Bridgelux Vero 29 LED Test

[PICOGRAV]

I just thought I would post a few pictures of some LED's I am thinking about using for growing...

Bridgelux Vero 29 LED tested with HP Harrison 6268A DC Power Supply.


This is a very high intensity LED module, they arrived in the mail today so I wanted to test one out, I used the fine degree of voltage variability to show the individual LED's lighting up.


I had it up to 2 amps but didn't want to go higher until I get them mounted better.


[video=youtube;i4g1biKEYBw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4g1biKEYBw&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

[FranJan]

Interesting. Must look into these. Thanks PICO.

http://www.bridgelux.com/products/vero.html


http://www.bridgelux.com/assets/products_portfolio/Vero 29 Datasheet 04-16-13.pdf

 

[PICOGRAV]

160 Watt LED Growing Enclosure Assembly Test With Dual HP 30 amp Power Supplies

The rack was a freebie from craigslist and the two rack shelf's. I will need to add a heat-sink to the top of the LED mounting shelf and use M3 mounting screws with heat paste for final assembly of the LED shelf.



The lights are the two Bridgelux Vero 29 LED I tested today.

BXRC-27E10K0-L-03 2700 K
BXRC-50C10K0-L-04 5000 K

From what I have seen, the 2700 K LED will give me the shorter wave length for vegging and the 5000 K should be with-in the flowering wave lengths.

Powering with two HP Harrison 6268A DC Power Supplies 0-40 Volt 0-30 Amp
I got four of these cheap for like $50 each, two need minor repairs and others being used work great. These are constant voltage or constant current auto switching.

I plan to run them at 1.8 to 2.2 amps normally, giving me about 80 watts from each LED, I can peak them out at 3.1 amps with good cooling, supplying about 130 watts out of each LED if I needed it.

The high regulation of this power setup will allow me to mix in different levels of 2700 K and 5000 K light.

I have one power supply connected to one LED but I can drive up to 10 in total, with two of these power sources I can have a total of 20 LED's displacing 2600 watts of power equal to about 312,000 lumen (taken into account these LED's are 120 lm per watt efficient)

These master power sources can be used to run light power for up to nine additional grow racks. The power supplies also have remote sensing and could fundamentally be computer controlled by a grow program which takes other information from temperature and humidity sensors in the rack, giving the plant peaks and dips in its normal lighting routine based upon previous yield ratios

[video=youtube;Mib1gbHWzRE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mib1gbHWzRE&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

[PICOGRAV]

So I picked up some 130 watt all aluminum server heat-sinks for $12 each so we could mount the LED's and start longer run tests. The heat sinks worked out pretty well exsept for the fact we could only use 3 out of the four mounting holes on the LED's.



We sanded the aluminium shelf flat with 220 grit sand paper mostly by hand exposing the bare aluminum on both sides. Fine silver heat paste was used on the LED side, very thin coat and cleaned prior with alcohol wipes. The three screws have been tightened with the proper toque recommended by Bridgelux. Also this brand new skill drill was picked up for 30 on craigslist never used and its about maybe 35 years old, I dunno but its well made compared to lot of the new garbage out there.

Mounting the Heat-sinks was a bit more complex, we had to use some tech screws that tapped into the aluminum until we get some stainless nuts and bolts. Heat-sink side was sanded flat with a thermal paste pad right over the LED area.



So the heat sinks can displace about 130 watts of thermal energy with forced air, running the LED's anywhere past 1 amp will require fans. The plan is to have the ventilation/exit filter fan mounted just above the LED assembly with the air flow ducked through the heat-sinks and then further pulled through the power supply's, utilizing all the energy we can.

I ran the setup in the rack for about an hour last night, the 2700 K LED at about 1.8 amp and 35-37 volts and the 5000 K LED at about 2.8 amps and about 38-39 volts. When the LED's heat up and settle in you lose a little bit of lux output and they start to draw a little more amps at a lower voltage, so you have to be careful to have your power supply in consent current mode near the high output ranges, to prevent thermal runaway, this is when the added heat to the Diode Junction allows more current to pass at the same voltage which in turn adds more heat...



