One COB light for veg and flower

Two plants are fine, even six plants will do. Just fill the canopy with your preferred method and flip.

So 2 Vero 29s, or eqiv Crees, dimmable over 2 plants. Sounds doable to me. Now to chose the right driver. Suggestions?? This is cool!!

I went with 6 Vero 18s and I'm gonna run them with an hlg-185h-c1050a meanwell. For the spectrum i chose 4 3000k and 2 4000k.

The reason I chose the Veros was simply cost. They were much cheaper than the 3070s i was also considering.

If i was going to build another lamp right now, I'd go with the citizen clu046 ver 4 1812 4000k 80cri. It would either be that ot the 1818 and just run it at 1050 for better efficiency. Either way I, personally, just don't see the point of going over 50w sq/ft. Yes I know cobs big thing is efficiency, but to me getting a better spread and much more even light intensity through out the grow area on top of the efficiency is what sets cobs apart.

I like your thoughts on the more even intensity and light spread. I've drawn some diagrams of various light layouts and the 6 vero 18s in a rectangle look awfully good. How big is your grow area? I'm wanting to do this once for this area and do it right. I like the idea of 2 cobs for simplicity but 6 make more sense. Better light dispersion. What did you do for a heatsink?? I'll go check out citizen. What have you heard about them??

My space will be 2'x2' and I used arctic alpine 64gt rev. 2 cpu heatsinks and fans. To power the fans with some speed control I used this setup:
http://www.coolerguys.com/840556029977.html
http://www.coolerguys.com/840556094296.html
http://www.coolerguys.com/840556097600.html

For the fans you can go much cheaper and just wire them to an old phone charger or 2 depending on the mAh of the charger. As for the setup I have, the speed control seems more like steps than "fine tuned", but thats just judging by sound and visual. But as you turn the knobs it seems to go from zero and at what should be 10% it starts, at what I'm guessing is 5v, and then at what should be 60% it jumps, to what I'm guessing is 12v, and doesn't really go any faster than that even at 100%. But on the plug end of the controllers theres only 2 "wires/contacts" and I did have to cut some plastic to get the fans to plug in as the AA64gtrev2 had 4 pin fans.

I'm using a 300w power supply out of a desktop computer. Run as many 12 fans as I want. I get them and the fans and the heatsinks for free from a computer repair place. Units are going to the dump. May even use the case horizontally to be the light case. I have found that I can get a variable potentiometer for ~ $4.00 and use it to control my fan speed. Also got some 12v temperature switches for $7.50 that turn the exhaust fan on at setable temps. Now if I could get a temp switch to turn my 110v heater on and off I'd be happier.
What made you choose the MW HLG 185h-c1050a?? for 6 vero 18s?
I am looking at the HLG-60H-c350B. Will run 7.2 18's. Is that bad or is the extra headroom a good thing?? Very confusing to me. Also I think I read the wire leads from cob to cob should be the same length?? Anything to this??

Some thing like this perhaps?

Thats what I mean. Tell me about it. !!! Why square vs 2 bars? How big a grow area???

Jack Reacher said:

Thats what I mean. Tell me about it. !!! Why square vs 2 bars? How big a grow area???

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It can do a 3x3-4x4

Will cobs work better in veg or flower ?

Jack Reacher said:

I have a small grow area about 18" x 27" x 48" high. I want to create a COB light I can use for both veg and flower. From reading I'm thinking of 6 VERO 18, 4000K on dimmable driver. Run at lower power for veg and crank it up for flower.
Or 6 Vero 18, 3500K for flower, 4 Vero 18, 5000K for veg, dimmable driver on an SPDT switch all mounted on the same HS/Fan.
I'm thinking 2 plants at a time. Veg under 4 cobs centered over them then flower on the 6 with a wider light spread.
Or maybe 3 Vero 29s on a dimmer. I have a hard time thinking about this not knowing the lights footprint coverage at heights that I have.

Suggestions??

Click to expand...

If you are height limited as you state then it would make more sense to get a Quantum board. One QB288 board on an HLG-120H-54 will be 130w max with dimming down to 50% with an 'A' series driver. This will maximize your space by allowing your plants to creep higher up into the tent. Way more simple as a build also. You could even use 2 boards in that space if you wanted but not necessary.