Bridgelux EB Series Build

PicklesRus said:

Why dont you for now look on craigslist and get a florescent light for cheap or free to keep them alive... then you dont have to rush all the led stuff

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Cause i already have 16 samsung H strips in my hand and they are ready to flower and i have the $ for drivers. That would be 2 more months of vegging which would make me run out of what for me is more medicine than recreation and i would have to go buy some. At same time im buying a house so for the first time ever ive got a tight budget until closing on the house sale. For someone who needs it to help them function medically a 2 months gap in supply is not really an option.

Look dont worry about it. ill have to figure somethign out. thanks for your patience its difficult for me to even communicate all of this and right now i feel like my head is going to explode.

haze010 said:

Cause i already have 16 samsung H strips in my hand and they are ready to flower and i have the $ for drivers. That would be 2 more months of vegging which would make me run out of what for me is more medicine than recreation and i would have to go buy some. At same time im buying a house so for the first time ever ive got a tight budget until closing on the house sale. For someone who needs it to help them function medically a 2 months gap in supply is not really an option.

Look dont worry about it. ill have to figure somethign out. thanks for your patience its difficult for me to even communicate all of this and right now i feel like my head is going to explode.

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Alright man heres what I would do.

#1 - If I wasnt going to upgrade later, and keep only 16 strips. I would get two HLG-120H-C700. They run a maximum of 8 strips at 700ma

#2 - if I was sure I was buying more strips in the near future. I would either

A - use one HLG-240H-C700 and run 14 off one driver and add a second driver when I get my other strips OR

B - (I think this is what you want) get two HLG-240H-C700 and run 8 strips on each. Then later you can add 6 extra strips onto each driver.

PicklesRus said:

Alright man heres what I would do.

#1 - If I wasnt going to upgrade later, and keep only 16 strips. I would get two HLG-120H-C700. They run a maximum of 8 strips at 700ma

#2 - if I was sure I was buying more strips in the near future. I would either

A - use one HLG-240H-C700 and run 14 off one driver and add a second driver when I get my other strips OR

B - (I think this is what you want) get two HLG-240H-C700 and run 8 strips on each. Then later you can add 6 extra strips onto each driver.

Click to expand...

Okay, thank you so much again. Im not sure what to say, other than the reality is im a nice guy and not a blithering idiot. Its difficult for me to share certain aspects and mental health issues i deal with on the daily that make communicating my thoughts in the written form is an incredibly difficult task. When i take the time to slow down and build each sentance and paragraph im able to make things understandable but the best way to describe what a learning disability is like is if you knew exactly what you wanted to say but when its formed into written words your brain takes all those words, throws them in a jar and shakes it up and dumps them on a table. I then have to almost build what i want to say like a jigsaw puzzle to make it understandable to others. Its like my brain is a miswired electrical circuit that shorts out when trying to communicate in the written form.

This leads to others misinterpreting what i am trying to say and the intent of what im trying to communicate. That leads to me getting more and more frustrated and as i try to communicate faster the problem snowballs and it leads to me saying things in a way that can confuse and anger other people.

This single post i slowed down, stopped and took the time to actually build the puzzle of what i am trying to communicate and i think its coming out comprehendable and sounding at least partway intelligent.

It took me over an hour to write this but if we were talking it would be like any other conversation you have with any other person and this entire thing would be communicated in seconds or minutes not hours.

I cannot thank you enough and hope it sheds light on what some people have to deal with when it comes to learning disabilities and mental health in a world today with the internet where a vest majority of communication is in the written form. This is why many of my posts are edited three four and five times over as i try and re-read it and suddenly realize that jigsaw puzzle piece i thought was in the right spot wasnt or how i formed it came out sounding completely wrong in context. When i said i wouldnt learn something it wasnt that i am unwilling its that the task is so difficult what others think is something simple anyone should be able to do easily i cannot do easily. It leads to me becoming overly defensive and well i think you see the result of what can happen.

I sincerely apologize to anyone that may have thought i was being difficult or having an attitude with, its just part of the struggle as you get frustrated about how your brain wont let you say what you want to.

Thank you particularly to pickles and random for doing the effort to help me with this as i now know exactly what the correct options for myself is and how to go about building it. I have zero difficulties in completing these tasks i just have an incredibly difficult time communicating it to others in written form.

Hope you all have a wonderful day and again i apologize if how i said things or let my frustrations with my own brain get the better of me.

Oh, and one other followup question, these are all series wiring for the drivers you list?

Sorry, I fall asleep yesterday, Lol!

