Economical multi LED Chip Projects for Growing

VLR#2 Progress Report
The LED panels have been applied, the rough wiring done and the major components mounted in the electrical box. Tomorrow I'll complete the wiring and fire it up for a quick bench test to check the components and wiring, before completion. Next I'll work on the top of the electrical box and mount the computer power connector to the rear of the box and cut holes for the 2 switches in the front. finally I'll sand and paint the box to before remounting the fan and mounting the switches and connector.

I lined the edges of the box where it mounts on the duct and cooling tubes with aluminum tape to seal it. I mounted the aluminum LED panels using washers and counter sunk 3mm screws salvaged from the street lamps, I also coated the backs of the panels with heat sink paste before applying them. Where the LED wires pass through the tubing, I used plastic strain relieving wire grommets and I enclosed the wires in plastic woven wire conduit salvaged from a computer power supply. I wire tied the woven conduit enclosed wires to the support frame and ran them to the inside cooling tube and from there to the duct, then electrical box. I had to extend the wires from the outside arrays to the electrical box using 4 conductor telephone wire (same gauge as that used to wire the arrays). All wire connections were soldered and covered with heat shrink tube, and in the case of the cooling tube LED panel wires, inclosed in woven conduit. I'm going to wire the 2 banks of LEDs so that alternate arrays will light in a checker board pattern at the low power setting.

This 200W rig is composed of a total of 120, 3 watt LEDs divided into 10 arrays of 12 X 3 watt 5000K LEDs wired in series, if you were buying something like this, it would be advertised as a 360 watt lamp. The large panels are composed of 2 X 12 LED arrays and the 2 small panels in the center under the duct are composed of 12 LEDs each.
Here are a few photos of the build and various details.

VLR#2 Completed
VLR#2 was completed this evening and bench tested. Everything works fine, the rig runs cool and tomorrow the clones will awaken under a new sun. I had a problem working with the cheap dollar store cookie box I used because the metal was too thin and I had to take steps to reenforce it where ever I could. This included bolting a salvaged aluminum fan support to the underside of the box lid to support the fan and the power connector. I just cut holes for the switches, but they look pretty bad, so I'm going to make a mounting plate for them later and bolt it onto the front of the box to reenforce and gussy it up a little. If I were doing this again I'd look for a metal box with thicker walls, an older cookie box with thicker walls would work, the sheet steel used to make this cheap dollar store box was so thin I couldn't even use a nibbler tool on it! A better thicker metal box would have been an easier build. I just glued the outside fans on with silicone caulking and I figure it will hold as well as any screw and with a lot less time and effort.

As mentioned before, this lamp has two power levels, with the arrays switched in a checkerboard pattern by 2 switches. I left room for future expansion on the rig with spare spots on the terminal block and gaps between the inner and outer cooling tubes that I plan on filling with 2 X 5" or 6" miniature fan lamps that can swivel right and left. I'll mount heat sinks on swivel brackets to the fans so that the LED array can swivel inward or outward. I might mount 6 X 10 W LEDs on each fan heat sink and run them with one common 100 watt driver. I figure it is better to move the fans out of the growing space and put them above the grow pointing down on an angle and since they're blowing air, why not use em to cool LED arrays. If I could find a pair of 5" or 6" oscillating fans and mount them to the support tubes between the outer and inner tubes pointing downward, that would make an interesting addition!

The VLRs are popular among my circle of gardening friends and I have to build one more VLR for another friend! It will be a three cooling tube, one driver model like VLR#1, I might use an ATX power supply box for the electrical box on that one. Here are some pictures of how VLR#2 turned out, there's room for improvement and I'll probably get around to fixing up the switches when I install the fan lights on it and upgrade it to VLR#2 V 2.0

DIY-HP-LED said:

VLR#2 Progress Report
The LED panels have been applied, the rough wiring done and the major components mounted in the electrical box. Tomorrow I'll complete the wiring and fire it up for a quick bench test to check the components and wiring, before completion. Next I'll work on the top of the electrical box and mount the computer power connector to the rear of the box and cut holes for the 2 switches in the front. finally I'll sand and paint the box to before remounting the fan and mounting the switches and connector.

I lined the edges of the box where it mounts on the duct and cooling tubes with aluminum tape to seal it. I mounted the aluminum LED panels using washers and counter sunk 3mm screws salvaged from the street lamps, I also coated the backs of the panels with heat sink paste before applying them. Where the LED wires pass through the tubing, I used plastic strain relieving wire grommets and I enclosed the wires in plastic woven wire conduit salvaged from a computer power supply. I wire tied the woven conduit enclosed wires to the support frame and ran them to the inside cooling tube and from there to the duct, then electrical box. I had to extend the wires from the outside arrays to the electrical box using 4 conductor telephone wire (same gauge as that used to wire the arrays). All wire connections were soldered and covered with heat shrink tube, and in the case of the cooling tube LED panel wires, inclosed in woven conduit. I'm going to wire the 2 banks of LEDs so that alternate arrays will light in a checker board pattern at the low power setting.

