A total nube's DIY LED build đź› 

When I built mine the price of aluminum angle was just to much so I used the wall angle for drop ceilings. Worked great and a fraction of the cost. My setup is probably overkill x2 as I’m running 32 3500k 4’ gen 2 strips and 4 meanwell xlg 240 drivers in a 4x4. Mine are wired series for cleaner wiring, where I’m at building codes for portable light fixtures are the least of my worries

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I can add that as someone who’d also been using HPS and MH for 10 years,the most intimidating part of switching to LED were the big words that most home HPS growers don’t care or don’t know about.
@nube did everything except put it together. @ChemicalDependant did that lol.
Hands down this is the easiest build even for a procrastinator like myself. My build came out to a little more but I bought enough extra wiring and tools to not have to buy more for another should I choose to build one(or two lol).


Temps are consistently at 80F and 45% Humidity and my drivers are mounted to each slab as well.

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Don’t get caught up trying to layout the strips, lay them down and moved them until they look equally spaced and mark the location. As far as the bracing for the slab, use two angle or tube aluminum and “X” brace it, then you can attach your ratchet straps to the ends. One other thing, if you are drilling through the slab to install the strips, get a punch or big nail and hammer to nick the point where you are going to drill. This prevents the drill bit from wandering. Looking forward to your build! Good luck!

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Aluminum extrusions are absolutely wonderful, and machined extrusions are extremely useful as sort of engineering Lego. The cost of aluminum is the real crux here. I almost wonder if perhaps mild steel angle or galvanized steel sheet would frame up better. It increases weight and difficulty for your tools; but you to have gains.

The trick is almost always either get the item from the source, or look for the same item with a different name. I’d be curious about some rectangular ductwork used as a backing. You would probably have to use nuts and bolts, or a backer, as I don’t know that the strips will really mount into such little material, if you’ve ever screwed ducts together know what I mean. You also may require cross bracing so that the shape does not sag, but stays relatively square. But this would allow a few pluses as well. I haven’t looked fully into it yet, I’m not sure on the pricing at retail.

But that’s only one idea I had, composites! You only need the aluminum because it’s uniquely light, strong, and thermally conductive. If you use a thinner aluminum sheet, and use a backing material you could see similar results. My first thought is XPS foam as it’s actually just my favorite lightweight building material. That is much less effective for compression stress rather than tension, so you’d need to bolt the mounting points to the aluminum face.

I learned a fair bit on composites watching the video on those DML panels I mentioned to you. They don’t need to be conductive though, kind of changes things, but could still be worth a look if you go that way.

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The strips are so light you don’t need much. I built a 2x2 using an old street sign lol way heavier than it needed to be.

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I also had fun doing a build.
Started with Aluminum framing, ended up with this.

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Your aluminum, is there any going to other direction? It looks like your relying on the strip structurally.

My bad, I see your fiberglass rods! I am tempted now to do similar, but drill blind holes to seat the rods.

Wow. I actually really like this, back to reading.

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This was the aluminum version…


Yes, the foam and fiberglass rods.

I was split. The metal is heavy and conducts…the foam board is light weight, non-conductive, but is flammable. So keep that in mind. Safety!
Happy with my choice.

Also, going forward, moving the CMH out and going all strip.
I’m building another flyweight panel for the middle.

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That’s… giving me ideas. Do you have a temp reading aluminum backings of the strips? Running at recommended voltage?

I could easily see something working out from XPS and fiberglass driveway markers. Would just be worried about not only losing a lot of heatsink material but adding insulation to parts, you were bang on using small strips of foam. It is flammable yes, but only at high temps. So no flames, no sparks, all should be well. It’s also sure is easy to work, compared to aluminum.

That said, aluminum is still a great choice, not much more expensive. I’m curious now, what issues you’d see with aluminum vs foam. I have to build two panels at least, maybe I’ll make two versions. But that really could cut the cost of aluminum, if you can get some square stock big enough. Just drill holes for screws and rods.

I need to put up a second space to veg extra, maybe I’ll pick up a driver and a few strips. I was going to buy a low wattage HID, I have a spare ballast and it’s open air for the moment, so heat is not a concern. So I could maybe afford a 2x4 panel, less the aluminum cost.

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Well, if you have the money, 1/8" thick square corner angle aluminum is a better option than plate or sheet. Repurposing other types of aluminum extrusions would be the next best bet if you can find them for cheap and they’re rigid enough. I’ve seen people use tool wall extrusions and other neat things. This build ended up clean but, like you said, it’s basically a big dull blade if you were to drop it on anything.

That’s a good idea. Does it flex much? One of the most important things when using strips is keeping them rigid, especially these fiberglass strips, because if they flex the copper traces can go bad. Even deflection of 1/2" over the entire 44" length can cause issues, I’ve heard. Did you end up doing a lot of cross bracing to make your frame more rigid?

