Build Your Own LED Array

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Man building these are easy. If everyone is really nice to me I might make a DIY:D. I've built a few of these.
 
Cool stuff but the prices have come down enough that I just buy them. Last one I got is rockin it at we speak. Plants love it.
 
That is a very good read. It gave me flashbacks to my electronics engineering classes. :D

All that stuff used there for making the LED arrays could be bought at Radio Shack at one time but now it has to be ordered online as they quit carrying that stuff for the most part.

If you are tech savvy at all, doing those builds is a blast. I did a very similar thing to build "moonlight" arrays for my 55gal fish tank. But instead of using a circuit board, because of the simplicity of my needs, I was able to just mount everything into the plastic covers of my hoods. They worked great for several years until I had to replace the hoods. :)
 
It's waaaaayyyy cheaper to build one.

I would have to agree with you my friend not to mention you'll get a lot better quality I don't know much about this stuff but what I have learned in this last little bit is you're definitely better to build one like you said Plus you can get a lot better coverage instead of A store bought one beams the light and one Derakhshan where you can get full coverage by spreading it out on your custom built one
 
Here's a 4200k(or 4500k...can't remember) with specific spectrums from the blue range added...can't remember the nanometers either:/. I guess this can be considered a super veg bulb. These plants are growing under t5 just wanted to show off how bright led is at 33w using 11 3w diodes.

Interestingly enough I've never actually used these for anything. I just made them, turned them on, thought to myself, "Oh cool! It works!", then kind of put them away. It wasn't until I returned to the forums that I realized that people actually use these now lmao.

View attachment 20161202_134646.jpg
 
That is a very good read. It gave me flashbacks to my electronics engineering classes. :D

All that stuff used there for making the LED arrays could be bought at Radio Shack at one time but now it has to be ordered online as they quit carrying that stuff for the most part.

If you are tech savvy at all, doing those builds is a blast. I did a very similar thing to build "moonlight" arrays for my 55gal fish tank. But instead of using a circuit board, because of the simplicity of my needs, I was able to just mount everything into the plastic covers of my hoods. They worked great for several years until I had to replace the hoods. :)
You don't even have to be tech savvy to build these. I'm an idiot so if I can do it...:D. It's crazily easy.

You get any pics before you replaced it?
 
I would have to agree with you my friend not to mention you'll get a lot better quality I don't know much about this stuff but what I have learned in this last little bit is you're definitely better to build one like you said Plus you can get a lot better coverage instead of A store bought one beams the light and one Derakhshan where you can get full coverage by spreading it out on your custom built one

Yup. Just need a plant spectrum chart and you can pick the nanometers you want, you can pick the diodes layout yourself, make them as small or large as you want to. Totally customise your lights spectrum and it's cheap.
 
Seems the light in the above post does have a couple 3000k diodes. So it's more of a full spec with added blue.
 
Sorry I didn't ever take any pics of it. It was very simple. I had 2 white and 2 blue leds with little screw-in led mounts that I mounted to the plastic in each of the hoods. I bought a 6v 300ma plug in power supply. I mounted small push button switches on top of the hoods so that I could switch them off and on. I used the same formula for figuring my resistors. I mounted a small terminal strip inside each hood and made all my connections through those (rather than using any boards). It was fairly crude but for my purpose it worked out really well.

I think I am going to build a couple of these in strip lighting to hang with my HPS lights in my flower space to see if I can increase resin production in my plants.
 
This is awesome i'm going to sit back watch and pay close attention to what you guys say maybe somehow I can understand this LED business I watched a few videos for me putting it together part will be easy for me but I just don't understand all the different LED and drivers to choose from. :48:
 
Sorry I didn't ever take any pics of it. It was very simple. I had 2 white and 2 blue leds with little screw-in led mounts that I mounted to the plastic in each of the hoods. I bought a 6v 300ma plug in power supply. I mounted small push button switches on top of the hoods so that I could switch them off and on. I used the same formula for figuring my resistors. I mounted a small terminal strip inside each hood and made all my connections through those (rather than using any boards). It was fairly crude but for my purpose it worked out really well.

I think I am going to build a couple of these in strip lighting to hang with my HPS lights in my flower space to see if I can increase resin production in my plants.

You don't even have to worry about resistors now. You just connect your leds to the driver, connect the driver to the power supply and you're golden. Does require a lil soldering but a novice could do it.
 
Sorry I didn't ever take any pics of it. It was very simple. I had 2 white and 2 blue leds with little screw-in led mounts that I mounted to the plastic in each of the hoods. I bought a 6v 300ma plug in power supply. I mounted small push button switches on top of the hoods so that I could switch them off and on. I used the same formula for figuring my resistors. I mounted a small terminal strip inside each hood and made all my connections through those (rather than using any boards). It was fairly crude but for my purpose it worked out really well.

I think I am going to build a couple of these in strip lighting to hang with my HPS lights in my flower space to see if I can increase resin production in my plants.

Thats a good idea Hammy. You could build the Leds to fit around your Hps anyway ya wanted too.
I want to do a grow with HOT5s and LEDS.
 
This is awesome i'm going to sit back watch and pay close attention to what you guys say maybe somehow I can understand this LED business I watched a few videos for me putting it together part will be easy for me but I just don't understand all the different LED and drivers to choose from. :48:

Drivers are really simple. The one I have running the 33w light is rated for 12x 3w leds. I never go with the max amount of leds because the drivers seem to only have a lil over 35w max in reality. I chose 3w diodes because I wanted to keep things as cheap as possible. So 3w diodes with a 36w driver minus a diode because the drivers aren't really 36w and I had enough power for 11 diodes.

Searching on eBay makes it simple. If you want to use 3w diodes and make a 36w light just type in 12x 3w led driver-

http://m.ebay.com/itm/Water-Resista...265V-to-25-40V-600mA-/231260897825?nav=SEARCH
 
This might help some.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlM5uvO7sao[/ame]
 

This guys pretty good I like watching him he gives good explanations and show step-by-step but like I said I still don't know what the hell I'm talking about I think when it comes time for me to start building my lights I'll just ask you guys to let me no what to order to make sure I get the right ones
 
I'll do a how to tomorrow. At work atm...off tomorrow. I'll even throw up pics.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top