Cheapo DIY Chinese LED grow. 200w

[FranJan]

Perfect. I really didn't think you could get your hands on them. You the (wo)man! And you're right to take their claims with a grain of salt .

See that 600-700nm area. Output seems weak to me and the target peak you would want for flowering is low for both IMHO. The cool must have a pretty good CRI, which I like because cooling problems can lower your CRI and thus change the LEDs spectral outputs and from what I read higher CRIs will keep their proper outputs when heating problems arise. The warm is way too shifted to yellow for my tastes but what's interesting is if you overdrive it it may increase it's outputs and peaks in the red spectrum. I guess that could be asking for trouble with array type lights and without the proper equipment you'd be guessing or having to wait on your plants to tell you what's up, which I don't like. I believe this, along with what you, ( I'm battling the heat thing too), and polyacturus stated are all conspiring to hold this grow back. The problem with most arrays, and most LEDs for that matter, is when it comes to growing nobody asks the plant if the light is any good . They build these lights for people, so the average array is always going to have too much green, which sucks for us. And I'm a little wary of the 630 and 660 arrays at the moment to buy one. But that's just my 2 cents. Good Luck and Stay Frosty!

 

[Gastanker]

Perfect. I really didn't think you could get your hands on them. You the (wo)man! And you're right to take their claims with a grain of salt .

See that 600-700nm area. Output seems weak to me and the target peak you would want for flowering is low for both IMHO. The cool must have a pretty good CRI, which I like because cooling problems can lower your CRI and thus change the LEDs spectral outputs and from what I read higher CRIs will keep their proper outputs when heating problems arise. The warm is way too shifted to yellow for my tastes but what's interesting is if you overdrive it it may increase it's outputs and peaks in the red spectrum. I guess that could be asking for trouble with array type lights and without the proper equipment you'd be guessing or having to wait on your plants to tell you what's up, which I don't like. I believe this, along with what you, ( I'm battling the heat thing too), and polyacturus stated are all conspiring to hold this grow back. The problem with most arrays, and most LEDs for that matter, is when it comes to growing nobody asks the plant if the light is any good . They build these lights for people, so the average array is always going to have too much green, which sucks for us. And I'm a little wary of the 630 and 660 arrays at the moment to buy one. But that's just my 2 cents. Good Luck and Stay Frosty!

I was wondering about the over-driving pushing out more of the red. From what I understand those test results are at a fraction of the current the drivers I have put out so that they can sell them as high watt chips yet still claim the high lumen/w - ah Chinese marketing. If my measurements are accurate they are pushing a bit more juice than as tested.

I'm thinking the two strips would be perfect for over the last tank. 4' tank and 2x2' of LED panels with the ability to spotlight.

[video=youtube;t4bWbPZW73k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4bWbPZW73k&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

[curly604]

How the plants lookin gas?

 

[Gastanker]

How the plants lookin gas?

Eh, so so. There are pics posted earlier today a few posts back.

 

[curly604]

Sweet man thanks for the heads up

 

[Gastanker]

So I've been checking out the aquarium LED forums and damn do they know their stuff. So tempted to start fucking around with some custom programmable drivers:

I think this design has all the the elements needed to go from "mild to wild" with an LED build. Too many many features to list, but here's a partial rundown:

16 MHz ATMEGA 328P-AU micro-controller on board w/ ALL pins "Broken out for connections"

DS1307 "Real Time Clock" w/ back-up battery.

Standard "FTD1 Connection" on board (for programming purposes)

I2C connection ( for "2 wire communication" with other I2C enabled devices )

12 volt, 1.5 amp Voltage regulator ( for powering cooling fans ect..)

5 volt, 1.5 amp Voltage regulator ( provides power to Atmega 328 and CAT4101 led drivers.)

6 OnSemi CAT4101 led Constant current Regulators w/ up to 1000ma output.( will drive 6 - 8 leds per string, provided total led Vf does not exceed 25 volts.)

Analog current control for each CAT4101 ( 50ma - 1000ma adjustable )

Independent PWM dimming capability on a 6 CAT4101's.

With 6 CAT4101's on board, this driver will be able to handle up to 150 watts worth of leds, that's 6 - 8 3W leds per channel or 36 -48 3W leds per driver board. The beautiful part of this driver is, once the maximum current per channel is set, (using the Analog current Pots) Each of the six channels can be programmed to dim via PWM signals provided by the on board Arduino microcontroller.

 

[IlovePlants]

Still have a tab open from the Arduino playground myself. I hope you do put this set up together, could you dim the arrays rather than PWM? Anyway best of luck.
ILoveplants

 

[That 5hit]

im sorry, but im in over my head in this thread. i have to unsub from it, you guys are smart as fuck.... im so fucking lost... later guys...