Also, yeah that’s way overkill. LOL 600w is probably plenty for the EB2 strips in a 4x4, and 500w is prolly enough of the EB3. 1000w is way too much.

Series vs. parallel is mostly about safety and insurance coverage if there’s a fire, as verified by certified electricians in the LED strip thread linked above. You probably can’t get hurt by our low voltage fixtures wired in parallel because there isn’t enough current flowing through them, but the high voltage series fixtures have the potential to kill somebody. Also, if you’re using high voltage fixtures without a permit and you have a fire, even if the lights aren’t the cause, you could be denied an insurance claim and could be fined by the county/locality. That’s not something I’m willing to risk just for some weed. Also, I’m a renter, so I would never do that to somebody else’s property. But I’m not going to judge somebody for disagreeing. :slight_smile:

You’re less of a procrastinator than me! lol I’m just glad it’s working out well for you. Hopefully other folks find it easy as well! :slight_smile: I think the angle aluminum builds are actually more complex, and I don’t like how they fit in a tent with negative pressure.

Thanks for the notes on laying it out and building it. I figured it out pretty well in the end. I didn’t need to brace anything, but I appreciate the helpful tips. :slight_smile: I did use a center punch to drill all the holes.

Yeah, fucking useless tariffs. :confused: Aluminum is better for all the reasons you mentioned. Steel is possible but it’s just so not good as a heatsink and it’s fucking heavy. You don’t want much of any flex in your fixture.

That’s essentially what I did, but with fresh slabs of aluminum plate instead of street signs. I did think about “borrowing” some though! lol

It’s a cool build! Thanks for that. I considered not using a heatsink like your build, but in the end I decided that longevity of the strips was paramount, since I’m so poor, and want this to last at least 5 years. Not that bare strips necessarily will die or suffer failures before 5 years, but we just don’t know about that specific use case.

All electronics in general do better with heat dissipation, but I’m curious to see if there’s much reduction in PAR output of bare strips run at or below nominal after 5 years. :slight_smile: I’d be curious how you ascertained that part about “Strips will be gently bolted directly to the bare ass naked 1” aluminum. Better cooling than with tape anyway." I don’t agree that bare strips are better cooled than strips mounted to a metal surface with a thermal interface. My understanding from years of building PCs, specifically with regards to the cooling of CPUs and GPUs, is that air cooled is never better than heatsinked even when using thermal interface material pads, and it’s not even close.

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You absolutely get better thermal transfer with a thermal interface, unless you get like micro-honed surfaces. But shitty thermal tape may very well be better than just raw metal. I would use a thermal compound myself, let the bolts hold it on, but good thermal tape or non adhesive thermal pads is just the same, if not better… but I’m not sure the strips need that much heat sinking. Allegedly they run with no additional heat sinking with I think… 2” air space? Those numbers maybe false memories; don’t hold me to that. I do own an contactless thermometer and thermocouple, plus might be adding automation to the build… Let’s just say expect something cool next year sometime.

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So getting back to the build, after sketching it out and deciding the build was solid, then seeing Windy and ChemicalDependent have success building out my design, my metal was delayed because the Metal Supermarket moved and couldn’t get to my order for a few weeks. Then I got a puppy and lost 6wks to lack of sleep and puppy interruptions. I literally got nothing done those 6wks but it was all worth it cuz the pup is great. Enough with the excuses, though, right? :slight_smile:

When I finally got around to doing the work, I laid out everything on the floor to make sure I had it all. This includes everything used in the build except for the 2x 18awg PC power cords I had laying around and repurposed for the power cords of my two drivers. Also, it includes 1/2" grommets that I didn’t talk about before.

So I then got to work laying out the strips and marking hole locations. I did this all on my kitchen table underneath a skylight.

This was a low tech build, and all I did was lay the strips down starting from one end, use no-residue masking tape to keep them in place, use 1" masking tape to separate the strips, and then a Sharpie to mark hole locations and strip edges. This got me an approximation of what I needed, and allowed for the space in the middle for the driver standoff thru-hole marks.

You can’t see it but I marked three holes on each strip where I was going to fasten it down. Each end and one in the middle. This was the most critical placement of the whole thing.

I don’t have a workshop, so to drill and sand and deburr the plates, I took them outside and put them on milk crates on my patio. I used a center punch to create a starting point for my drill bits so they wouldn’t walk all over the place, and I used old drill bits that I had laying around.

Shockingly, I didn’t break any bits but I did misuse some pretty severely by using them in ways significantly different than their intended purposes. The strip fastener holes are 9/64th which fit the M3 plastic fasteners. If you use metal fasteners to attach the strips you can short them out. I used 1/4" for the eyebolt holes and the driver standoff holes.

