so... obviously the series is good, but..!

Finally got my xpl V5s in the mail yesterday, after 6 weeks. Found some time to work on putting them in today and wrapping up the critiques on my "ACF1" lol putting the new Cool Whites in and putting on the rest of the relfectors. Got everything soldered back together and that last deep breath you take before seeing if it all works out. Well...kind of.



So the series is complete and over half the string would light up. K. But what the fuck? 3x 670 XPEs, 1x 3k AB, and 1x 6k XPL won't illuminate with the rest.

Calling my boys supe, positivity, and any others with some helpful insight to this simple mistake.

Things I have done:

-tested each individual emitter to make sure they didn't pop, I DID hear a click when I first turned it on. Never heard this any other time and doesn't do it now when I turn it on and off. All emitters still lit up with the test current from my multimeter, only one obviously I couldn't test was the AB

-Checked the connections that each emitter was lighting up solder point to solder point.

-tried dimming the drivers so they were maxed or drawn down to make sure my numbers weren't off in the spreadsheet with voltage.

-kicking it

-tossing it

-licking it

Etc.

One question I have is if one emitter IS blown, would that disrupt the string and cause a "black out" if wired in series unlike in parallel? (So I can eliminate that God awful option)

-second, can you harm drivers? I mean...Wtf???


@Positivity @SupraSPL @bicit @alesh

Almost every time that happens it's a bad connection somewhere

Check your positive and negatives?

First ones I would check closely would be where the string goes dead

Check the cxa too. It's easy to put the cob with polaritys reversed in the holder. The connections need to be fully seated also. Just because it goes in doesn't mean it's in good

One note.. You should really keep the wires on the stars insulated up to the solder point. If it grounds out on your heatsink you can lose the whole string.

Just snip a 1/8", get the insulation right against the solder

Just some ideas for the future. Reflectors look good on there, glad that worked out for you.

Would the whole string be "dead" if the polarity wasn't right though? I checked it but I'll look again. I'll go through and check all the solder connections too. Thank you brother.

One dead emitter would cut the string at that point. But if it lights up on the multimeter it should be fine

Scotch089 said:

Would the whole string be "dead" if the polarity wasn't right though? I checked it but I'll look again. I'll go through and check all the solder connections too. Thank you brother.

Click to expand...

Yea. I can't remember off hand if the whole string goes dead. It does seem like a led is dead, a pop is a good indicator of that. But if it lights up it should be fine

Good luck, been there many a times. Problem should be in the dead cluster somewhere

If you have a multimeter you can check for continuity between the solder point and heatsink. Sometimes a single copper strand could be touching down or as POS said jacket could be melted through or stripped to far down. If you have a a pair of LEDs with continuity to the heatsink, the current will travel that path instead of through the LEDs. That is very common with aluminum stars. Aiming for something like this:

Rather than this:


As far as burnt emmiters, I use 3 nearly dead AAAs to check each LED with direct current to the solder points.

We'll get it sorted, sweet build bro!

Bet one of those solders are grounding out..

That would explain the snap crackle pop

I had a copper strand ground out on my heatsink and it popped and shut the LED off, I clipped the strand (after shutting power off lol) moved all wires at the solder points to make sure. Fired it back up and haven't had an issue, I was using stiff wire so the strand was hard to spot, it was right up against the side of the LED and jacket wiring sticking straight down, as soon as I moved the LED a little it grounded out.

I had a similar issue a while back when I screwed stars to HS using metal washers. Of course it scraped insulation on the top of the stars and made electric contact with the HS. Solution was to replace metal washers with the plastic ones.

I as well have dealt with small shorts and monos. Using 10mm stars. 60 in series...took a while to find the short, but was just a little too much stripping of the insulation and was contacting the star's side and sink.

The light looks bad ass bro

Alright I got it guys. Thanks for the possibilities, got in there and soldered all the joints again and finally found one that wasn't connected quite enough. Didn't wiggle, but obviously it was the issue.

Got all my reflectors on and this bad boy is ready.