The pictures are with the set up drawing about 4.6 amps at the LED end (1.8 2700 K and 2.8 5000 K) at about say 37.5 volts, works out to be about 172.5 watts of power displaced in the LED's them self's and maybe 60-150 watts in the power supply's which I will be double checking later on. So say about 272.5 watts of total power used but it is impossible to actually look at the LED's, they are so bright! The plan was to have four mounted on the light shelf two 2700 k and two 5000 k.
The LED's are so bright placing things in there under the light almost magnifies what you can see, you can make out every detail in an object and see all the light dust partials floating around, quite interesting when your stoned

So after the hour the 5000 k LED (2.8 amps) heat sink was warming up just to the point where you could no longer touch it but the 2700 k (1.8 amps) heat sink was warm and settled and was displacing heat nicely. The aluminum shelf was the coolest component in the system, the heat sinks do a very good job at sucking the heat out and holding on to it. The fins are really too close for passive operation so forced air flow is going to be utilized in this set up.

The last think we added that night was heat insulation to the LED side of the light shelf.

 

[PICOGRAV]

I hope everyone doesn't mind me posting this hole grow process, start to finish, It will properly take a few months but we are hopping to start plotting this weekend or next. I wanted to document it as much as possible so others can feel confident in making there own LED modules just as an alternative to what is commercially available.

I think LED technology has come along way recently but they are very different then any other light source and I think when people have a better understanding of how they work and how to power and assemble them properly there will be better results and any way tinkering with electronics and technology is always fun

 

[PSUAGRO.]

I have only one question ........do you have a par/umol meter?.....my God! Get the sunglasses out! It hurts looking at the pics

Keep posting and stick some girls under it.....let's see what this beast does

Subbed with my sunglasses

 

[Bumping Spheda]

"Décor configurations are not available for Vero 29."
Damn, that spectrum looks smexy...

Anyway, cool shit Pico. Thanks for this.

 

[PICOGRAV]

My friend was over and couldn't really understand how bright these things are.

I called Bridgelux and talked with the people there and asked them about the Décor spectrum and he said there are no plans to even add this down the line. The filter martial must not be able to take the power or the "stuff" its made from could be to toxic for a high end factory. I forgot to ask but I think these modulus are produced here in Cali, bay area, but regardless of this, one of the reasons they are only rated at 10,000 lumen is if they rated them any higher it would be classed as dangerous to human eyes and they would have to deal with a lot more legals. In reality these can be run for maybe 90-95% of there normal life span at over 130% of the rated power, peaking out at about maybe 110-120 watts each LED...

 

[Bumping Spheda]

http://www.bridgelux.com/products/decorarray.html

I guess they're designed for other purposes so they separated the phosphor mixtures to keep specs in line with their intended demographics? Not really sure, but usually higher CRI equates to better spectral analysis for horticultural use, imo, and the Décor line looks pretty bang on. So the 2700k Décor only gets 50lm/W. Yeah, that sounds abhorrent to a typical consumer, but that's a lot of Red light. You'd expect that. It doesn't say too, too much about efficiency. These chips max out at about 50W, it seems.

Also, if you're looking for cheap active CPU coolers, maybe check out the Arctic Alpine 11 Plus:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186070
$10, free two day shipping, rated for 100W.

 

[PICOGRAV]

http://www.bridgelux.com/products/decorarray.html

I guess they're designed for other purposes so they separated the phosphor mixtures to keep specs in line with their intended demographics? Not really sure, but usually higher CRI equates to better spectral analysis for horticultural use, imo, and the Décor line looks pretty bang on. So the 2700k Décor only gets 50lm/W. Yeah, that sounds abhorrent to a typical consumer, but that's a lot of Red light. You'd expect that. It doesn't say too, too much about efficiency. These chips max out at about 50W, it seems.

Also, if you're looking for cheap active CPU coolers, maybe check out the Arctic Alpine 11 Plus:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186070
$10, free two day shipping, rated for 100W.

Maybe we could add some of these on either side of the plant and use them to help flower? I think there must be something difficult in producing LED's that can emit far-red at high efficiency.

I like the look of those coolers, 100 watts should be adequate at displacing the heat for a single chip, It would be good to have the fan suck through the heat-sink and exit out the top, I wonder if the fan could be blow the other way on that heat-sink...

