Aussie High Lights – we're official

Bungalow

Well-Known Member
and this is why I chose your boards for my first diy build. I had been eyeing the optisolis spectrums, but was intimidated into diving into a strip build from scratch as a first go round. your boards offered me exactly what I was looking for. something different from my 80 cri cob lights, but maintaining a very simple build with a single driver and a couple wires. could not have been easier and I am not the most handy person when it comes to building anything.

i wish you guys the best and cant wait to see where you all go from here with the new products.
I was in the exact same situation.
@Grow Lights Australia was very helpful in finding the right driver and wiring.
Looking forward to seeing you guys grow!
 

SSGrower

Well-Known Member
Looks colourful mate. Did you give the tent a good wipe down before you stuck all those LEDs on? :roll:

For those wondering, those little sticky LEDs are called "Buddies" and they are a new product by LED Teknik that we're hoping to sell soon. I'll post another thread with all the specs when they're ready to go. I think LED Teknik has given them out to a few growers first to see how they go.
Give teknik my best, wish he coulda stuck around.
 

Prawn Connery

Well-Known Member
Looks colourful mate. Did you give the tent a good wipe down before you stuck all those LEDs on? :roll:

For those wondering, those little sticky LEDs are called "Buddies" and they are a new product by LED Teknik that we're hoping to sell soon. I'll post another thread with all the specs when they're ready to go. I think LED Teknik has given them out to a few growers first to see how they go.
Nah mate, I just stuck em on. Teknik gave some test strings out and told everyone to get creative with them, so I did the simplest thing I could and stuck them to the side of the tent, half-way up. The LEDs have 3M double sided tape on them and they're really sticky. I tried to pull one off and it stuck to the tent and tore half the tape off the LED. This will be a good test to see how long they last in a tent and how they interact with short (indica) and tall (sativa) plants.

IMG_2381.JPG
 

Humple

Well-Known Member
Nah mate, I just stuck em on. Teknik gave some test strings out and told everyone to get creative with them, so I did the simplest thing I could and stuck them to the side of the tent, half-way up. The LEDs have 3M double sided tape on them and they're really sticky. I tried to pull one off and it stuck to the tent and tore half the tape off the LED. This will be a good test to see how long they last in a tent and how they interact with short (indica) and tall (sativa) plants.

View attachment 4478483
Spectrums and output?
 

Prawn Connery

Well-Known Member
Here you go. I took these with my hand-held spectrometer. @Grow Lights Australia might have some official tests from LED Teknik, but I haven't seen them yet so I'm not sure how they are in terms of efficiency. I do know they have a diffuser lens on them, so the light spread is a bit wider than normal. I'll ask GLA to post the results if he has them. I've added 60W of Buddies (four strings; two red, two white) to my tent, which brings the total power up to about 400W including the High Light boards. They only just went in, so probably won't make much difference to this grow, but the next one should be interesting.

So each strong has 20 LEDs spaced 10cm apart (2m total length) and they draw about .72W each for a total of just under 15W. They use cheap constant voltage (24V) Osram drivers.

Phosphor-coated red
original-3.png

4000K CRI95
original-4.png

Combined spectrum 1:1
original-2.png
 

diggs99

Well-Known Member
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wietefras

Well-Known Member
That's pretty poor efficacy though?

The point is to combine that vegetative phase light with the extra reds to make it work both in VEG and Boom?
 

welight

Well-Known Member
That's pretty poor efficacy though?

The point is to combine that vegetative phase light with the extra reds to make it work both in VEG and Boom?
I think you need to think about those numbers as System Eff, the buddy has its own current limiting system so they operate off 24v CV drivers and more importantly they have a build in 160 degree secondary optic which while providing great light distribution has some inherent losses. The benefit is of course their good to go right out of the pack, no heatsink required, IP68, can be placed pretty much anywhere
cheers
 

Smoky Man

Member

Hey Man, look those results testing Nichia. Its looks like the 5000k spectrum has the same red colors of 3000k, with a large additional blue and maybe near UV. Why did you use 2700k ?
 
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Grow Lights Australia

Well-Known Member
That's pretty poor efficacy though?

The point is to combine that vegetative phase light with the extra reds to make it work both in VEG and Boom?
As Cutter explained, the LEDs are fully encased in an IP68 housing with a diffuser lens, so there are inherent losses associated with the trade-off of being fully waterproof. As the Buddies are not intended to be primary lighting, 2+ umol/j system efficiency for under-canopy lighting is still better than HID and the wide beam angle allows the plants to grow into the LEDs, minimising wall losses. Of course it depends on how you mount them.

