Humple
Well-Known Member
To my eye, those buds don't look ready to chop. You're at about 8 weeks of flower, right?
Keep adding more features, EB Gen2 build
- Thread starter noodle-led
- Start date
Rocket Soul
Well-Known Member
Id say the same. Amnesia strains tend to run a lot longer than 8 weeks and the buds look like theyre still missing a little. But i havent havent got experience with Amnesia sweet. If your only worried about falling over just stake them a little bit.
But dont get me wrong, your plants look awesome. Wait a bit cause they will get awesomer
Humple
Well-Known Member
Agreed. It would be a shame to miss out on the extra weight and the better effects of a fully matured plant.Id say the same. Amnesia strains tend to run a lot longer than 8 weeks and the buds look like theyre still missing a little. But i havent havent got experience with Amnesia sweet. If your only worried about falling over just stake them a little bit.
But dont get me wrong, your plants look awesome. Wait a bit cause they will get awesomer
noodle-led
Well-Known Member
Yeah I am at 8 1/2 weeks into the flowering. The bud in that photo might be a little undermature but it was the photo that was in the best focus, it is hard to get focus with a 10x closeup filter on the lens. The others are showing brown trichomes on the leaves and those on the bud starting to turn. The smaller buds are a few days ahead, with all reddish brown pistils and lots of brown trichomes. It probably could go until the end of the week, but I figure they'll still mature a bit on the stems as they start to dry. I could either spend 20 minutes stringing them all up for just a few days or chop them now. I'm concerned about the stems leaning up against the sides of the tent as those will certainly start to mold soon due to the lack of air around them. I'd cut just those off but the tent is also where I do the drying so it is either one or the other. You guys are totally right though.
Hello man,
I really liked your led system and wanna make one like yours. Ill buy same strips and driver but I need help to run two independent circuit on a single driver like you (I will do it in parallel). I'm a noob on electric systems haha
I wanna run only strips and far red, other things maybe Ill improve on future
thanks
I really liked your led system and wanna make one like yours. Ill buy same strips and driver but I need help to run two independent circuit on a single driver like you (I will do it in parallel). I'm a noob on electric systems haha
I wanna run only strips and far red, other things maybe Ill improve on future
thanks
noodle-led
Well-Known Member
It's fairly straightforward, the way I did it is to wire them all up in series and use a switch to effectively disable certain strips:
Imagine each strip is represented by one of the LEDs and the power supply is on the left. All you need is a SPST switch with one terminal connected before the strip you want to cut out, and the other terminal attached to the next strip down the line. Which terminal doesn't matter. When the switch is off, no current can flow through it so it is business as usual for the strips. When you turn it on, it just becomes a 0 resistance wire, so instead of going through the strip, the power goes through the switch and those LEDs will not light. Multiple strips can be switched off by a single switch, just connect one switch terminal before the one you want to switch out, and one terminal after. VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure the voltage for both your full collection of strips AND the voltage of just the remaining strips are within the constant-current voltage specification of the driver, and also the full current of your setup is within the specifications of the switch. The voltage specification for the strip is the combined voltage of all the strips you're cutting out. I figure 20V per strip on the EB gen 2, so I use a 300VDC rated switch.
If you're designing with all your strips in parallel rather than series, it is even easier, just put the switch inline with the parallel strip you want to cut out. In this setup, your switch only needs to be rated 20VDC and for the current going through 1 strip, up to 1.4A for EB gen 2. This is much more convenient because you could theoretically put a switch on every strip and turn each on/off individually if you like and not worry about the constant-current voltage range of the power supply.
Also, I would never flip the switch while the power is on in my setup because the voltage is switching from 190V down to like 120V and it takes the driver a short amount of time to adjust to the new voltage, during which it will oversupply current which could destroy LEDs in an instant. Just turn off the driver, flip your switches, turn the driver back on.
If running far reds and you find that your system current is too high, say you're running 1400mA on the strips or something, you can just divide that by putting the reds in parallel even in a series system. In a series system, all the reds will get 1400mA, but if you put two in parallel, that's only 700mA each:
Sorry about the scribbly drawing there, but D1 and D5 are now in parallel getting 700mA each and both will be switched off by SW1.
Imagine each strip is represented by one of the LEDs and the power supply is on the left. All you need is a SPST switch with one terminal connected before the strip you want to cut out, and the other terminal attached to the next strip down the line. Which terminal doesn't matter. When the switch is off, no current can flow through it so it is business as usual for the strips. When you turn it on, it just becomes a 0 resistance wire, so instead of going through the strip, the power goes through the switch and those LEDs will not light. Multiple strips can be switched off by a single switch, just connect one switch terminal before the one you want to switch out, and one terminal after. VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure the voltage for both your full collection of strips AND the voltage of just the remaining strips are within the constant-current voltage specification of the driver, and also the full current of your setup is within the specifications of the switch. The voltage specification for the strip is the combined voltage of all the strips you're cutting out. I figure 20V per strip on the EB gen 2, so I use a 300VDC rated switch.
If you're designing with all your strips in parallel rather than series, it is even easier, just put the switch inline with the parallel strip you want to cut out. In this setup, your switch only needs to be rated 20VDC and for the current going through 1 strip, up to 1.4A for EB gen 2. This is much more convenient because you could theoretically put a switch on every strip and turn each on/off individually if you like and not worry about the constant-current voltage range of the power supply.