Actually a really cool idea could be mounting the LED chips directly to a heat-sink like that and then run a duct from the back of it out of the room. You could have them speed up and slow down rapidly and create little wind currents, I wonder if the slight movement of the plant back and forth would help it grow? Stretching the stem little amounts possibly helping the nutrients flow up and down the plant?

I will have to look into this further to see if anyone has studied it, does anyone here know of any added "wind" or "air current" experiments ? Maybe we could try it out!

 

[Bumping Spheda]

You mean having a fan on your plants? If so, yes, plants love a light breeze. It forces them to grow deeper roots and thicker stems in order to withstand the breeze. Plants typically grow less vertically the more air movement there is so it's a good strategy to keep stretch down, especially if you have limited vertical space and/or you wont be assisting the plant with bamboo sticks/wire ties as thicker stems help support larger buds.

The fans on most CPU coolers only operate in one direction/polarity. You'd have to turn the fan upside-down, I think, if it's even possible with this model.

On the Décor, yes, that was my idea, they look fantastic for flower. As for Far Red efficiency, you're right, afaik the longer the wavelength you down convert Blue light into the more heat you generate. Not only that, but the conversion efficiency of the phosphor coating is directly related to temperature (less efficient the warmer it is). At some point you have to ask yourself is it worth it to have a 97CRI, 2700k Warm White LED, or should I just supplement a 70-80CRI, 2700k LED with Deep Red LED's? It's not like I'm filming with the light source, I actually couldn't care less about CRI... It's a valid point and I really couldn't tell you. But, damn, those Décor LED's really do look good...

 

[PICOGRAV]

Spheda, I have to ask what that is in your profile picture, it looks like high power LED module what are the specs?

So I have to admit now this is going to be my first ever grow and I'm super excited to get any results to begin with. I have been reading a lot but I not sure exactly why the light color is switched at the flowering stage. From what I gather the flowering light is a change in color temperature and intensity? Also going from say 20 hours on and 4 hours off, to 12 hours on and 12 hours off. I have the two LED's one at 5000 K and the other at 2700 K, just within most recommendations of the different light temperatures.

I have read that it is more about the air temperature changes that encourages the flowering, slightly cooling the plant at night.

Hopefully the setup works well enough to grow many times and we can test a lot of these variables but for the first grow I am thinking 20-18 hours on, 4-6 hours off for veg and then switching to 12 and 12 for the flowering and reducing the cool white LED by at least half.

I wonder if to much light is bad for or could damage the plant when starting out, these LED's are truly going to throw some intense light down at what ever is underneath them

 

[Bumping Spheda]

Hey, Pico. My avatar isn't an LED module, it's actually an electret (electrostatic) transducer made by Sony in the early-mid seventies.

Different colors of light have different effects on (or, rather, mean different things to) plants. It's about getting the results we want for the least amount of power consumed. During veg we humans are focusing on stem, leaf and overall vertical growth and we want our plants to be doing the same. Plants use Blue light for a lot of that, so we try to give them an abundance of Blue. However, they also use UV, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red, and IR as cues that mean certain things (such as root development seems to be affected by Red and IR). In order to get the plant behavior that we want we've found a mixture (of about 1:1) of Neutral White and Warm White gives us near ideal results for the amount of Watts we're using. It's not etched in stone, of course. I, myself, have 20W of 4500k and 50W of 2700k in my veg tent. Play around with your settings and find what works for you. Red promotes flowering/fruiting so we tend to have more of that on our plants during flowering. I think plants enjoy all light. If you had a light source with all wavelengths from 400-800nm at the same intensity (the spectrographic analysis graph would look like a horizontal line) I think plants would be perfectly happy, but that's not viable with LED's.

Cooling temps at night promotes flower? Can't say I've heard that, but sounds... logical? I couldn't tell you.

Light intensity can be too much for plants and cause stress. Also, plants can overload on certain wavelengths (read Emerson Effect, Martian Method, etc). For this reason, maybe you could do an experiment where your 2700k LED and 5000k LED change in intensity throughout the day. So, say, when the 2700k is relatively bright, the 5000k is relatively dim, and vice versa. This allows processes that take place under high amounts of Blue-Green light to rest while you feed the plant an abundance of Yellow-Red, etc. High and low intensities would be at a frequency of about 30 minutes in my mind. Then do another grow where light intensities remain constant and compare the results.

