do a weight-check on the final harvest tomorrow, but for now, just wanted to show y'all how well my new plants are vegging under the LEDs this time round. Now the noob jitters have eased up...

When I rub the leaves on these, the smell off all of them is so much sweeter than the white ice was. I'm looking forward to some fruit this time round

AK47 reg is front left, NLxBB Autofem is front right, Chernobyl reg is back left, Lemon OG fem is back right...



Check out the tasty looking purple colour on the bottom of my NLxBigBudxAuto.

I'm talkin about 5 or 10 watt at a 660nm ass an additional boost only for flowering which would be a cheap solution like 30-40 cheap solution 20w would e overkill in a small can maybe a big tent but then again I wouldn't use a CPU heats ink for anything over 10w so that why I'm saying the CPU heat sink are supposed to handle a lot of heat I know my i7 puts off a lot of heat 120+ so they should work, btw anyone seen any UVB LEDs out yet ?

No..not really. The problem is that finding semiconductors with a large enough band gap to emit UVB radiation is a hard task. It took them several decades to move from red light to yellow and green, and blue is a relatively recent commercially viable product. Any UV LEDs that might be out there will be pretty new-fangled i.e. less efficient, more expensive, and probably less reliable.

Reptile CFLs are your best bet there

Edit: Turns out I''m wrong on that...there are some available, but they all seem to be pretty low power so far, so CFL may still be more effective. Someone else may know better though....

Some high-end CPUs are 120+W and their heatsink can keep them under 70°C. A good CPU heatsink could effectively cool 100+W worth of LEDs with no problem. GPU heatsinks have even better performance.

They look very happy. Pretty crazy leaf underside there.


I would agree with you not to go with UV LEDs. If you want some UV go with reptile CFLs. If you want more UV go with reptile MV bulbs. UV LEDs are out there but they are new tech like you said and seem to be pretty unreliable and inefficient while being very pricey.

Gastanker said:

They look very happy. Pretty crazy leaf underside there.

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I thought maybe it was common these days...have you not seen it before either?
I do have almost 10C difference between day and night temps, so that might have helped show it, but it's still weird that it's just on the under-side right? It's on all the leaves too!! Crazy.
Glad it's a fem, because the leaves are making me think the buds might be purple too. I've seen one report of a purple bud pheno off this exact strain...

My guess would be either the low temps or genetics causing the purple under tint. I suppose as long as they are growing healthy I wouldnt worry too much. Does the new growth start out like that or does it change from green to purple over time?

I have seen it but not all that frequently at all. I had one plant that did it in 110 temps with minimal drops so I'm thinking it's likely genetic. Lets cross out fingers for dark purple buds

puffenuff said:

My guess would be either the low temps or genetics causing the purple under tint. I suppose as long as they are growing healthy I wouldnt worry too much. Does the new growth start out like that or does it change from green to purple over time?

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Oh, I'm not actually worried. It was like that right from the second real set of leaves, and it's really healthy in every other way, but I just SO wasn't expecting it with NL or Big Bud genetics strain, so I wondered if anyone else might have had the same. I think it looks beautiful, so I hope it stays...although the purple does seem to be getting a little fainter with newer leaves, so maybe it will go once temps here get back to normal.

Gastanker said:

I have seen it but not all that frequently at all. I had one plant that did it in 110 temps with minimal drops so I'm thinking it's likely genetic. Lets cross out fingers for dark purple buds

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I love purple buds, although I'd prefer a blueberry flavour one rather than the classic purple haze flavour. I used to hate the smell of that stuff back when I got it regularly back in 2001ish, but the high was always amazing. Mmmm purple weed

Gastanker said:

UV LEDs are out there but they are new tech like you said and seem to be pretty unreliable and inefficient while being very pricey

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There's one company that sells a UVA/Near LED for $450.00 a pop. WTF

Something tells me we won't be seeing affordable UVB diodes soon .

FranJan said:

There's one company that sells a UVA/Near LED for $450.00 a pop. WTF

Something tells me we won't be seeing affordable UVB diodes soon .

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yea but UVA is pointless basically, im still trying to figure out why some 11 wavelength LEd pannels have UVA

Right everyone...penultimate grow update from me I think. I might do one more round of bud photos next week, but to be honest that's mainly to make sure that this thread goes over 10,000 views hehe Cheers everyone for that milestone!

Anyway, I weighed the final harvest it turned out to be just 48g...below what I was expecting...especially considering the main cola on its own weighs 13g... I was a bit disappointed until I remembered that I'd put a few of the less-than-primo buds and a load of popcorn into a separate box to dry for BHO. It may just be popcorn, but there was a lot of it and it still counts of course, so I weighed all that too, and the total came to 54g (i'm going to call it 2Oz, cause it's close enough!)

So my total was 5.5 Oz from 3 plants. That's 154g from 320W, or 0.48g/W.

Here a reminder of what they used to look like, and what did what...from left to right (2Oz, 2.5Oz, 1Oz)



The limiting factor here was definitely me. The lights could have yielded a bit more if I hadn't reverted to being a noob so stereotypically...but still a win for White LED arrays I think

All Hail the Major! The pioneer of LED Dankness!

Cheers Chronikool!! Just about to roll a very contented fatty of the last harvest bud to celebrate

Well done Major! .48g/w is more than 1lb per 1kW so I'd say you're doing pretty damn well. And that's your first grow with em Can only get better right?

Throw in some shitty, red, low wattage panels on the walls, and that place would be bud heaven! You really inspired me to take a look at white leds Major. They helped me fix the Spectra panels lighting. Soon I will be building a flowering panel, for now just looking around at diode pricing. I'm going to save a bit extra so that I can buy the red's in bulk for a bit of pocket change, and long term commitment. It seems that 50w leds are coming down in price, all of the lights are just going to get cheaper from here on out, now that you bumped up the demand!

DIY has recently taken a heavier hand in the LED forum, and I think much of it is due to this thread.

+Rep to MajorCoco

Sincerely,
ILovePlants

^^^I agree with this.....good job major