Passive cooled 3w DIY LED Halo

Hi Folks,

After much reading I decided to give building my own custom LED solution a go. I get really great light penetration with the HG 189-pro but since it uses 60 degree lenses coverage can be an issue. I have the 189 on a mover which really makes a difference but I wanted to take advantage of the led's true strength by placing leds strategically so that the entire plant is illuminated. What better way than to encircle the entire top of the plants with light? I designed and built the hydro setup in the pictures. You can see that I have a trellis frame integrated in the setup. I decided to use that to clamp the bars to. The long bars are 36". The short ones are 20".
Each long bar has 21 3w leds. Each short one has 12, for a total of 66 leds in the halo. Each bar is independently powered. I wired up a switch box so I can switch on or off each bar separately. The led colors I used contain cool and warm whites to round out the more targeted spectrum of the 189.
The total power use for the halo is 134 watts at the wall plug as measured with a Kill-A-Watt meter.

Ratios:
3000k white 12
6500k white 6
455nm blue 5
625nm red 5

The heat sinks are 60mm wide and 20mm tall with 8 corrugated fins. I was a little worried about heat but now that they have been running for several days I am confident that its all good. There seems to be enough air circulation in my grow room. They barely gets warm. Lets put it this way..If it was my cup of coffee I would want to heat it up before drinking.



Here are a few pics of the halo in service with and without the 189 and a couple of shots of some DNA Genetics Holy Grail Kush at about 6-1/2 weeks.
Note the bottom buds. They're rock hard.

Not sure if i agree that it's the best coverage you could get, but a cool idea! Would love to see its' effects alone - or maybe mounted even lower on the plant, solely to boost the "popcorn" buds while your overhead lighting does the main colas. Sweet DIY.

Time will tell... It's only been in service for days so far. My expectation is that I will get more light filling out the spaces that may not get fully lit by the main light as well as giving the plants a little wider spectral coverage.

The bars are short enough that I can mount or hang them anywhere from the bottom to the top of the plants . Right now they are angled in at roughly 45 degrees which seems to give pretty good coverage. Also the trellis is height adjustable from 20-36" so mounting them at the top as I have may be sufficient unless the plants get fairly tall. The plants in the picture are ~28" now.

Looks sweet... There must some other LED drivers that are not in the last picture, right? Do these drivers get very warm?

The drivers do get warm to the touch but not hot. I have been busy. Here's a picture of the latest setup at about a month into flower. I now have 4 levels of led bars surrounding the grow. The surrounding bars use a total of 347 watts when they're all lit.

wimpy69 said:

Looks sweet... There must some other LED drivers that are not in the last picture, right? Do these drivers get very warm?

Click to expand...

In the picture you refer to there are 4 drivers for the 4 top bars. 2 of them have black plastic housings. In the latest picture none of the drivers are pictured. There are 16 drivers in total. One for each bar. The two lower sets of bars are built with 1 watt Chinese Epistars mostly warm white and 660nm red with about 5% cool white and 3% blue all at 320-350ma. The top 2 bars are Luxeon Rebels from steves leds. The top bars have a touch more blue. Ratio is 39% 660nm, 39% 2700k, 11% 6000k, and 11% 470nm blue all driven at 650ma. I'd snap a picture of the many drivers but the lights are off at the moment and I'm pretty anal about not disturbing the dark in any way.

This is a pretty cool idea bruv, +rep for you! woooo...

But really, that is sweet. maybe make your srcog squares a little smaller, those diodes on the side will be able to go in a little ways.. no once you get towards the middle your foliage is gonna block all the center tops' branches, but you can just focus on the colas with those... I cant see in the pictures, do you have a central light up top?

You wont be able to train like a traditional scrog though... more fimming and guiding them to the squares than anything. Super Cool- but maybe 'thicken things up a bit.. '

Scotch089 said:

This is a pretty cool idea bruv, +rep for you! woooo...

But really, that is sweet. maybe make your srcog squares a little smaller, those diodes on the side will be able to go in a little ways.. no once you get towards the middle your foliage is gonna block all the center tops' branches, but you can just focus on the colas with those... I cant see in the pictures, do you have a central light up top?

You wont be able to train like a traditional scrog though... more fimming and guiding them to the squares than anything. Super Cool- but maybe 'thicken things up a bit.. '

Click to expand...

I do have a top light. It's a Hydrogrow 189x-pro and it's on a light rail mover to spread the love. The reason it looks a little thin in the photo is because I had just removed leaves to get more light to more buds. I don't have a photo of the mature crop but it did bulk up significantly in the last 4+ weeks of its life. Defoliation is an old habit I developed for using LED's but now I have less need for that. Also, I tried a screen with smaller holes but found that I like the 4.5" size just for the flexibility it gives me in training. I do use fimming only to keep the canopy even.

great minds think alike...
I recently used some 6500k 5050 led strips to achieve a similar effect in my veg cabinet.
i ended up using 2 halos with some pretty good results
side buds are double their normal size so far i'm diggin it

In my tent I've noticed something kinda strange. Popcorn buds that receive light from supplemental side lighting panels are very small, yet frosty. Popcorn buds that don't really see the supplemental panels (almost all light is coming from my over head spot light penetrating the canopy) are larger and hairier, yet not very frosty.