You all act like you haven't seen this before?! I remember feeling so flattered supra commented and said he loved the layout. Lol I guess so many DIYs come in and out of here though it's hard to keep things straight. Guess I'll have to make a name for this one



Figured I'd screen shot my sheet for the panel, can't link the actual document but thought some may want to see total driver loads, bins, draws before and after cooling/etc at different currents

I have the total efficiency of the panel written down somewhere for each current if people are interested as well.

Thanks for the help guys

It sounds like there was/is a current leak to the heat sink.

Even if it seems fixed, check the continuity between the solder pads of all the stars/cobs and the heat sink. Also, check the voltage of the heat sink by putting 1 probe on the heat sink and one on V-. Did you ground the heat sink? The only reason I can think a series connection only half lights is there's a leak through the heat sink. (skipping the rest of the chain because the heat sink is easier to go through)

Also, do not lick batteries or DC supplies over 9V. lol

Yea I grounded it back when I first built it but instead of running the green wire to the 3rd prong for some reason I mounted it to a screw on the heatsink. When I talked to you I moved it to the third prong. Everything but the fans are grounded, properly lol. I'll check the continuity and see if the sink is live.

I remember the basic layout. But didn't remember so many mono and cool white additions.

I like the spread sheets too.

Thanks buddy. My whole life I've fought fixation on the current thing on my mind whether it be music, building things, fixing the house, work, growing. And I finally decided one day... maybe this isn't a bad thing? Sure it can be... but when I delve in to something, I go all in and can really get into the details of what I want. So came the spreadsheets for each panel I make, part numbers, individual costs, etc. Just wish I could create spectral distribution graphs to see how close I am to my ultimate goal. Too much red, too little, you know...

I've always kept the same amount of each color since the original decision, trying to save some money and not change it up like Positivity, at least not so often at this point I need to make that money back in medicine, I don't deal, never will. But one harvest pays for the panel it was grown under, and maybe even then some, eh g? Lol give us an update Btw

But speaking to money, I had no intentions of replacing the xml2 U3s (top bin, cooler white than the xpls but not as efficient) BUT 2 of the 8 xml2s I ordered never worked so when I heard of them, I am too picky to have 2 of a different emitter and decided to replace them all and finish the panel. And I wanted to try the reflectors and see if there was any visible difference. The new deep red xpes. ..Yea. I wanted those. :}

Here's a shot of the first build, you can see the two xml2s I had that weren't working, don't remember if I put em in to finish the series instead of just wiring through but if not you can see where they are supposed to be on that left side. I think the reflectors make the monos stand out much more. I noticed that in the pic I took to trouble shoot the 4 emitters that wouldn't light up compared to the Finished picture.

You can see I moved the furthest cool whites out between two of the reds to help mixing with the reflectors equipped. I do enjoy the idea of cooler white light in the center with more stretch on the sides to create a kind of stadium/coliseum growth so the sides balance out the falloff of photons but honestly I don't know how much of a difference these stars are going to make. Just aesthetically appealing at this point. Ha sorry for rambling. Not too often I get to put it all on the table to the peeps I know get it. Wish our culture would just accept the shit already.

i think you'll enjoy the way that setup works. The only thing i'd caution is the 670nm. The best red effect i got was with 660nm. Think it was 652nm, the actual chloro peak. Just something to keep in mind if you aren't completely happy with the 670s.

Took me a while, but i'm just about done with experiments. ...yeah right...

Lol thanks pos, I do still have all the luxeons so that'd be an easy "experiment" (positivity laughs out loud, what the fuck that's no experiment!) See what the difference is in stretch/filling out.

I'm quite proud/excited about the build. The numbers I was getting off the apogee meter got me all giddy. It was really dumb luck hitting it as well as it came out. You know...spacing them out just enough the overlap does well...watts... all that was just a guesstimate.

What are yoy thinking you're gonna stick with P? Or what's the next round of tweaking, and what would you keep in if you WERE actually done?

Nothing too fancy, warm white and a little deep red. I don't think the cool white is a bad addittion at all, just not as important as deep red.

Gg's run with 4k is pretty badass though. As well as supras 3k of course. Lots of ways to get the job done. From my different spectrum runs i kinda like the way 2700k flowers so far. Something about the extra red just seems to make them stack a little nicer.

It all works. With all the different contributors we should have a good pool of info to draw from.