Then I had to figure out how to drill 1/2" holes for the grommets. Those holes are where my wiring is going, and the grommets are to prevent the wire jacketing from being damaged or rubbed raw. I ended up using the 1/4" bit to drill a starter hole, and then used a 1/2" woodworking spade bit to make the finished holes. I’m shocked this worked out, but it did.

Like I said, this is super low tech. I used a drywall joint knife to chisel some of the biggest burrs, and I then deburred all the holes with sandpaper. That’s about it. Nothing fancy. I don’t have lots of tools and didn’t want to buy any because I’m poor. I did leave the tape separating each strip to help me guide the thermal tape when I finally applied it.

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I love those bruce bugbee videos, he’s a champion of cannabis researching justice. I definitely need some more IR in my LED room. Can’t wait to see your build hit first light!

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Hey man, IR isn’t super useful to plants other than as heat. Maybe you meant far red (FR)? :slight_smile:

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lol the irony is I was heating the room up the water temps dropped to 16C, yah you’re right I need some far red but I am obsessing over IR.

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On the heat. I kinda planned for running them at lower levels.
They barely get warm @ 600ma.
Currently running them at .380 in late flower. 315 CMH in the middle.

My aluminum frames were way overkill.

Might be in my blood to build light. Lol

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Nice write up man, and good info as always. I like the straight forward and simplistic build style. You gotta work with what ya got! Your plants are looking great under your new light, are you gonna retire your COBs? Strips only?

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That’s pretty cold, so yeah, maybe you do want IR! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: lol The Bugbee videos should be required for everyone building a DIY LED light.

Can’t argue with those low currents. Hopefully they stay happy and output remains consistent for many years to come! The EB2 strips are a supreme value at their blowout prices. Amen to DIY! :building_construction:

No reason to retire the COBs yet. When/if I can expand with a veg tent, they’ll be put to use in there. They’re still great and I wouldn’t want them to goto waste, but I’ll only build strips for the foreseeable future - they make a lot more sense than anything else. However, the prebuilt bar lights from Meiju are looking super sexy for the money… Thanks for the kind words. :rainbow:

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Continuing the build, after deburring all my through-holes and sanding down the edges of the plate so they weren’t razor blades against my tent walls, it was time to mount the strips. For each strip I put down the tape and then the strip immediately after so there was no dog hair or contamination between the tape and the strip.

The method was pretty simple. I first cleaned the whole plate with alcohol twice. I wanted to make sure they were spotless. Also, I should have said something before but this plate comes with one side covered in a plastic coating to protect it. Remove that and then clean the plate! After cleaning, I applied the thermal tape to the aluminum plate close to the area outlined for the strip. I say close because the tape is about 1-2mm wider than the strips. The most critical thing was the placement of the strip’s holes in alignment with the holes I drilled. Like I said, I’m no engineer and I just eyeballed the drill holes after marking them.

To get the screw holes to line up, I poked holes through the tape at each of the 3 fastener holes. Then I put a plastic M3 x 12mm screw thru a hole on each end of the strip. The strips are pretty flexible since they’re so long, so if you don’t get the hole placement just right you’re kinda screwed. To prevent them from sticking to the tape before they were aligned, I put another M3 screw in the middle to keep the sag from sticking to the tape. Then I just lined up the screws on the ends with the holes and then lowered the whole strip to the tape. It’s hard to explain but if you build one, you’ll see. They turned out pretty good.

The tape is extra sticky. This was the 3M 8810 Thermally Conductive Adhesive Transfer Tape, 1" width x 36yd length (I found a super cheap deal on Amazon, normally $220 per roll lol!), and though it says no cure needed, everywhere I read advises a 72hr cure before any heat is applied, so that’s what I did. The M3 x 12mm screws and matching M3 nuts are to make sure it stays put both before and after it’s cured. Lots of people have issues with the thermal tape sticking properly, and it’s almost always because they don’t allow the 72hr cure before using.

Anyway, the next step was wiring. Because the push connectors on these boards are so fragile, I wanted to make the wire harnesses before plugging everything in. You can tell many quantum board manufacturers have realized how fragile those connectors are because they’ve now started putting big plastic block protectors over all of them. Strips don’t have that luxury.

With parallel builds, you want the wires to each individual strip to be approximately the same distance from the driver leads. Again, I’m no electrician or engineer, but as I understand it, this is to prevent voltage and current sag due to more distance in some rather than others. Well, it was pretty easy to do. I just cut 20x 12" lengths of my 2-conductor jacketed 18awg solid core thermostat wire.

Then I stripped off the outer jacket on each end, then stripped about 1/2" of each of the conductors. The reason I used 2-conductor wire was to keep the wiring fairly clean, and the outer jacket added an extra layer of protection if the grommets came out of the wire thru-holes.