This 200W rig is composed of a total of 120, 3 watt LEDs divided into 10 arrays of 12 X 3 watt 5000K LEDs wired in series, if you were buying something like this, it would be advertised as a 360 watt lamp. The large panels are composed of 2 X 12 LED arrays and the 2 small panels in the center under the duct are composed of 12 LEDs each.
Here are a few photos of the build and various details.
View attachment 3337979 View attachment 3337980 View attachment 3337981 View attachment 3337982 View attachment 3337983

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Your procedures are meticulously elaborated upon.

I received my drivers and im confused as to which side of the Ac runs hot or neutral? They are the same ones used on the canister lights, both of the wires are red making it hard to tell.

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jpizzle4shizzle said:

I received my drivers and im confused as to which side of the Ac runs hot or neutral? They are the same ones used on the canister lights, both of the wires are red making it hard to tell.

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Try this link, It will work either way, but for safety reasons follow wiring conventions and put the wire marked "L" on the circuit board to line and the "N" wire to neutal. Look on the circuit board for "L" and "N" printed where the red wires attach to the driver. Always put your switch on the line side and wire the neutral directly to the driver.

After you get your LED running, adjust the (blue) potentiometer screw to maximum brightness or maximum volts/current if you have a DMM. If you have one cheap 100w LED per driver, don't be surprised if you can only get around 50W out of the LED, to get more light and use more of the available driver power, wire another 100 W chip in parallel with the first and you should get close to 100 watts of power used by both chips and about 70% more light. you may under drive the 100 watt LEDs slightly, which is good since they become more efficient at turning electricity into light.

Thank you so much for the help, I feel stupid asking you that now cause as soon as I grabbed a flashlight i saw which was which. I appreciate the help though, and the simpler instructions as I would be trying to figure out what a potentiometer is as we speak without it.

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jpizzle4shizzle said:

Thank you so much for the help, I feel stupid asking you that now cause as soon as I grabbed a flashlight i saw which was which. I appreciate the help though, and the simpler instructions as I would be trying to figure out what a potentiometer is as we speak without it.

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"what a potentiometer is" = variable resister
Little blue box on the circuit board with a brass slot head adjusting screw sticking out of one end. The screw is multi turn so you'll have to rotate it a few times to notice a difference in voltage, when the volts won't go any higher, it's in current limiting mode and that's all there is and there ain't no more.

jpizzle4shizzle said:

Thank you so much for the help, I feel stupid asking you that now cause as soon as I grabbed a flashlight i saw which was which. I appreciate the help though, and the simpler instructions as I would be trying to figure out what a potentiometer is as we speak without it.

Sent from my LG-V410 using Rollitup mobile app

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IMPORTANT INFORMATION, Please read and head
Be careful when you hook up your LED(s) to the driver that you get to polarity right. Hold the chip with the front facing you so the the + symbol is on the top right. The POSITIVE CONTACT is the LEFT CONTACT and the NEGATIVE CONTACT is on the RIGHT! Look closely at the chip under good light and you will see an array of 10 x10 LEDs wired in 10 parallel X 10 series LED arrays to two "L" shaped contact buses on the sides of the chip. Carefully follow the bus from the top of the chip around to the left side, note the small gaps between the positive and negative buses on the top right and bottom left. Once your sure about the terminal polarity, just stick the driver wires in the holes of the contacts (you can use alligator clips to hold them as well) and fire it up for a quick test.

If your going to use 2 LED's on one driver, orientate the LEDs so that the either the positive or negative terminals face each other for ease of wiring. A $10 multimeter would help you to know what kind of power levels your getting by measuring the volts and amps between the driver and the LED(s) by simply multiplying volts X amps to get the power measured in watts. Since about 25% of that energy is emitted as light the rest will be dissipated as heat. The cooler you can run the LED chips the better they perform and the longer they last.

DIY-HP-LED said:

IMPORTANT INFORMATION, Please read and head
Be careful when you hook up your LED(s) to the driver that you get to polarity right. Hold the chip with the front facing you so the the + symbol is on the top right. The POSITIVE CONTACT is the LEFT CONTACT and the NEGATIVE CONTACT is on the RIGHT! Look closely at the chip under good light and you will see an array of 10 x10 LEDs wired in 10 parallel X 10 series LED arrays to two "L" shaped contact buses on the sides of the chip. Carefully follow the bus from the top of the chip around to the left side, note the small gaps between the positive and negative buses on the top right and bottom left. Once your sure about the terminal polarity, just stick the driver wires in the holes of the contacts (you can use alligator clips to hold them as well) and fire it up for a quick test.

