Rocket Souls led lab

[Rocket Soul]

Hey my name is Rocket Soul and im an addict. Led DIY is my thing cant get over that feeling when you first flipp the switch on your own home built light and see a thousand points of blinding light.

Anyway : i thought id put some documentation of some strips ive had built and testing it all out at a buddy of mines grow.
Spec : 408 warm white high cri leds and 12 monos - here all reds though theres a little difference in spectrum - this is basically what i wanna test out.

Got the last few strips soldered up and working, everything is on a 320 driver.

Lux meter gives:

Max 75000 lux around 15cm / 6" from the light. With conversion factor from my supplier i get :

1350ish ppfd from this config, nice. Once up these will run higher power levels but over double the area : 640w possible over a 4x4 but with some extra blue/uv/veg on tap.

Strips remain just a bit warm to the touch after this half hour or so, all looks good and more or less what i hoped for. Not shafted at least.
RS

 

[Laughing Grass]

Where do you get your strips?

 

[curious2garden]

Hey my name is Rocket Soul and im an addict. Led DIY is my thing cant get over that feeling when you first flipp the switch on your own home built light and see a thousand points of blinding light.

Anyway : i thought id put some documentation of some strips ive had built and testing it all out at a buddy of mines grow.
Spec : 408 warm white high cri leds and 12 monos - here all reds though theres a little difference in spectrum - this is basically what i wanna test out.
View attachment 13505
Got the last few strips soldered up and working, everything is on a 320 driver.

Lux meter gives:
View attachment 13506
Max 75000 lux around 15cm / 6" from the light. With conversion factor from my supplier i get :
View attachment 13507

1350ish ppfd from this config, nice. Once up these will run higher power levels but over double the area : 640w possible over a 4x4 but with some extra blue/uv/veg on tap.

Strips remain just a bit warm to the touch after this half hour or so, all looks good and more or less what i hoped for. Not shafted at least.
RS

Rocket! I am so glad you found us Welcome aboard!

 

[Rocket Soul]

Where do you get your strips?

Ive dabbled extensively in the alibubbers. Used a separate supplier and fabricator- that way i can get more reliable testing since the fabricator has no horse in the race over the led makers efficiency. White diodes come from digikey as far as I understand.

 

[Thurston]

Are your designing your own PCB layout?

 

[Laughing Grass]

Ive dabbled extensively in the alibubbers. Used a separate supplier and fabricator- that way i can get more reliable trating simce the fabricator has no horse in the race over the led makers efficiency. White diodes come from digikey as far as I understand.

Oh so you're fully designing the strip. That's wild. I was thinking like buying strips from digikey.

 

[curious2garden]

Are your designing your own PCB layout?

He and Prawn, taught me the use of my physics optics classes

PS hated it in school, love it over plants ;D

 

[Thurston]

I have some experience with PCB design using Gerber images. Been awhile though.

I see more research on grow light spectrums is needed on my part.

Like I need another task added to my list. Maybe someday after my list shrinks a bit. Always curious though and observation spurs questions.

Such as, why are the different spectrum diodes always grouped together? Would it not be more efficient (impact more of the plants surface) if they were evenly dispersed with the white diodes?

 

[Rocket Soul]

Are your designing your own PCB layout?

I did the string design but i get their engineers to do the gerber files and the actual layout. It is almost the same as the original Diablo board: 17s6p 2835 white diodes + 3 monos in cree 3535. 4 clusters. If you check the pics youll also see 3 empty spaces for standardised led star pcbs, for customization. You can stick any old ledstar on top of the pcb: uv, far red, infrared, what ever is your flavor, and wire them up separately. This way you dont need separate bars for this, you can use any ledstar out there, and it makes your extra diodes replaceable by yourself: you dont have to dingy a whole strip just cuz one of the uv diodes going out.

 

[Rocket Soul]

I have some experience with PCB design using Gerber images. Been awhile though.

I see more research on grow light spectrums is needed on my part.

Like I need another task added to my list. Maybe someday after my list shrinks a bit. Always curious though and observation spurs questions.

Its easy enough to do, you just need to have space for separate lighting over two trays in your grow space. The problem is finding two growlights in todays market with different enough spectrums for the comparison to give enough difference to notice.
Grow clones under your two lights and take notes. Try again with different clones and rinse repeat.
There is some things you can read about on forums and science papers bit kn the end i recon you have to see and smell it yourself.

Such as, why are the different spectrum diodes always grouped together? Would it not be more efficient (impact more of the plants surface) if they were evenly dispersed with the white diodes?

This has to do with the difference in current and price point between monos and whites.
Best efficiency whites are midpowers which have a nominal current of 65mA, best monos are usually in cree 3535 (some osrams 3030 are also great) which usually have nominal +350mA. So you have to figure out how to make a design which channels 6 parallel string of whites into one string of monos; in this case 3 in series. Unless the strips is 6 diodes across it gets very hard to spread it out perfectly. With boards it can be done better cause everything is closer, smaller pcb foot print.