If you stay with the hlg-185-1050 in my example you can add another 8 strips in series in parallel to each driver later.
Current would drop from 1050 to 525mA and efficiency goes up from ~52 to ~55%. Power usage stays nearly the same, but 3% more light or 3% less heat.
A-series HLG's are dimable via internal poti(50-100%), B-series needs a linear 100kΩ poti and is dimable from 1-100%. You can also use 0-10v for dimming or a pwm controller, but this would make the build even more complicated. Those 100k poti's are the easiest way to realize it.

The limit for 561c is 200mA, so for a strip with 6 cluster of 8 chips max. is 1200mA. So at 1050-1080 you are within their safe limits.
The temps should only rise from 50° to 65-70°C(look at F-Series, 72 LED's at 1120mA =65°C.)

So I do not see any issues when you mount the strips on a alu-sheet or c-channels because usually you have some airflow in your tent which helps a lot to keep the strips cool enough.
If in doubt use additional PC fans until you have added the second 16 strips. And later you would only improve efficiency.

If you start with a 700mA driver, then you start with ~126w per lamp and only get to full power when you add the other strips to full fill the driver voltage.

Can I ask how big your grow area will be?
If the surfaces are smaller (perhaps 60 * 60cm), then 126w is maybe enough. For a larger area (80x80, 120x60 or 100x100cm) you should use the 200w variant. It depends on how big the area is you want to light up!

haze010 said:

Oh, and one other followup question, these are all series wiring for the drivers you list?

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I'm not Pickles but yes, all series wired.

Randomblame said:

I'm not Pickles but yes, all series wired.

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Thank you both of you two so much. Its so frustrating at times when youre trying so hard to get there and too many people just look down their nose at others instead of honestly helping. Thank you again. Ill be putting an order in for one of the choices today, i should be able to get the drivers before the end of week and wired up. Means i should be able to flower and chop before the move into my new house. You have no idea the difference in my life it would have meant if i ended up without what really is medicine for me for a few months. You two are saviors for me.

As far as pwm dimming and controllers ect are all things im comfortable with and ive actually programmed multiple arduino controller and raspberry pi combinations for home automation. Once i get a concept grasped and pass that learning barrier im fine with things but its a incredibly frustrating struggle getting there.

Randomblame said:

Sorry, I fall asleep yesterday, Lol!

If you stay with the hlg-185-1050 in my example you can add another 8 strips in series in parallel to each driver later.
Current would drop from 1050 to 525mA and efficiency goes up from ~52 to ~55%. Power usage stays nearly the same, but 3% more light or 3% less heat.
A-series HLG's are dimable via internal poti(50-100%), B-series needs a linear 100kΩ poti and is dimable from 1-100%. You can also use 0-10v for dimming or a pwm controller, but this would make the build even more complicated. Those 100k poti's are the easiest way to realize it.

The limit for 561c is 200mA, so for a strip with 6 cluster of 8 chips max. is 1200mA. So at 1050-1080 you are within their safe limits.
The temps should only rise from 50° to 65-70°C(look at F-Series, 72 LED's at 1120mA =65°C.)

So I do not see any issues when you mount the strips on a alu-sheet or c-channels because usually you have some airflow in your tent which helps a lot to keep the strips cool enough.
If in doubt use additional PC fans until you have added the second 16 strips. And later you would only improve efficiency.

If you start with a 700mA driver, then you start with ~126w per lamp and only get to full power when you add the other strips to full fill the driver voltage.

Can I ask how big your grow area will be?
If the surfaces are smaller (perhaps 60 * 60cm), then 126w is maybe enough. For a larger area (80x80, 120x60 or 100x100cm) you should use the 200w variant. It depends on how big the area is you want to light up!

Click to expand...

Okay this i think has finally made the lightbulb in my head turn on as far how you arrive at the right driver for what led. Jesus i feel stupid now.

As far as my space thats a complicated answer. Im buying a new house and it closes end of june.
Right now i have one dedicated space thats 2x4 but its something to not consider because its only to flower what is already mature ready to go and that crop should keep me going until i get settled in the new house. The first run in the new house ill have two closets to work with of like 2x2.5 or so, id have to measure them to be sure exactly. Thats why i needed the flexability to split the lighting. By the time that run is done i should have what is going to be a longterm permanent space built out which im not totally settled on but will likely be 3x3 or 4x4. Thats something i still need to figure out but ive got essentially two full clone to chop cycles to settle on.