If your going to use 2 LED's on one driver, orientate the LEDs so that the either the positive or negative terminals face each other for ease of wiring. A $10 multimeter would help you to know what kind of power levels your getting by measuring the volts and amps between the driver and the LED(s) by simply multiplying volts X amps to get the power measured in watts. Since about 25% of that energy is emitted as light the rest will be dissipated as heat. The cooler you can run the LED chips the better they perform and the longer they last.

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Some YouTube videos that might interest you:
100 watt LED
Updates to 12V 100W LED Hardware - Heatsinks, Grease & Lens/Reflector

High Power LED Tutorial #1 There are 3 of these tutorials

DIY-HP-LED said:

Some YouTube videos that might interest you:
100 watt LED
Updates to 12V 100W LED Hardware - Heatsinks, Grease & Lens/Reflector

High Power LED Tutorial #1 There are 3 of these tutorials

Click to expand...

One more tutorial, there are many such tutorials on YouTube.
How to measure current and voltage with a digital multimeter

Thanks for the links, I finished connecting the Ac side of things so I definitely needed them lol I will check them out and hopefully finish the light tomorrow once my other heat sink comes in.

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So when ppl say these run hot, do they mean burn your fingers hot? I just tested them for a minute and the thing got extremely hot very quickly, so I will for sure have to turn the driver down I assume

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jpizzle4shizzle said:

So when ppl say these run hot, do they mean burn your fingers hot? I just tested them for a minute and the thing got extremely hot very quickly, so I will for sure have to turn the driver down I assume

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You will need to use heat sink grease, a heat sink and fan for sustained operation. If you can hold your finger on the heat sink near the LED with out raising a blister, your generally OK. If you have an old PC you can use the power supply box for a lamp housing, the heat sink and fan to cool the chip and even the 3mm screws used to mount the mother board can be reused to mount the LED to the heat sink. You can drill 7/64"(2.8mm) holes in the heat sink, put a bit of heat sink paste on the screws and drive them into the heat sink without taping to hold the LED on. Go slow when driving the screws and back up a turn frequently, if you strip the hole, just put a strand of copper wire along side the screw and drive it in again.

Most desktop PC CPU heat sinks and fans work very well at cooling 100 watt LEDs, use thermal grease between the LED and the heat sink.
Since these chips typically consume around 50 watts of power and are 2" x 2" = 4 Sq in and about 25% (12.5 Watts) of the energy is emitted as light, that leaves about 37 to 40 Watts for a 4 sq in chip to dissipate, or about 10 Watts of heat per sq in. Naturally it needs some help getting rid of this heat and since copper and aluminum conduct heat very well, heat sinks are made from them. Thermal paste aids in the conduction of heat from the back of the LED to the heat sink and the greater the difference in temperature between the two, the greater the heat flow. Fans are often used to blow air on the heat sink so that heat can be moved to the surrounding air and to keep the heat flowing from the LED to the heat sink .

Old desktop PC CPU heat sinks will dissipate about 100 Watts of heat and you can use one heat sink to cool 2 chips if you use a heat spreader plate on the underside of the heat sink is or if it big enough to hold the chips by itself. If you use one LED and over drive it, it will run hotter, if you use two LEDs in parallel each LED will produce less heat, but the two together will produce almost 50% more heat because more of the drivers power will be used. So in conclusion, one 100 W LED running at 50 W will generate about 37-40 watts of heat and two running in parallel of one 100 W driver will produce about 75-80 W of heat.

DIY-HP-LED said:

Here are a few more pictures of the "canister light" on the bench, just before closing up and testing. You can see the small DC to DC converter board mounted on the side of the fan in all the pictures. The LED driver is mounted on the top of the case with some "L" brackets, an old PC CPU heat sink and fan cools everything. The LED chip uses a 2" dia. metalized plastic reflector and collimator lens that they claim only absorbs 2% of the light. Readings with a simple plant light meter proved that the lens doubled the light intensity at 3 ft (1M) when compared to the reflector alone. The shape of the intensely bright light cone produced by the reflector/lens is perfectly suited to grow one plant. The light is very penetrating, but I'm gonna use side lighting as well. These types of chips produce 9000 to 11,000 lumens and one should use sunglasses when working with them because they will dazzle ya. It reminds me of looking at a welding arc!

To draw DC power for the fan, I soldered 2 wires onto the LED terminals leading to the DC to DC voltage converter for the fan. I can adjust the speed of the fan by adjusting the output voltage with a potentiometer on the DC to DC converter The 100watt LED is supplied by a constant current driver (3A 30-36VDC) that runs on AC line voltage. I haven't measured it yet, but they claim that the chip/driver only consumes 70-80 watts. The major components of the lamp: LED chip, driver and DC to DC converter only cost about $35, most of the rest was scrounged free junk, an old canister set and a scrap PC.

