Bridelux Thrive - Finally an LED Spectrum worth a Sh⇧T!!

[OneHitDone]

Thrive is Alive!
Received one strip with a defective sting of led's but the Rockstar customer service at Digikey already has a replacement in route

 

[OneHitDone]

Ok, I know this has been discussed a bit in a strip thread somewhere on this website but it is not easy to find linked specifically to Bridgelux Thrive Strips.
What are some common driver configurations being used to power these strips? The forward voltage seems a bit different than many strips on the market.

 

[cobshopgrow]

the usual 48V meanwells arent a bad fit for your 4 feet strips.
at 700mA f.e. you will be in the CC region at 43.7V.
with 8 strips this would be ca. 270W, so may check out a 320W 48V.
if you want to drive them harder then the next bigger one 480W pushing you above 1A each strip, ca. 1.3A, that quite high for non cooling allready btw.

some XLG drivers will be a nice fit for sure and there will be some 700 1500 or 2100B fiting.
a option if you want to save wiring and are ok with the voltage.
as you have 8 you need to stay with a even number, so 2 strips in series as a option, this way you can route the power so your + and - are on one side terminated.

its a bit up to you.

 

[OneHitDone]

the usual 48V meanwells arent a bad fit for your 4 feet strips.
at 700mA f.e. you will be in the CC region at 43.7V.
with 8 strips this would be ca. 270W, so may check out a 320W 48V.
if you want to drive them harder then the next bigger one 480W pushing you above 1A each strip, ca. 1.3A, that quite high for non cooling allready btw.

some XLG drivers will be a nice fit for sure and there will be some 700 1500 or 2100B fiting.
a option if you want to save wiring and are ok with the voltage.
as you have 8 you need to stay with a even number, so 2 strips in series as a option, this way you can route the power so your + and - are on one side terminated.

its a bit up to you.

With the 48V's you are talking about wiring the stripe in parallel?

 

[cobshopgrow]

yep, as far i see this could make sense.
otherwise decide for how many you want to put in series and say.
its really up to you, depends a bit on your wiring.

 

[OneHitDone]

yep, as far i see this could make sense.
otherwise decide for how many you want to put in series and say.
its really up to you, depends a bit on your wiring.

Do you have any opinion on the number of strips to run in series as far as how high the forward voltage starts to climb?

 

[MidnightSun72]

Do you have any opinion on the number of strips to run in series as far as how high the forward voltage starts to climb?

I'd keep the forward voltage under 300V. For 700ma this happens at 200ish watts. Or 6 strips. You'll start to have trouble finding wire rated for enough volts amd same thing the connectors on the boards etc are only rated for so much. I've seen both 60V and 300V.

I have hundreds of 4ft bridgelux strips running on drivers at 285V (267V actually used). No problems with connectors getting hot or even warm.

 

[cobshopgrow]

good point midnightsun, would be my max prob too, you have some clever setup there.

Do you have any opinion on the number of strips to run in series as far as how high the forward voltage starts to climb?

what wattage are you aiming for?
on the quick i prob would go with 2 or 4 in series depending on the needed wattage and avaiability of the drivers.

youre saying 2x4 right? so 8 square feet.
i have no feeling for the thrive, lumen per watt isnt great but they put out a lot left and right of the lux CIE curve, so PFFD may not bad i just know no number.

could be that you wont need more then a 240w driver there, but as i am unsure some reserve would be good prob.
i would prob buy a 320w driver and see, higher i wont go anyway without increasing the stripcount to 16.

 

[cobshopgrow]

could imagine a HLG-320H-C3500AB do the trick.
its max is 91V so we can use 2 in series and this 4 times in parallel with a max of 875mA each strip then.
a 320W driver with 48V do of course work in any case, you just need to wire all strips in parallel.
depends really on you and where you see a benefit for your build.

 

[OneHitDone]

Damn, not sure how this thread got 2 pages deep before I realized that I misspelled the title

 

[cobshopgrow]

google loves you for it,lol.

 

[OneHitDone]

could imagine a HLG-320H-C3500AB do the trick.
its max is 91V so we can use 2 in series and this 4 times in parallel with a max of 875mA each strip then.
a 320W driver with 48V do of course work in any case, you just need to wire all strips in parallel.
depends really on you and where you see a benefit for your build.

So is the whole "Thermal runaway" not really a concern with running parallel groups of series wired strips? Or at least we are somewhat protected in groups of 2.