 

[Rocket Soul]

Heres some spectrum shots:
2700k R90 Cri + 3x660 :

Ive grown with this or something extremely similar before and it works well though so e genetics have been a bit wonky. With a little uv added it worked wonders. The "test variable" for this is red levels and efficiency: of all the setups i did for this test this would be the most photon efficient.

Second runner up: 2700k 90 cri- mix R90 and S90 narrowband +660+680x2.

Similar total red supplement and a similar amount of "high reds"/+650nm reds which should result in a similar activation of the phytochrome. Only that ive spread it out a litttle more over both 660 and 680nm. I was going to go for only 680 but took some advice from a friend and scaled it back; excessive 680 may be quite stretch inducing. Why even mess around with 680? In part cause it seems to have a great importance in horti science, it seems to be one of the best absorbed wavelengths by the leaf, 680/730 was the most effective wavelength combo measured for the Emmerson effect and from some limited test we made in the old grow where the smells just came out different: this gassy, volatile terpentine character of smell ive not really had on any led grow before.
Theres some other peaks aswell here due to S90 whites which have a strange spikey spectrum together with some extra green.
Test variable on this second spectrum is spreading out the red sup more towards the end of the par range, adding 680nm.
Both conditions have fairly similar levels of +650nm reds.

 

[DarkWeb]

 

[Rocket Soul]

Oh so you're fully designing the strip. That's wild. I was thinking like buying strips from digikey.

Ive been down that road before and its usually quite hard to get exactly what you want, especially if you wanna bring in monos. I also wanted the custom ledstar addon feature so i decided to try it out. At first i was looking at boards but they seem to have run out of fashion so i ended up going for strips.
Dealing with china can be a challenge, theres always language barriers but if you find people that you can work with it isnt so bad. Even so i had a few surprises when i finally took delivery.

If you ever need help with diy feel free to ask however nowadays there isnt really any savings in it - but it can still be worth it if you have a special sized or shaped space or want some features not available or just for the hell of it - what you can build you can repair and it keeps your light from leaving the grow.

 

[Rocket Soul]

Got my alu profiles paid for, next week i can start drilling and mounting the strips.

Mono diodes for the 3 slots/blue chanel is getting ordered but as always with alibubbers theres the chinese new year, it falls on slightly different dates every year but ALWAYS falls on dates when you need to order, thanks to good old Murphy.

The blue channel will be a mix of 460/420/400/365/6500k white - i will need a bit of that green in the 6500k for veg/early flower.

 

[Rocket Soul]

Finally build day, got some drilling and mounting to do and then to evaluate the sinking capacity of the profiles. Im betting 60w should be ok but 80w may be a bit too hot for my liking. Lets see how it works out

 

[Rocket Soul]

I got a couple of empty pcbs to use as a guide for drilling. This makes for such an easier process drilling than marking holes and then drilling, though i wouldnt recommend it on strips with leds on them as theres lots of nasty shavings.

3mm holes/3M screws and nuts.

Halfway there and living on a prayer.

I got My cousin Vinny on to pass the time while screwing and fastening nuts. They were almost acquitted by the time i got done with 12 strips.

4 are sitting on a 320 drive for thermal testing and looking quite good for the now, not very warm at all. Ill get pics later

 

[Rocket Soul]

My china diode supplier should be back from chinese new year today so hoping to finalize my order quickly and get it all sent to location. In a bit of a time crunch cause i need to go to see my fam and do some work in Scando in the ned of march.

 

[curious2garden]

View attachment 13864
I got a couple of empty pcbs to use as a guide for drilling. This makes for such an easier process drilling than marking holes and then drilling, though i wouldnt recommend it on strips with leds on them as theres lots of nasty shavings.

3mm holes/3M screws and nuts.
View attachment 13865
Halfway there and living on a prayer.

I got My cousin Vinny on to pass the time while screwing and fastening nuts. They were almost acquitted by the time i got done with 12 strips.

4 are sitting on a 320 drive for thermal testing and looking quite good for the now, not very warm at all. Ill get pics later

Was there any better part of the movie then Marisa Tomei's testimony LOL

Gorgeous work

 

[Rocket Soul]

After a few delays in china the diodes are finally shipping to my buddies place and should (crossing my fingers like crazy) arrive on tuesday, im there on monday night hopefully.

Looking forwards to building and first time meeting up with my buddy IRL.

 

[Rocket Soul]

Build day!

We started out with making the frame, getting the lateral supports attached:

Then fixed two of the strips in the middle for less bounciness over the diagonal.
Then attached the rest of the strips. Centre gap is slightly bigger to minimize hotspotting