I decided to use WAGO connectors as terminals for my wiring harnesses because I had them. Terminal strips with bus wires between each terminal would have been cleaner, but would have cost more money. If you’re not familiar, this is what WAGOs look like (they’re so so so much nicer than wire nuts):

The wiring pigtails I made are pretty simple. On each side of the fixture, 5x 18awg positive and 5x 18awg negative wires get pushed into 4 of the terminals in a 5-position WAGO, with the remaining terminal left for 16awg lamp cord that on each side go to a 3-position WAGO which combines all the positive and negative wires into their own single wire to connect to a final WAGO that connect the strips to the driver output leads. This is what those wiring harnesses looked like when done along with the 20 year old super basic wire stripper and wire cutting pliers I have.

I marked each WAGO as either + or - so I wouldn’t confuse them. It looks like a jumbled mess of wires here, but the next pics of it all wired up should make it clearer.

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Thanks for those documents. Unfortunately, they’re either misleading sales pitches or they’re out of date already. This is why people should watch Bugbee’s videos and the other ones I mentioned, and read the latest peer-reviewed research on light sources and spectrums.

I don’t mean to trash you or what you posted, but people will be led astray if they take that as the final word in lighting. They’re full of old or wrong conclusions and speculation, and some are just sales mumbo jumbo.

This is the problem with applying early and evolving research to cannabis - it’s not directly applicable unless the published results are from a direct study of cannabis or from biologists who study cannabis directly. And then the conclusions have to be reached by other researchers without major dissent. I don’t ever trust white papers put out by people or companies trying to sell a product - I’d recommend to only trust the real published, peer-reviewed research that’s later validated by others.

Take, for instance, that very first PDF. The one from Osram horticultural lighting says only blue and red primarily contribute to photosynthesis, but we now know that’s not true and that all the wavelengths between about 380-750ish help with photosynthesis, and nearly equally but in different ways. Plus their info on far red (730nm) isn’t accurate. Bugbee and Zhen’s research below proves it pretty conclusively. Also, Osram bought Fluence and this year they commissioned a dozen plant biologist studies to evaluate their spectrum and designs. None have yet been published.

And then the Energy Neil Yorio PDF is a sales pitch from BIOS lighting company for 7 year old LED technology (they claim 1.7umole/j is the highest efficiency LED prior to their 1.85umole/j lights, but current highest efficiency of lights you’d actually use for growing weed is 3.0um/j or slightly higher). Unfortunately, it’s not much help here either.

The third PDF is a published journal article about the effect of blue and red light on water and nute use of lettuce (no idea if it was peer-reviewed). It’s correct in concluding that spectrum matters to the nutrient uptake of plants, but that’s not super groundbreaking. Their test of only blue and red in varying concentrations is pretty limited, as shown by dozens of other plant biologists since. Blue and red (aka blurple), while definitely being the major photosynthetic pathways, isn’t the best lighting spectrum for just about any plants. Plants evolved under the sun we have, not a blurple sun, and as such, most of the spectrum put out by the sun is photosynthetically useful in some way or another to most plants.

The 4th PDF is a 2014 University of Utah Dr. Bruce Bugbee cost analysis of bulb vs. LED lighting in greenhouses. Modern LEDs are more than 2-3x more efficient now than they were then, and about 1/4 the cost per watt that they were back then, so their cost analysis and conclusion isn’t really relevant anymore. In fact, I believe Bugbee now says LEDs are the best option for new greenhouse construction because the ROI is so much faster than it was 6 years ago when he did that analysis.

The last PDF is from 2017 and analyzed the harvest weight of fruit from HPS, HPS-LED, and LED-LED supplemental greenhouse light sources in Nordic (cold) regions. Unfortunately, they didn’t normalize the light sources to PPF output like they should have, nor did they control the environments to have the same temps, and they were using very old LED technology, so it’s not really a robust methodological paper. Their LED-LED treatment had nearly half the output as the HPS and HPS-LED treatments. LOL! Being plant biologists and researchers, they should have known better. As such, I’d say their outcomes don’t have much bearing on reality if you controlled for the things I mentioned. Of course the lights with half the photon output and a lot colder temps produced less harvest.

Again, I appreciate you posting those because it’s important to have a robust discussion from lots of viewpoints, and I’m not trashing you by mentioning this stuff. Reasonable people can disagree reasonably. :wink: It’s just that those are old and/or insufficient papers, and some are just outright sales pitch white papers with a profit motive.

Here are two new peer reviewed papers worth reading about the effects of Far Red (I referenced them earlier):

Zhen 2018 far-red light enhances photochemical efficiency (1.5 MB)

Bugbee 2020 Far Red Results in 14 Plant Species.pdf (3.0 MB)

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