 

[polyarcturus]

im sorry, but im in over my head in this thread. i have to unsub from it, you guys are smart as fuck.... im so fucking lost... later guys...

i would only take a week or 2 of reading i reccomend doing it. you dont have to be smart to conversate, but really what are you confused about, actually, lol(no offense to you either) that is one of the more simple circuit boards ive looked at this week

 

[That 5hit]

i would only take a week or 2 of reading i reccomend doing it. you dont have to be smart to conversate, but really what are you confused about, actually, lol(no offense to you either) that is one of the more simple circuit boards ive looked at this week

no offence taken.... yeah i could prolly figure it out, but,,,,,,,,i dont really find led that improtant.. its like putting waaay more effort in then i would be getting out... now i could be wrong bout that .. but thats how i feel .... not saying NO to led, just no to the idea of building my own setup. part by part... im a cfl grower.. and i have not yet seen a led grow that is not comparable to cfl's... didn't mean to start a riot with that last statment...... this is just how i see it.... right now hps is king and then theres cfls then led.. i put cfl first only do to price and avalibility......... i would love to getinto this stuff (leds)
but just really dont have the time to learn it .....

 

[polyarcturus]

well all im saying is take the time to learn it. i dont have an led in the house but i could build one with ease. i dont know how to program but i can still understand some script and order, all i mean is take the time to learn everything you can it will only benefit you on the end but i can understand completely sometimes thats how i be feeling when some of these guys start talking about spectrums.

 

[Gastanker]

If it makes you feel any better this is all new to me as well and I'm way over my head. I can now look at that board and I understand what components are doing what and how it's hooked together but if you were to ask me to add up Ohms or what resistor... you would see a blank "no fucking clue" look on my face. I might be weird though; the less I know about something the more it intrigues me.

 

[FranJan]

Hey That 5hit, I am without a doubt a major league pothead and if I can get some of this stuff so can you. The trick is little bites of info and not to smoke so much the day you decide to do some reading .

 

[Gastanker]

Too cool and have to post. 1 trillion frames per second - slowed down by a factor of 10 billion.

Can't wait for this to me on my smart phone Can you imagine checking your grow room by watching there each photon was bouncing to?

If you don't have 11 min to watch the whole thing skip to the two min mark. You can watch a packet of photons pass through a bottle of water.

[video=youtube;Y_9vd4HWlVA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Y_9vd4HWlVA[/video]

 

[polyarcturus]

did you really just post some spam in a legit thread you are so disrespectful i could spit in your face.

 

[Gastanker]

Whoa, what happened? I was out of town for a couple days was someone abusing my thread?


So... I killed all my plants. But it's kind of relieving for some reason - perhaps my lights aren't shit after all and something else is up. I was going out of town for just a couple days I decided to put most of the larger plants' containers into a shallow tub with just an inch of water; enough in this heat to over water the plants for a day before drying up. Worked well at keeping the soil moist but every plant in the tub died. And in kind of a weird way - totally dried to a crisp with damp soil and a weird brownish green color to the leaves a bit similar to when I though I fed them that bad tea.

The plants that weren't in the tub are not happy but they aren't dead. Showing signs similar to the bad tea episode, which I'm now thinking wasn't a bad tea but just water issues. I honestly haven't checked the water parameters since moving as I grow in soil, and my fish are all healthy, but I'm starting to think this water is no good. All I'm feeding with is a low low level of floranova and calmg+ so I'm pretty baffled as to what else would do this.

And why the fuck is that one plant just chugging along? I don't get it so I'll have to run some tests when I'm feeling better.

 

[polyarcturus]

dun know wtf happened there.... sounds bad try repotting and pH balancing your soil that looks like a massacre :/

i dont think it was your light i mean if the soil was damp why are the plants crisp?

 

[Gastanker]

This whole grow has been fucked imo and now I'm really starting to think it's crappy water and that I might have to get an RO unit or make a solar still. I've never seen plants die in that manner before so I'm stumped. Like you say - why would they dry up in just a couple days in moist soil. I'm just hoping this explains the minute size of the plants.

 

[polyarcturus]

got to be the water you do too much right for shit to go wrong like that try using bottled on the surviers and see if things pick up that is so fucked up

 

[FranJan]

What do the roots on those crispy plants say GT? Maybe they got a story to tell. And isn't it like an LED grow to have one plant doing great? I usually get that with clones where they look like shit but one or two in the corner are rockin . Hyroot and others are really starting to suspect 420nm is not very good for our plants, or maybe it's too much 420 isn't very good. Regardless maybe raising or diffusing the 6500K will help, since it has very high peaks in those areas. Good Luck GT!