LED Lights Experiment

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

bobert

Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2006
Messages
6
Reaction score
1
First time ever growing. Plant is a white widow clone. Currently using 365 635nm high output leds (3000mcd). Power draw is 188mA at 117 volts for 22 watts of power and a whopping $11.56 per year in electricity at $.06/kWh. Red lights will be doubled soon and our blue lights still haven't arrived! We are attempting to recreate nasa's setup with 92% red and 8% blue. Current setup has cost $80 in electronic parts (leds, boards, etc). Guessing that enough lights for a full 3'-5' sized plant would run almost $200 total, no bulk rates, and building it yourself. Will keep ya posted tho.

The top light carries AC to the board, turns it into dc, and powers the lights.

The bottom board is connected to 2 wall adapter 12V DC power supplies (1 iomega and 1 linksys layin around) that combined actually put out 32 volts. This board is much less likely to shock you so its not covered.

So far the easiest way is rectified AC, more voltage, the DC board was a pain at the lower voltage.

Heres a picture of day 1:

day1.jpg


And a couple of day 13:
day13-2up.jpg


day13-3up.jpg
 
dude this is crazy looks awsome never seen or heard about any 1 tryin to grow with Led's
 
Whats going on bobert. This is going to be a very interesting grow and i cant wait to see the final product. Be sure to keep us updated with pics of course. :D
 
Very nice R&D project bobert, really looking forward to seeing the results you get. Is that the actual growth you got from 13 days exposure from your boards or did you use other types of lighting?do you rotate your lower board?

this is a definate "subscribed thread"...:D
 
Day 1 is the day i finished the first panel of lights and got a clone from the med club. Started off at 4". Added second panel of reds on day 8. Days 8-13 got about 3.5" total growth. It gets no other light other than some indirect sunlight whever the closet is open. There has been no direct sunlight since day 1.

Man that ledtronics is expensive! My current setup is a duplicate of the ledgrowlights.com without the blues (still in the mail). I was able to build their setup for around $100 (self built red with prebuilt blues) without the benefit of bulk purchasing and manufacturing and they are still selling it for $300 per kit.


Lower board does not get rotated yet. Plant is deffinately angling the leaves towards that board and the upper one. I think I'll have to approximately double the red lights by the time it gets around 18" to keep it going.

Everything you see is getting done on 22 Watts total, probably about 15 watts actually going to the LEDS
 
wow, thats awesome man. ive been wanting to see an LED grow. and here it is. cant wait to see the results.

oh you might want to check out this link. www.besthongkong.com they have some neat stuff at good prices.
 
Hey do you have a parts list handy for it? Resistor values, Diode types? Or even better a schematic?
 
that is a nice plant man. i wanna see its buds :D lights look kool
 
Hi-inten white and blue still hover in the $2 range up here..whats your cost?
 
besthongkong.com is a great place, shipping time is lacking tho ;)

best prices ive found so far are at www.hebeiltd.com.cn/?p=led.diode ...reds at 5 cents and blues at 7 or 11 cents or something. The blues are pretty much like radioshacks $4 singles. Its in china tho so there is a min $25 shipping fee so it is about the same price to go through like, besthongkong for blues/red or even jameco.com or digikey.com for reds.

Besthongkong sells 48 led high output blue round lights for 12 bucks a pop!

Current process for ac/dc was to connect 60/15 leds in series, power it, monitor current while adjusting a potentiometer, get correct current, disconnect and measure the potentiometer, and then put in the correct resistors. Almost every set has a slightly different resistor requirement. Im looking into current limiting diodes right now which may make it a lot easier/quicker. By the end of this i may write a guide for people.
 
bobert said:
Current process for ac/dc was to connect 60/15 leds in series, power it, monitor current while adjusting a potentiometer, get correct current, disconnect and measure the potentiometer, and then put in the correct resistors. Almost every set has a slightly different resistor requirement. Im looking into current limiting diodes right now which may make it a lot easier/quicker. By the end of this i may write a guide for people.

I'll assume you limited them to around 30ma each ,so you'd be pulling 1.4Ato1.8A/60LED?...
did you take into account the LED's angle when you mounted them on the board?
 
THEMEDIC said:
I'll assume you limited them to around 30ma each ,so you'd be pulling 1.4Ato1.8A/60LED?...
did you take into account the LED's angle when you mounted them on the board?

The mA rating is how much current you can draw through the led. Whether you have 1 led or 60, 20ma is the TOTAL being drawn through them.

Ok,heres the cool part. If you wanted to you could take one led rated at 1.9V and power it with a 12V supply and 1 resistor. The led would drop the voltage to 10.1. V=AR so 10.1/.02= 505ohms so now we have 1 led using 1.9*.02 + 10.1*.02 = 0.038W + .0202W for a total cost of .24 watts/led. Using 1 led/1 resistor in this setup would mean 86 watts for 360 lights.

Now lets say i chain 15 of them together and power it with 32 volts. 15*1.9 = 28.5 so at the end of the chain i have (32-38.5) 3.5 volts to work with. Now i have 15*1.9*.02 = .57 watts now 3.5/.02=175 ohms and 3.5*.02 = .07 watts for a total of .64 watts/15 lights

now 360 lights would be powered by 15.36 watts vs 86 watts for the same light output just by using less resistors.

The first board i made all the leds where flat mounted, 10x easier this way. Second board i tried to have them floating about .25" off the board so we could angle them different ways, kinda works but was an enormous hassle. Gonna stick to flat mounting for now.
 
thanks for the calc's bobert..nice job..I have the blue&whites 4V 30ma mounted at my cabin..@ .36watts/led I was looking at 130 watts for a 360 board..more than my battery system would of liked..sound system...you have brighten'd up my cabin..:)
 
daaaaaaaamn!...Welcome genius's..:eek:
I'm still tryin' to figure out how they get 'lectricity to run uphill.
 
bobert said:
!

Current process for ac/dc was to connect 60/15 leds in series, power it, monitor current while adjusting a potentiometer, get correct current, disconnect and measure the potentiometer, and then put in the correct resistors. Almost every set has a slightly different resistor requirement. Im looking into current limiting diodes right now which may make it a lot easier/quicker. By the end of this i may write a guide for people.

Have you tried looking into IC's to accomplish this for you. National Semi-conductor has a section on this.

http://www.national.com/appinfo/power/lighting.html
 
Hick said:
daaaaaaaamn!...Welcome genius's..:eek:
I'm still tryin' to figure out how they get 'lectricity to run uphill.

It does? Hell, I caint even make it fall outta the little tubes. Tried to see how it tastes once.

Won't be doin that again.

Hhahahaahahaha
 

Latest posts

Back
Top