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Nice Looking build,and Thread..Subbed!!

DIY-HP-LED said:

Here is a Fan Lamp that uses 2 x 100 watt generic warm white chips running off one 100 watt driver. The heat sink and chips are mounted on the front bottom of the fan cage and the driver is mounted on the top back of the fan cage. I used a piece of an old computer case to contain the driver, but if you want to keep it simple use a water proof IP67 driver in it's own box and mount it on the fan cage, a bit more expensive, but easier. I have connectors on the wires between the driver and the LED for ease of maintenance and cleaning. I made a reflector from self adhesive plastic mirror pieces bought from the dollar store. Every garden has a fan, why not use it to cool an LED array. This is a test rig and I'm gonna build a better one with 4 chips and 2 drivers on a new fan. The oscillating mechanism on my fan doesn't work quite right and I don't use it now. I did test it though and it works very well as a light mover. This lamp is great for growing out those bottom buds, between the blowing leaves and the changing light angle there aren't many shadows.

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DIY-HP-LED said:

View attachment 3323018

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^^^ Awesome Idea!!! Kudos!!

Corner Tube Light Update:
The slow boat from China has finally docked. The 10W LEDs, 120VAC drivers and blowers have arrived and today I called and ordered a 20 foot length 2" X 1" rectangular tubing. It's about about $2.50 US a foot and I'm splitting the $50 cost with a friend who is going to use 4 X 20" lengths for his corner lamps. I'm ordering this from a local machine shop and they will chop the 20' piece of tubing into 12 X 20" lengths, I might use the other 4 tubes in the veg area with cool white 10W LEDs.

I got around to measuring the 10W warm white bridgelux designs and the red/blue 10 W grow LEDs on the 2 kinds of supplied drivers and this is what I found. I tested both LED chips on each AC driver one driver was a 6-11V 600ma and the other was a 6-11v 900ma.

900ma Driver
WW 10W LED # 1 9.3V X .83A = 7.72 Watts
WW 10W LED # 2 9.3V X .83A = 7.72 Watts
R/B 10W LED 8.55V X.84A= 7.84 Watts

The 600ma driver only pushed 9.09V X .62A = 5.6W trough a WW LED so I had a pretty good idea how it would perform on the other chips (not well!).

So there should be plenty of slack in one of the 900ma WW LED drivers to run the fan at 9.3V x .18A = 1.67 watts. Since the LED is only using 7.72W that leaves about 2.8 W of power to run the fan at 1.67W

Looks like we will start building my friends four corner lamps next week

Here is a front and back look of the design as of now so you can get an idea of what im working with. Im still waiting for heat sink paste but since its from deal extreme I might just go buy some to finish up and btw check ebay for heat sinks, mine looks brand new pre tapped and it was 10.50. Does it make any difference if the heat sink is anodized or whatever its called? Lol

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jpizzle4shizzle said:

Here is a front and back look of the design as of now so you can get an idea of what im working with. Im still waiting for heat sink paste but since its from deal extreme I might just go buy some to finish up and btw check ebay for heat sinks, mine looks brand new pre tapped and it was 10.50. Does it make any difference if the heat sink is anodized or whatever its called? Lol

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Anodized is OK, but the part where the LED(s) mount should be clean and flat. I assume your going to put a fan(s) on, or in the box blowing inward and the driver(s) will be inside the box?

I was thinking about attaching a fan above the light blowing down and also attaching computer fans on the heatsinks. As for the drivers housing I have a few old CPU power supplies that I will put the drivers inside and connect to the heat sinks. I also plan on cleaning up the aluminum plate with some steel wool, I marked where the lights would go so I could drill the right holes to hold the leds. Is there any ways to connect the leds other than solder? Silicon or epoxy wouldn't do would it? My soldering gun is crap so im trying to avoid using it again

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jpizzle4shizzle said:

I was thinking about attaching a fan above the light blowing down and also attaching computer fans on the heatsinks. As for the drivers housing I have a few old CPU power supplies that I will put the drivers inside and connect to the heat sinks. I also plan on cleaning up the aluminum plate with some steel wool, I marked where the lights would go so I could drill the right holes to hold the leds. Is there any ways to connect the leds other than solder? Silicon or epoxy wouldn't do would it? My soldering gun is crap so im trying to avoid using it again

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If your going to build these kind of lights I would recommend getting a working soldering iron (only around $5). Good connections are important in low voltage DC circuits to avoid power loss through heating of connections. Also use wire nuts on the AC end of the driver to the power cord and avoid using electrical tape since the adhesives on cheap tapes becomes soft when heated. You can solder some wires with a bic lighter if yer desperate, but don't try it with the LED contacts! Try to keep the heat on the contacts to a minimum.

If your not familiar with soldering here are some tutorials from YouTube