Dnl.svrr
Active Member
Long time lurker coming out. First of all, thank you very much for all the information presented here. It's been a pleasant and productive read. I owe everything I know and all the ideas written here to other people on this and other growing forums.
After some research, I decided to try a DIY project for a led lamp to use in my home grow. I don't want to sell anything, altough I'm quite the heavy user (Actually hoping to diminish my consumption by growing my own) so yeld is a factor, but not the main factor.
The principles of this project are:
Low cost (Energy consumption and materials)
Silent (Absolutely no coolers, only passive heat dissipation)
Low difficulty (I'm not that good with a soldering iron)
Reliable on flowering (Where most of the difficulty is, as I see it.)
Proper spacing (Might be me, but I find most brand-name led lamps stack the diodes too close together. Maybe this is not the best way. I'm thinking about 2 inches apart should be fine.)
I've settled with 1w chinese ebay leds because of the cost, so I'm basically looking at this:
All seeds are bagseed from weed acquired via different sources all across my country (Brazil). I'll number each seed and go all the way through seedlings. Maybe I'll spare the best male and the best female to have some seeds to continue experimenting with. I thought it could be fun to have a seedling race and document the whole life of each of the plants in a SOG-like system. Maybe we could bet on them like jockeys, and such. But that's obviously just a stoner thought. Right now I have about 30 viable seeds but I hope to try to germinate 50 of them, expecting about 25 to actually sprout (Bagseed, after all) and 12-18 females. Maybe this is a bit too optimistic, but I'll aim for that. The grow area is about 4 feet by 2.5 feet, under a kitchen table about 4,5 feet high. It has a metal structure underneath it that will act as a nice support for the lamp, so I can control the light height easily.
(Materials not acquired yet)
-Large aluminum tray to house the leds (Way cheaper than a reflector)
-Kapton tape and copper tape (as an alternative to wiring)
-Shower box rails cemented to the tray using artic silver (the rails are made of aluminum and much cheaper than heat dissipators)
(Already bought)
-90x 1w Leds from Ebay, brand unknown. (50 Red, 18 Deep Red, 4 White, 9 Royal Blue, 9 Blue.)All leds have a 120 degree viewing angle, except for the Deep Red ones which have a 140 degree angle.
- 5x Waterproof Drivers (Said to power 18 leds each)
I'm still waiting for the items to be delivered so this might be an early start for a journal. But I'll try, heh.
I know 5 drivers aren't the best option, but I didn't knew then. One welcome benefit is the ease to simply turn part of the red lights off during veg by shutting down one or two drivers (in order to save power during veg)
Now, the questions:
Do you think 90w is enough? I'm planning on adding more leds (Maybe 36 extra whites)right before flowering but this time I might acquire a proper driver instead of two extra drivers, p.ex.
What is the most viable solution, in your opinion?
The medium is something I'm unsure about: perlite hempy buckets, coco or soil? In any case, do you think a wick system (sub-irrigation) would work?
I'm trying to reutilize plastic (PET) soda bottles (2l and 2,5l) as pots and whatever else possible so any suggestions are very welcome.
Last but not least, am I missing something? Do you think this could work?
Thank you for reading, any comments will be much appreciated. I'm about to take pictures once I have most of the materials ready. It's been hard to find copper tape here and the leds are two weeks away from being delivered.
Peace!
Jaya!
After some research, I decided to try a DIY project for a led lamp to use in my home grow. I don't want to sell anything, altough I'm quite the heavy user (Actually hoping to diminish my consumption by growing my own) so yeld is a factor, but not the main factor.
The principles of this project are:
Low cost (Energy consumption and materials)
Silent (Absolutely no coolers, only passive heat dissipation)
Low difficulty (I'm not that good with a soldering iron)
Reliable on flowering (Where most of the difficulty is, as I see it.)
Proper spacing (Might be me, but I find most brand-name led lamps stack the diodes too close together. Maybe this is not the best way. I'm thinking about 2 inches apart should be fine.)
I've settled with 1w chinese ebay leds because of the cost, so I'm basically looking at this:
All seeds are bagseed from weed acquired via different sources all across my country (Brazil). I'll number each seed and go all the way through seedlings. Maybe I'll spare the best male and the best female to have some seeds to continue experimenting with. I thought it could be fun to have a seedling race and document the whole life of each of the plants in a SOG-like system. Maybe we could bet on them like jockeys, and such. But that's obviously just a stoner thought. Right now I have about 30 viable seeds but I hope to try to germinate 50 of them, expecting about 25 to actually sprout (Bagseed, after all) and 12-18 females. Maybe this is a bit too optimistic, but I'll aim for that. The grow area is about 4 feet by 2.5 feet, under a kitchen table about 4,5 feet high. It has a metal structure underneath it that will act as a nice support for the lamp, so I can control the light height easily.
(Materials not acquired yet)
-Large aluminum tray to house the leds (Way cheaper than a reflector)
-Kapton tape and copper tape (as an alternative to wiring)
-Shower box rails cemented to the tray using artic silver (the rails are made of aluminum and much cheaper than heat dissipators)
(Already bought)
-90x 1w Leds from Ebay, brand unknown. (50 Red, 18 Deep Red, 4 White, 9 Royal Blue, 9 Blue.)All leds have a 120 degree viewing angle, except for the Deep Red ones which have a 140 degree angle.
- 5x Waterproof Drivers (Said to power 18 leds each)
I'm still waiting for the items to be delivered so this might be an early start for a journal. But I'll try, heh.
I know 5 drivers aren't the best option, but I didn't knew then. One welcome benefit is the ease to simply turn part of the red lights off during veg by shutting down one or two drivers (in order to save power during veg)
Now, the questions:
Do you think 90w is enough? I'm planning on adding more leds (Maybe 36 extra whites)right before flowering but this time I might acquire a proper driver instead of two extra drivers, p.ex.
What is the most viable solution, in your opinion?
The medium is something I'm unsure about: perlite hempy buckets, coco or soil? In any case, do you think a wick system (sub-irrigation) would work?
I'm trying to reutilize plastic (PET) soda bottles (2l and 2,5l) as pots and whatever else possible so any suggestions are very welcome.
Last but not least, am I missing something? Do you think this could work?
Thank you for reading, any comments will be much appreciated. I'm about to take pictures once I have most of the materials ready. It's been hard to find copper tape here and the leds are two weeks away from being delivered.
Peace!
Jaya!