Another topic is Dimming. A Dim to off dimming strategy is a must for me as this allows us to control the system completely with no timers or contactors.
Tying into this opens the topic of PWM - any thoughts on this vs dimming my amperage reduction?

 

[cobshopgrow]

the more is driven in parallel the higher the risk of a thermal runaway, theoretically.
practically its all less of a concern.
the strips, boards, all, themself use a mix of parallel and series allready, youre doing nothing else by your wiring.
there is no real sensefull way to drive a few thousands leds in series.
pratically you just encountered the theretical thermal runaway case with your broken leds on one strip you showed.
you will have quite some redundancy by using 4 groups, if one fail it will divide up on the other 3, latest when half your leds went out you should consider a repair.
btw. ive found these strips very reliable, yours is the first broken bridgelux i saw.

my hlg 320 driver dims to zero, so far i use just the usual 100k potentiometer.
he prob dim to zero with PWM too, at some point i will go the PWM route also.
there is no real benefit using one or the other but of course PWM give nice control options, my light channels still run on smartplugs (which does astonishingly well, have its kinks but i got a feeling for it).

 

[cobshopgrow]

btw. youre right that there arent tons of driver options, basically just the 48V and the above mentioned plus maybe the low voltage xlg 240, maybe one else find more options.
ive thought its more, but well as long there are options.
i just realised that bridgelux is giving voltages for hot and cold.
i went after cold, as you need it anyway to startup the panel, startup volage is always the highest, you cant go lower then this.
when it heats up resistance increase so voltage goes down, but they state 85C as hot, i never ever would reach this on my setup and you will be far below too.
my leds never heat up enough to cause such a big drop.
just be aware you wont get 320W, no big concern to me honestly also at 115V youre most efficient at 80% load, so its perfect.

 

[Horselover fat]

I'll be watching this. I grow with 3500k lm301b only and I'm very happy my light, but I'm interested in how you'll do.

 

[cobshopgrow]

thinking of it, there is also a hlg 42v version, which may work may not.
the AB types may do by pushing the Vo to the max, make it basically a regular 42V power supply this way if i am right, above the CC region.
this would be prob the only way to max out the driver, but maybe the plan dont work out.

 

[OneHitDone]

btw. youre right that there arent tons of driver options, basically just the 48V and the above mentioned plus maybe the low voltage xlg 240, maybe one else find more options.
ive thought its more, but well as long there are options.
i just realised that bridgelux is giving voltages for hot and cold.
i went after cold, as you need it anyway to startup the panel, startup volage is always the highest, you cant go lower then this.
when it heats up resistance increase so voltage goes down, but they state 85C as hot, i never ever would reach this on my setup and you will be far below too.
my leds never heat up enough to cause such a big drop.
just be aware you wont get 320W, no big concern to me honestly also at 115V youre most efficient at 80% load, so its perfect.

I was looking a bit at Invertronics also as I have some of their larger drivers on my purchased lights. The product line takes some serious research to understand and it seems most of the drivers can be programmed for different output currents etc. Great features for the professional but a bit overwhelming at first for the simple DIY people.
I went a much different route on the 2 builds with strips so far (1 LDD driver per strip), but have another 6 strips I plan to get up and running so want to fully understand all of the options

 

[cobshopgrow]

inventronics are very good, but have the drawback that you need their programming box.
also with the release of the AB meanwells and their overall lineup i dont see the sense for us, but would need to compare for each case.
how you power the LDD drivers?

 

[OneHitDone]

inventronics are very good, but have the drawback that you need their programming box.
also with the release of the AB meanwells and their overall lineup i dont see the sense for us, but would need to compare for each case.
how you power the LDD drivers?

48V Meanwell Power Supplies

 

[DukeFluke]

Point being - temperature and humidity being low or out of "ideal range" do not cause nutrient deficiencies with a complete electromagnetic spectrum lighting up the atmosphere

Yes they do.

In an indoor environment you can have an intense amount of light and a lack of heat at the rootzone. Those conditions aren't natural.

Give your plants high amounts of light and leave the pots cold and it won't matter what spectrum of light you've got above them.

The main point is: there's no real barometer for the performance of one strip vs another if the conditions aren't right for the control group which, in this case is all the 80-90 CRI stuff that's already out there. I personally can't see any difference so far in the health or appearance of the plants vs those grown under regular Blux strips. I haven't noticed it in my own room either with the more balanced spectrum vs flower based, or the higher CRI vs lower. Temps, humidity and intensity seem to dictate pretty much everything for me.