DIY led grow

That is a excellent way to compare white leds. Thanks for posting that. My 10 nw xml l2 are 5000k...30% blue in them babies. Still seemed I could have benefited from more blue, but the numbers added up and I was wrong.

This run is done, day 62. Time to make a few more led changes and make the flowering chamber a touch larger to 4 x 2. Thinking blue out, 630nm and 385nm in. Wonder if ill ever stop experimenting with colors but it's all for fun and learning. Running a led you built is much more interesting than store bought.

bubba k..sorry for the kinda shitty pics my new camera isn't cooperating.

Changed the leds up a bit. Took out the 450nm and 470nm. Added in 24w of luxeon es red and a ledengin 5w 385nm. Left the reflectors off the violet uv leds, their just for a little ambience


Looking forward to seeing how these 630nm do in place of the blues or even all deep red.

Can't wait to see the results again. So many frequencies we're not used to seeing, I feel like there's so much to learn from threads like this even if it turns out something you changed made it worse at least then it will stand out.

Thanks for doing these experiments!

Positivity said:

Changed the leds up a bit. Took out the 450nm and 470nm. Added in 24w of luxeon es red and a ledengin 5w 385nm. Left the reflectors off the violet uv leds, their just for a little ambience


Looking forward to seeing how these 630nm do in place of the blues or even all deep red.

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Pos, can you explain the solder pads on those LEDEngin stars? There are six pads, numbered one to six. Are three of them positive and three negative? Does it matter which ones you use?

This is the second time i had to deal with ledengin leds. always hard to figure out how to solder them. I initially guessed wrong and it didn't light up. so i took out my nifty double a homemade led tester..and it still didn't light up. Figured since it's a 5w led there wasn't enough volts to light it up. So i rigged up a 9v battery, tried a few pads, and got it to light up.

I still don't know the exact pattern of pos and neg. I stopped once i got it to light..lol.

Google led battery tester diy. Comes in handy.

Well final yield numbers are in about .8 g/w. Little better than last runs .7 g/w.

One plant yielded 80g which is the best I've done in a while. That's the bubba pictured in above post. Pretty good figuring it was surrounded by other plants.

little over 10 zips off a 36" x 20". Not sure I can get much more out of this space without scrogging. I did have two smallish plants so that could have possibly kept me from the 12 I was shooting for.

also managed to fry my first leds. My solder guns been performing shitty so sure enough I ended up with a bad connection. Wiggled the wire...saw a spark..and poof that led and the other 7 downstream fried. Lucky I had extra of all but one of my new 620nm red.

so for any diyers...don't wiggle a bad connection. Shut it off and fix it...lol.

little pre harvest budporn..

Good info tnx POS. This nugs look nice and sticky!

I have had similar things happen when I was trying to hand solder my LEDs without stars, LEDs sure do hate loose connections. My mistakes were: using too weak of an iron for soldering on a heatsink (26W), and I was melting the solder onto the tip of the iron which burned off the flux. Then I was not using solder flux on the wire and solder pad for pre tinning it.

After an episode of EEVblog convinced me I got a hold of a syringe of flux gel I started putting it on every connection it made beautiful connections easy and fast.

10z from that kind of an area is very respectable number! Pretty much only guys I know doing better are crazy dutchmen with perfectly controlled climate, multiple Gavita 1000 Pro DE and Co2!

That is a good yield. I've pulled 8 zips under a 400hps aero / scrog in 2'x 2' several times way back in the day with soma strains. Never got 10 zips in that space. Now I hit anywhere about 4-6 zips. That's one plant in that space though

10 zips in a 36"x 20" is impressive.....................good job positivity................what's next???

Earlier I posted this shot of a 3up luxeon with a reflector. Don't do that...looks like it was shorting out my leds. I thought since it was plastic it would be okay but maybe the metalized interior was enough. Too bad since I really liked the idea of intensity of the design. In the future I'll be looking at another way to go about it...looks like carclo has a lens holder with legs that might work.

Not recommended...



Also one note on ledengin leds. They have been by far the hardest to solder. They wick heat away extra quickly for some reason. I used the trick of a thin piece of wood between the sink and star. That worked much better.

also someone asked the arrangement of pads on ledengin when numbered 1 - 6. 1 - 3 is negative and 4 - 6 is positive. Lucky there's extra pads because I ruined a few before figuring out how to get the solder to stick.



DIY can be challenging at times...whew

Positivity said:

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This sexy bud photo would certainly find a happy home in the LED bud porn thread (in my sig)!

Great grow and buds there,Positivity...
Great work .

Time for a toned down run..

3 plants topped, transplanted, defoliated, and flipped to flower. Think I stressed them? Want them as small as possible for now. Hopefully the new soil mix doesn't fry them and end this round early. Be perpetual from here on..

gorilla tent didn't work out so same small space. They wanted more for shipping after I paid so declined for now. Didn't really want to redo everything anyway.

no flower trigger. Want to see how long it takes without it. Last run had first pistils at 7 days so that will be hard to beat, but we shall see.

Leds are about a 50/50 split of luxeon red and deep red plus the same white xmls. Should be a clear difference going from 80w deep red down to about a 40w split. Let's see what does better in this particular setup.

Also lost a bunch of leds!! Did some troubleshooting and discovered some things. Changing leds out and putting reflectors on and off again started a problem. The hi temp silicon for the reflectors was starting to contaminate my solder joints. So keep in mind if doing something similar you need to clean the star thoroughly before soldering anything. So no reflectors this round again..the fit is too tight and a pain in the arse. Don't have enough height anyways..

My bet is on 2 weeks before flowering starts to really kick in.

Are you not using the trigger just to confirm it works, or because you think it's probably a myth? It would be great to find out either way.

Positivity said:

no flower trigger. Want to see how long it takes without it. Last run had first pistils at 7 days so that will be hard to beat, but we shall see.

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Church> yup..just want to make sure it's actually speeding things up before I start running it all the time. Lots of white led grows are starting and finishing just fine so there's a good chance I don't really need it. Going to keep good track of dates on this and following runs.

I really appreciate it then, because that's an experiment I've wanted to do for years. I've seen so much theory, but so few journals to sway me one way or another.

My guess is that it will indeed be an improvement and that besides earlier flowering, the total yield will be larger on average with the trigger. Captain Morgan's setup, for example, seemed to get great results using the trigger.

If it turns out that the trigger is a myth, I can put 730nm out of my head all together, and focus on wide spectrum lighting and individual peaks to hit with narrow band emitters. (when I finally convert to LED)

Positivity said:

Church> yup..just want to make sure it's actually speeding things up before I start running it all the time. Lots of white led grows are starting and finishing just fine so there's a good chance I don't really need it. Going to keep good track of dates on this and following runs.

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Lil update

Running a 4 x 2 tent now...so going from 70w sq/ft down to 45. Little tent upgrade opened everything up, more room for everything, much better environment now.

No flower trigger and I still got first pistils at 7 days. So now I just need to see if they still finish around day 60 ish. If they do I probably won't run the trigger anymore...but too soon to say.

Also rearranged my red channel with the leds I had left after some troubleshooting. Now my red channel resembles a Hans or something...would be interesting to run this 120w by itself...maybe as a finishing/economy spectrum