Also, I would never flip the switch while the power is on in my setup because the voltage is switching from 190V down to like 120V and it takes the driver a short amount of time to adjust to the new voltage, during which it will oversupply current which could destroy LEDs in an instant. Just turn off the driver, flip your switches, turn the driver back on.
If running far reds and you find that your system current is too high, say you're running 1400mA on the strips or something, you can just divide that by putting the reds in parallel even in a series system. In a series system, all the reds will get 1400mA, but if you put two in parallel, that's only 700mA each:
Sorry about the scribbly drawing there, but D1 and D5 are now in parallel getting 700mA each and both will be switched off by SW1.
Dachem2010
Well-Known Member
Does anyone know if this strips can be run at full power 1.4amps with a passive heatsink
Awesome build but that plant looks far from done. I would guess it need to go another couple weeks.
Chip Green
Well-Known Member
I ran a set of 6x 560mm GEN1 EB 3500K on an HLG 185 1400 for an entire flower cycle, using only a 2'x2' sheet of aluminum roll flashing for heatsinking.....
That panel eventually got taken apart, and the strips encompassed into a different build, but they are all still running, on one of my fixtures....somewhere in the mix, who knows....
Trichomelab
Member
awesome setup one day wouldnt mind something with some of these bells and whistles but right now i'm just scraping to get the grow areas back together after moving cross country back to our home state. I gifted most my old stuff and sold a few things so starting from nothing and have been looking at the various strip leds for a few reasons but after a few head injuries i get lost in the numbers. so i'm looking for economical suggestions and would like to start out with a few probaly 2' or 4' strips and maybe a driver with sum headroom to add a couple more ... or just one to run them sorta hard
thanks for the help
thanks for the help
ChiefRunningPhist
Well-Known Member
Very cool @noodle-led. Very neat project. I am trying to do pretty much the same but just getting started. Was attempting to use an Arduino UNO as the sole controller (w/o the Ras Pi). Just add switches and dimmers ect and program to play together (?). I ordered an Arduino kit to play with but it hasn't gotten here yet (so I'm not exactly sure what I'm in store for). 
2cent
Well-Known Member
WowOr - If the LED light fixture still works, it just doesn't have enough features yet.
I replaced my 2x Vero29 light in my 30"x30" tent with a new Bridgelux EB Series Gen2 build and took the time to implement some new features. On its face I have 9x 560mm strips (5x 3000k, 4x 5000k) run by a HLG-185H-C1050 which can run them at 1100mA for a total of about 210W at the wall. Strips are attached to 24" wide aluminum flashing with 20mm thermal tape with spacing from the center out of 85mm, 83mm, 79mm, 73mm. The two center cross members are 3/4"x3/4"x1/8" aluminum L and the outside frame is 1/2"x1/2"x1/16" which is plenty sturdy for the frame and saved some bucks over using 1/8" for the whole thing which is overkill. The flashing is attached with pop rivets apart from the corners which have M3 screws in them for no good reason.
Because I only grow one plant at a time I don't need the whole 28" wide fixture lit up all the time, especially in veg. I added a switch which simply shorts out 4 of the 3000k strips and consolidates most of the light toward the middle. This drops the voltage from around 190VDC to 95VDC but the important point is that I'm running two circuits of strips on the same single driver. All my strips are in series but this method would work even better on parallel setups where you won't have to worry about keeping the combined voltage in the driver's constant current range-- a 20V driver could have switches that would disable as many of the strips as desired and always put out 20V.
Keen-eyed observers will note I tried cutting some vent holes under the driver. It gets up over 55C in still air when pushing 1100mA and the vent holes maybe lowered the temp 1-2C and I added a spacer to lift the driver away from the sheeting to allow better airflow. The original design had space for one of my Initgnokt wifi far red pucks but I decided I didn't want the wiring of it to get in the way of the lights so I just used some aluminum stars and spaced out the same 4x Cree XP-E 730nm LEDs.
Speaking of the far red LEDs, they are run by a separate 12V power supply that drives them up to 700mA and is controlled via wifi / MQTT, fully 5V PWM dimmable 0-100%. Because I had the controller there anyway, I've also wired in the HLG's dimmer wires with open-collector (~10V) PWM so those are digitally controllable over the wifi (for ramp up/down if desired) as well as able to be overriden by the standard knob on the front we all are familiar with.
Not having enough features yet, I also wired in a DC volt and current meter for instant feedback of power usage. This is wired into the HLG driver's output so there will be no light emitted when the main fixture is off. That is controlled separately by a sonoff relay, but there is an open GPIO on the microcontroller so if someone really wanted to they could also implement an AC relay. I opted to avoid having to deal with mains power. Lastly, I added an environmental sensor, a DHT22 temp/humidity sensor. I wasn't getting very accurate humidity readings so I swapped it for a BME280 in the final version. Eventually I will make a little extension cable for the sensor to move it away from the radiated heat of the light. A 3D printed enclosure (link) holds all the goodies.
Control of the homemade Ebb & Flow system as well as data logging of Temp / Humidity / VPD is run through Node-RED on a Raspberry Pi 2 with a dashboard for at-a-glance status. (sad trombone) You can see the humidity is a little low for my new seedling. The new ventilation system is too powerful even on low speed.
Now grow you little plant, grooooowwww!