 

[PICOGRAV]

Hey, Pico. My avatar isn't an LED module, it's actually an electret (electrostatic) transducer made by Sony in the early-mid seventies.

Different colors of light have different effects on (or, rather, mean different things to) plants. It's about getting the results we want for the least amount of power consumed. During veg we humans are focusing on stem, leaf and overall vertical growth and we want our plants to be doing the same. Plants use Blue light for a lot of that, so we try to give them an abundance of Blue. However, they also use UV, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red, and IR as cues that mean certain things (such as root development seems to be affected by Red and IR). In order to get the plant behavior that we want we've found a mixture (of about 1:1) of Neutral White and Warm White gives us near ideal results for the amount of Watts we're using. It's not etched in stone, of course. I, myself, have 20W of 4500k and 50W of 2700k in my veg tent. Play around with your settings and find what works for you. Red promotes flowering/fruiting so we tend to have more of that on our plants during flowering. I think plants enjoy all light. If you had a light source with all wavelengths from 400-800nm at the same intensity (the spectrographic analysis graph would look like a horizontal line) I think plants would be perfectly happy, but that's not viable with LED's.

Cooling temps at night promotes flower? Can't say I've heard that, but sounds... logical? I couldn't tell you.

Light intensity can be too much for plants and cause stress. Also, plants can overload on certain wavelengths (read Emerson Effect, Martian Method, etc). For this reason, maybe you could do an experiment where your 2700k LED and 5000k LED change in intensity throughout the day. So, say, when the 2700k is relatively bright, the 5000k is relatively dim, and vice versa. This allows processes that take place under high amounts of Blue-Green light to rest while you feed the plant an abundance of Yellow-Red, etc. High and low intensities would be at a frequency of about 30 minutes in my mind. Then do another grow where light intensities remain constant and compare the results.

My mistake but still really cool, other then playing around with LED's I build speakers and amplifiers as one of my other hobbies, I think we could get pretty far off topic if we started down that path

Your idea with the lighting is fantastic I think with the first grow I could have the constant setting and after I top them use the clones and try doing the variables. Can you clone a clone and just keep it going indefinitely? It would interesting to keep the same clones going for a few grows and keep experimenting with light mixtures.

 

[Bumping Spheda]

No worries, you're not the first person to mistake it for an LED of some sort. And if you build speakers I too believe we could get very, very off topic. >.< I'd like to take a class in CAD and look into the cost/difficulty of building a planar magnetic headphone.

I'd be very interested to see the results of that experiment. I stole the idea from things I've read about the Martian Method and how plants converts Pr to Pfr and alternating between Deep Red and Ir can keep the conversion process (and other photosythetic activity?) going, even while the plant is "asleep," as Blue light is the mechanism for photoperiod in plants. No idea if this would translate to day time spectrum shifts like what I proposed for the experiment, but it would be cool if you could save electricity and get similar results!

 

[PICOGRAV]

So just a quick update, I have selected a few fans for cooling/air flow. These are all 24 volt, 2x120mm quite fans from a HP switch, another 120mm high CFM I will use inside of a duct and one small blower I will mount near the bottom of the rack, blowing air into the growing chamber. I have also mounted a pull out tray which will hold the carbon filter and the two HP 120cm fans.



I have the two HP 120cm fans mounted on the tray blowing up, I will build a duct so these will suck through each heat-sink.



I have fitted some insulation and have the grow chamber almost enclosed now. I will make a reflector around the LED's soon.



Here is a video of what I finished today, I connected both LED's to one power supply and have the Fans on the other, for the first run I think this will be the setup. Both LED's are going to be getting the same amount of power and the only control I will have is the intensity, this will give me a base line to compare further results, also this gives me high control over the cooling. The four fans will all be run off the top power supply which should be able to control temperature inside the grow chamber quite nicely. I really like the idea of the of using pure analogue systems to control things like this, there is just something about breaking down the intensity of light and controlling it with the tips of you fingers, from the little black nobs on the power supply's, its like an instantaneous electromagnetically reaction to something physical you are doing...

[video=youtube;m5mxldsYX94]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5mxldsYX94&amp;feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

[foursixfive]

I am impressed with the amount of light those are generating. It seems that at times you forget how bright they are while watching the video because of the light adjustment of the camera, but when you come away from the cabinet, everything that was once black is now fully lit. I would love to see this in person to see how it compares with other grows that I've seen. Still haven't checked it with a light meter?