Its a shifting space over the next year or so. Eventually i will end up having this all fully automated with a raspberry pi audrino system. I actually had most of this planned out for once i move in the new place but when my ballast blew i sorta freaked out cause i thought i was going to lose my crop and be without meds at a very stressful time of a new home purchase and moving ect ect. It lead to me overreacting to ppl and handling things poorly. Throw a learning disability on top of it all and i was ready to lose my mind. I had essentially less than a week to be able to learn what i had thought id have months to learn and someone in my brainspace its compounded.

I wrote all this very quickly as im leaving to go to my work soon so it may have come out completely garbled and not understandable. Anyway thanks again and i'll re-read and likely edit this to make more sense later.

Pulled the trigger on my lights!

I've got a 5ft wide 2.5ft deep 7ft tall wardrobe I'm using. The back wall will be a trellis with 2 pots growing vertically, the front door will have 2 pivoting light walls made out of 1" wide 22" long Ally strip heat sinks. I've customized the floor/back wall to sit my pots lower and further back so I can try maximize trellised area.

Each pivoting wall will have 10 x 2ft EB strips 3000k + 10 x 27E Vero 10 2700k 97 CRI + 5 x 10w "full spectrum chinese cobs + 5 x 730nm far red.

Strips mounted to 10 x 1" x 22" heat sink ($3.50 ea, heatsinksusa) and 15 x 1"x 2" ($0.30 ea) for the cobs/far reds.

FOR NOW! I really want to add in some 2ft t5ho tubes for uvb, but I've spent my budget for now..

Anything anyone wants to add? IMO with these strips changing the game its very exciting times. Previously I would have had 5x2.5 flower space, but with vertical now my space is 5x7! I can't wait to see how this limited space vertical goes

I wonder how a horizontal scrog on the floor then vertically up the wall would go.. Maybe 4 pots, 2 at the back 2 at the front, grow the back vertically and the front covers the floor? This is all possible with strips

3GT said:

Pulled the trigger on my lights!

I've got a 5ft wide 2.5ft deep 7ft tall wardrobe I'm using. The back wall will be a trellis with 2 pots growing vertically, the front door will have 2 pivoting light walls made out of 1" wide 22" long Ally strip heat sinks. I've customized the floor/back wall to sit my pots lower and further back so I can try maximize trellised area.

Each pivoting wall will have 10 x 2ft EB strips 3000k + 10 x 27E Vero 10 2700k 97 CRI + 5 x 10w "full spectrum chinese cobs + 5 x 730nm far red.

Strips mounted to 10 x 1" x 22" heat sink ($3.50 ea, heatsinksusa) and 15 x 1"x 2" ($0.30 ea) for the cobs/far reds.

FOR NOW! I really want to add in some 2ft t5ho tubes for uvb, but I've spent my budget for now..

Anything anyone wants to add? IMO with these strips changing the game its very exciting times. Previously I would have had 5x2.5 flower space, but with vertical now my space is 5x7! I can't wait to see how this limited space vertical goes

I wonder how a horizontal scrog on the floor then vertically up the wall would go.. Maybe 4 pots, 2 at the back 2 at the front, grow the back vertically and the front covers the floor? This is all possible with strips

Click to expand...

Please post pics

PicklesRus said:

Please post pics

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Will post pics hopefully Sunday of how the wardrobe is coming along, then however long digikey takes on their standard shipping :/ think I fucked up there! But they didn't show any estimated times for any options so how could I tell if it was worth the extra cost.

3GT said:

Pulled the trigger on my lights!

I've got a 5ft wide 2.5ft deep 7ft tall wardrobe I'm using. The back wall will be a trellis with 2 pots growing vertically, the front door will have 2 pivoting light walls made out of 1" wide 22" long Ally strip heat sinks. I've customized the floor/back wall to sit my pots lower and further back so I can try maximize trellised area.

Each pivoting wall will have 10 x 2ft EB strips 3000k + 10 x 27E Vero 10 2700k 97 CRI + 5 x 10w "full spectrum chinese cobs + 5 x 730nm far red.

Strips mounted to 10 x 1" x 22" heat sink ($3.50 ea, heatsinksusa) and 15 x 1"x 2" ($0.30 ea) for the cobs/far reds.

FOR NOW! I really want to add in some 2ft t5ho tubes for uvb, but I've spent my budget for now..

Anything anyone wants to add? IMO with these strips changing the game its very exciting times. Previously I would have had 5x2.5 flower space, but with vertical now my space is 5x7! I can't wait to see how this limited space vertical goes

I wonder how a horizontal scrog on the floor then vertically up the wall would go.. Maybe 4 pots, 2 at the back 2 at the front, grow the back vertically and the front covers the floor? This is all possible with strips

Click to expand...

Well, this sounds like a nice setup. Nothing special to add from my side except perhaps that you should choose the full spectrum cobs as large as possible and drive them low for better efficacy. UVB can be added later..