I'm not quite sure what your second question is. If you are asking can each string be powered by separate drivers with separate timers, then the answer is yes. What growers do with each string is entirely up to them. Some growers will want to veg and bloom in the same tent or area. Some, like @Prawn Connery, have separate veg and bloom areas. It appears he has matched the CRI95 4000K with the PC Red to make a combined flowering spectrum. You would have to ask him. I believe other growers who are trialling these are doing something similar. My personal opinion is that the 4000K CRI95 version is already a nice spectrum and as far as under-canopy lighting goes maybe you don't want to induce any more shade avoidance by using lots of deep red and far red. But that is why Teknik gave these to other growers to trial to see how they would perform. The PC red could also be used as supplemental red lighting for those who are running CRI80 3000K or 3500K strips or boards. They are not the most efficient for that use but it is really up to the grower's imagination as it's all about how flexible Buddies are.

I do need to point out that the report above for the PC Red is not a Buddie. That was my mistake, I should have realised from looking at the beam angle that it is not a Buddie. I will leave the report up, as it is still interesting to see the spectrum which I believe is the same, but I'll just repeat again that it is not a Buddie.
 

grisbi

Well-Known Member
Nah mate, I just stuck em on. Teknik gave some test strings out and told everyone to get creative with them, so I did the simplest thing I could and stuck them to the side of the tent, half-way up. The LEDs have 3M double sided tape on them and they're really sticky. I tried to pull one off and it stuck to the tent and tore half the tape off the LED. This will be a good test to see how long they last in a tent and how they interact with short (indica) and tall (sativa) plants.

View attachment 4478483
find that solution pretty amazing, solve loooot of probleme of side led stripping, ip 67 , no heat problem ( plant can be on them)
can i buy some! :D
 

Grow Lights Australia

Well-Known Member

Hey Man, look those results testing Nichia. Its looks like the 5000k spectrum has the same red colors of 3000k, with a large additional blue and maybe near UV. Why did you use 2700k ?
The Nichia Optisolis use two different epis: a 450nm pump for 2700-4000K, and a 420nm pump for 5000+K.

I'm not sure how you are reading those spectral graphs but there is a huge difference in the ratio or red:blue comparing 3000K Optisolis to 5000K. We use 2700K Optisolis to supplement red from 620nm onwards, peaking at 660nm. The Optisolis are not as efficient as CRI90 LEDs, so that is why the main LEDs on the board are Nichia V3F1 CRI90 2700K. We get good flux bins from Nichia that puts those LEDs at around 2.75 umol/j (which is quite high for a 2700K CRI90 mid-power LED).

There are three reasons we did not use the 420nm pump Nichia Optisolis for near-UV. The first is they are only rated at 100mA, so we would have needed to use a disproportionate number of them. They are expensive and even less efficient than the Optisolis 2700K, so that is the second reason. The third reason is because the Seoul Semiconductor "Sunlike" LEDs we use are rated at 150mA and have a 415nm pump, which is deeper into the near-UV spectrum and includes some UVA.

When we first started trialling the Sunlike LEDs, they were a 405nm pump, which is exactly what we wanted. However, between the test board and the production board Seoul Semiconductor changed the LED from 405nm to 415nm to make them more efficient. As you can see below, this made a slight difference to the spectra of the test board and the production board. Look at the near-UV and UVA range.

Test Board
Test Board.png

Production Board
Production Board.png
 

Grow Lights Australia

Well-Known Member
find that solution pretty amazing, solve loooot of probleme of side led stripping, ip 67 , no heat problem ( plant can be on them)
can i buy some! :D
We will be selling these when they are made available. You can also buy them direct from LED Teknik and I can't speak for @welight (Cutter) but maybe he will be selling them too? I'm not sure yet when they will be fully available, but probably within the next month or two. I think Teknik just wanted to get some results back first and trial them in the field before releasing them. He has been working on them a long time.
 

grisbi

Well-Known Member
We will be selling these when they are made available. You can also buy them direct from LED Teknik and I can't speak for @welight (Cutter) but maybe he will be selling them too? I'm not sure yet when they will be fully available, but probably within the next month or two. I think Teknik just wanted to get some results back first and trial them in the field before releasing them. He has been working on them a long time.
ok thank you sir, im gonna ask to teknik and welight, have already bought lot of solstrip ^^
 
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