What are you initially planning to grow? Do you want to go from seed or clone?

I presume from the amperage that you're drawing and from how far up the amp meters go that you could run quite a few more lights from a single power supply--do you plan on doing so? Not that that enclosure would really warrant more light, but you could perhaps run similar enclosures from the power supplies in that first one?

What are you doing for irrigation? Are you planning on using soil? Chemicals? Organic?

How is this all looking cost wise? Did you spend quite a lot on the rack, power supplies, LEDs, insulation and everything? It seems that all that would cost quite a bit if you were paying retail for it--do you think this will be a cost effective grow?

What is your dog's name?

 

[Bumping Spheda]

Careful with those PC fans if you plan to place them at the start/end of duct work, I read that most PC fans don't create enough pressure to push air well through a duct more than a foot, or two.

Lookin' good, Pico.

 

[PICOGRAV]

I am impressed with the amount of light those are generating. It seems that at times you forget how bright they are while watching the video because of the light adjustment of the camera, but when you come away from the cabinet, everything that was once black is now fully lit. I would love to see this in person to see how it compares with other grows that I've seen. Still haven't checked it with a light meter?

What are you initially planning to grow? Do you want to go from seed or clone?

I presume from the amperage that you're drawing and from how far up the amp meters go that you could run quite a few more lights from a single power supply--do you plan on doing so? Not that that enclosure would really warrant more light, but you could perhaps run similar enclosures from the power supplies in that first one?

What are you doing for irrigation? Are you planning on using soil? Chemicals? Organic?

How is this all looking cost wise? Did you spend quite a lot on the rack, power supplies, LEDs, insulation and everything? It seems that all that would cost quite a bit if you were paying retail for it--do you think this will be a cost effective grow?

What is your dog's name?

I bought a three in one moisture, light and pH meter. I have never used one of these before so I don't know how much it means, but at the bottom of the enclosure I was getting about 800 with 38.5 volts and 5 amps running through the two LED's, about 192.5 watts. I can easily push them to about 3 amps each if I need to.

I downloaded an iPhone app and at the same wattage settings, the phone was reading 2000-2500 lux near the bottom and 5000-6000 about 12 inches away from the LED's



As you can see now I am getting ready to start with seeds, I want to try and sprout 8 seeds, 4 from one strain and 4 from another. When they get big enough I will take away the males, if any and concentrate on making some mothers.



I do already have another rack I could use as a flowering chamber and have it connected to the power supplies in the main chamber or the mother chamber, this does get I bit more complex but you are right, I should be able to power 10 of these LED's from one power supply, I did mention this in a previous post and calculated the wattage that would be generated.

I don't have the cost fully itemized yet but the power supplies where $55 each, the LED's $49 each, the rack was free, fans free, shelf's free and about $200 for insulation materials but there will be enough to do about 3-4 racks.

I think this first grow will just be soil, I know very little about the best to use, I picked this soil up from Home Depo. It says good for root development, I think that's what I want for the seedlings. When I transfer them to larger pots I might need some advise on what to use next. I would like to keep it as organic as possible.

I think by the end of the first grow I would have spent $500-$600 depending if I add the flowering rack or not. After that I can easily and cheaply expand to mutable racks, maybe $200-$250 each time and total about 10 in this one system. I don't know how that compares to what other people have spent but I just think its a really fun project.

Spheda, have a look at my air flow plan and tell me what you think? Its a little hard to follow but I think it will be OK for the first time.



Any recommendations on seeds to get?

My dogs name is Timothy and I call him Tim or Timmy

 

[Bumping Spheda]

Not sure on the air flow. Do you have the Carbon in place? PC fans pushing air past Carbon sounds questionable to me. Other than that I'd say it looks good.

Easy 4" Carbon scrubber:
http://forum.grasscity.com/do-yourself/281136-how-cheap-easy-efficient-diy-carbon-scrubber.html
Can of Pineapple juice from the grocery store, some wire mesh, some Aluminum tape and some activated Carbon. You do need an extraction fan that can push past the Carbon, though.

Usually you try to make sure the airflow through the scrubber is relatively even over all of the Carbon so when you replace the Carbon there's no waste.


AWESOME DOG!