I don't know if you are interested but @ttystikk has a nice thread about vertical growing. Extra large thread, lol, but full of usefull informations and you can see how he's using Quantumboards above a vertical canopy. Very nice...

Can't wait to see your setup in action because I've got a similar cabinet, but I'm still undecisive, whether vertical or horizontal..

Edit,
Digikey is usually fast in shipping unless the item is in backorder. But EB strips are still available so you should get it within a week.

Randomblame said:

Well, this sounds like a nice setup. Nothing special to add from my side except perhaps that you should choose the full spectrum cobs as large as possible and drive them low for better efficacy. UVB can be added later..

I don't know if you are interested but @ttystikk has a nice thread about vertical growing. Extra large thread, lol, but full of usefull informations and you can see how he's using Quantumboards above a vertical canopy. Very nice...

Can't wait to see your setup in action because I've got a similar cabinet, but I'm still undecisive, whether vertical or horizontal..

Click to expand...

Thanks I'm really keen to get this cranking and see what I can make work for my space I didn't think about that! Stoned cunt. Anyway yeah I'll grab the larger full spectrums so long as it all fits within my gaps you're right it can wait! uvb can come later, I need a base line for this area.

Although I'm thinking about solenoid dosing co2 on the cheap (as cheap as fills) since I sold my controller. Wish I never sold any of that stuff.


I've been searching around vert the past week or so, ttystikk is awesome :O very inspirational set up! I love the optics he's using they trip me out

Why not try vertical? I mean horizontal has been done yet vertical in this way is new and possibly very favorable for the footprint and power used.

Yes,
you are right, why not but it can take a long time to have the screen full and I usually work with short vegging periods and indikas.
But I like the idea of flipping the lights to be able to use it for both/each positions.
The screenie below shows a possible design for a light weight build with strips.
I think I would use small c-channels(1" wide) for the strips and a 3" wide channel as housing for the drivers and then mount them to two L-channels. This way I could add more strips later if needed and it would work in each position. And it is possible to use wider c-channels for some CRI90 cobs or smaller ones for a few mono's.
The more I think about it, the better the design seems to work.
Good airflow between the strips, good expansion possibilities and actually even better passive cooling in vertical operation.

the cooling is why i am getting 70 w 1170 mm x 20mm x 2mm thick aluminum led strips..t will probably give enough structure too and 70w driven at lower wattage like 45 -50w will help eficiency..

buying the 20 w 315mm estonian linear strips showed me that strips spaced out on a frame will grow well..

they were not an aluminum pcb though..

on airflow..i have a few panels and cobs mounted on 7x 40" x1/8" x 1/8" aluminum bars..i can run almost 85 watts

and not have them be in a danger zone..but wiht even modest air movement..[let alone a big muffin fan]

the aluminum and boards are darn cool comparatively

Randomblame said:

Well, this sounds like a nice setup. Nothing special to add from my side except perhaps that you should choose the full spectrum cobs as large as possible and drive them low for better efficacy. UVB can be added later..

I don't know if you are interested but @ttystikk has a nice thread about vertical growing. Extra large thread, lol, but full of usefull informations and you can see how he's using Quantumboards above a vertical canopy. Very nice...

Can't wait to see your setup in action because I've got a similar cabinet, but I'm still undecisive, whether vertical or horizontal..

Edit,
Digikey is usually fast in shipping unless the item is in backorder. But EB strips are still available so you should get it within a week.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the kind words!

3GT said:

Thanks I'm really keen to get this cranking and see what I can make work for my space I didn't think about that! Stoned cunt. Anyway yeah I'll grab the larger full spectrums so long as it all fits within my gaps you're right it can wait! uvb can come later, I need a base line for this area.

Although I'm thinking about solenoid dosing co2 on the cheap (as cheap as fills) since I sold my controller. Wish I never sold any of that stuff.


I've been searching around vert the past week or so, ttystikk is awesome :O very inspirational set up! I love the optics he's using they trip me out

Why not try vertical? I mean horizontal has been done yet vertical in this way is new and possibly very favorable for the footprint and power used.

Click to expand...

Gotta have the same light intensity per square foot, vertical or not. This is where LED comes in handy.

So want to hear something hilarious, finally settle on driver choice and cannot find HLG-240H-C anywhere. I finally understand how to match drivers tho for constant current drivers. So at least theres that. lol.

cobkits has 23 in stock. Last 5 digits of part number?

I hadnt looked at cobkits, i was looking at meanwell distributers like Mouser. Thanks for the tip ill check em out.