I realize my situation is a little different than yours since my supplemental panels are Red/Blue/White and my over head light is ~2700k, but do you guys think side lighting is 100% worth it since the plant seems to have different hormonal responses to light quality lower on the plant?

Maybe lower buds respond differently to different colors of light, too. Red and Blue might be best for the colas, but perhaps Orange/Yellow is best for under canopy yield?

mmmmbrownies said:

great minds think alike...<br>
I recently used some 6500k 5050 led strips to achieve a similar effect in my veg cabinet.<br>
i ended up using 2 halos with some pretty good results <br>
side buds are double their normal size so far i'm diggin it <img src="https://www.rollitup.org/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif" border="0" alt="" title="Very Happy" smilieid="3" class="inlineimg">

Click to expand...

<br><br>

I've seriously considered 5050 strips too. It's a good solution for side lighting. I had some eBay 50w square panels I used for side lighting but the spectrum was only red and blue and the shape was all wrong for my space. They did help so I just took it further by making a shape that works for me with much higher output diodes to boot. I love how adjustable they are and how they fatten up even the lowest buds. It's more like a light chamber now than the halo it began as with the light coming from everywhere. I like to tell people my bottoms look like tops!

Bumping Spheda said:

In my tent I've noticed something kinda strange. Popcorn buds that receive light from supplemental side lighting panels are very small, yet frosty. Popcorn buds that don't really see the supplemental panels (almost all light is coming from my over head spot light penetrating the canopy) are larger and hairier, yet not very frosty.

I realize my situation is a little different than yours since my supplemental panels are Red/Blue/White and my over head light is ~2700k, but do you guys think side lighting is 100% worth it since the plant seems to have different hormonal responses to light quality lower on the plant?

Maybe lower buds respond differently to different colors of light, too. Red and Blue might be best for the colas, but perhaps Orange/Yellow is best for under canopy yield?

Click to expand...

Getting red light to the lower part of the plant seems to make some nice nugs for me. It's the very reason why the lower 2 sets of my side light bars use mostly 3000k and 660nm in equal amounts with a pretty small amount (~3%) of blue and 6500k (5%). As I understand it, the lower parts of the plants receive red light as natural sunlight passes through the canopy. I thought the best way to emulate that was to provide as close to that as possible. My lower buds are both chunky and frosty. They're not as big as the top buds but they are good and viable unlike what I got with no or lamer side lighting.

Here are a few pics of the latest. It's two Kosher Kush girls with about 3 weeks left to go. I expect 20-30% more swell in the buds by the big day. The overhead light is on a mover. I like to keep it real close and keep it moving which gives me super intensity the plant can handle. I did get one whitecap which is an indication of too much light but only because the 1 bud is uniquely located to get light almost all the time. The little ones are close to the flip under my custom 1w veg light I made just for this purpose.

just love those side lights.. planning to supplement my closet with some kind of that light to.. nice buds.

whats the Price on those? maybe got a link?

Green in The Garden said:

just love those side lights.. planning to supplement my closet with some kind of that light to.. nice buds.

whats the Price on those? maybe got a link?

Click to expand...

The side lighting is all home made. The top two rows are all Luxeon ES leds with a small number of 3000k Cree XTEs all running at ~650ma. The bottom two rows are Chinese Epistar leds running at 350ma. As far as cost goes it wasn't cheap but then these are custom made. For me, the joy of creating exactly what I need and watching it work is rewarding.

Where did you source the heat sinks? It looks like you have 3 different versions, I'm especialy interested in the one on the bottom, is that the 60mm wide one? Do they come in a given length, can they be cut & how much do they weigh? Still happy with them?

lighterup said:

Where did you source the heat sinks? It looks like you have 3 different versions, I'm especialy interested in the one on the bottom, is that the 60mm wide one? Do they come in a given length, can they be cut & how much do they weigh? Still happy with them?

Click to expand...

The second and bottom rows are 25mm wide x 10mm high. The long bars are 90cm, short ones 50cm. The third and top rows are cut from several 120mm x 90cm x 20mm high heatsinks. All of the heatsinks were bought off ebay. I am pretty happy with them as they get warm but not hot. I do have to keep air moving in the room but not much more than I would provide for normal circulation. If I were building a light today I would buy heatsinks here http://www.heatsinkusa.com/ They offer a great assortment of widths and heights cut to length and they ship worldwide. I discovered them after I had already bought the heatsinks I have.

Hey man, that's a cool setup. Would you use something like this http://www.aliexpress.com/item/3W-high-power-LED-PCB-200-220lm-easy-installation/713498607.html for supplemental lighting? I'm looking to buy some epistar 3w's from shops at aliexpress, there seem to be a lot of these going around.

Would you use them?

ak84 said:

Hey man, that's a cool setup. Would you use something like this http://www.aliexpress.com/item/3W-high-power-LED-PCB-200-220lm-easy-installation/713498607.html for supplemental lighting? I'm looking to buy some epistar 3w's from shops at aliexpress, there seem to be a lot of these going around.

Would you use them?

Click to expand...

I would use them especially if it's your first build. $68 is about what 20 Cree XTE or Luxeon ES would run. Those more efficient leds aren't 5x more efficient than the Epistars. More like 10%, maybe a bit more at equivalent amperage but not 500%. So, without breaking the bank, those 'cheap' Epistars still do the trick pretty well. The bottom two strings of leds in my setup are all 1 watt Epistars.