Its fine, I bought what I bought and im ok with it. Im all set but thank you.
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For sure. I am sure you will be ok with it too. I am an LED newbie (last 12 months) and am well impressed.
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its for the boards he using, vs say bridgelux strips where the difference wouldn’t be as great, no need to read if you dont want to 
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I have been meaning to post here actually about some cheap LED strips I have used to build lights for my mother plant tent and part of my veg tent.
They come in different sizes but I will speak of the 60cm ones I am using. they are 10 watts each, from what i could tell they use the same grade diode as the bridge lux strips many on this thread are using. They come in an aluminium housing which is a heatsink and a driver built in. They replace a T5 tube. I remove the diffuser off them and i can build a frame that has the clips that hold each one. They just clip in and out of the frame. Each one has a 240v plug on the end. So i made a cable that breaks out into 10 plugs. I can plug and unplug each one on the fly to change the wattage and interchange the strips to get different sprectrums. Literally grab and pull one out of the frame and clip in the other and plug it in. Each one costs me about 4 bucks US. Below is one i just found after a quick lookup. However the ones i bought were not in a 10 pack. i just bought them one at a time while i experimented. They are so low power, like the bridgelux strips you do not need any extra heatsink on them. They are probably super innefficient as you run a separate driver for each one and they would be cheap quality too. I have been using 19 strips for 12 months now and nothing has failed yet. I use the cool, warm and natural spectrum’s to get what i need. I will take a photo of the light when i next think of it in the room and post it. The plants love them.
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They look pretty good for the price.
I’ve got a 4x2x5’ tent, and will be putting a metal shelving unit inside so I can house a few domes for my clones. I will be starting with one shelf that will hold 3 trays that are 22x11" each.
Am I on the right track with choosing the following lights and driver?
7 Strips - https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/bridgelux/BXEB-L0280Z-50E1000-C-B3/7907666
https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/mean-well-usa-inc/XLG-50-AB/9858488
Scratch that I’ll double that to 100watt driver and get 14 strips. Will allow for upto 29watts for my area, and dimmable also.
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What would total cost be to do a 8x 4
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It would depend on how you wanted to do it, you can go with 8x 2x2 ft lights or 4x 2x4 ft lights or combinations and how many Watts per square foot you want.
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Enough to give the plants all they need
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Hell the rig I’m running in a 4x4 could do a ,4x8 @ about 25 w per.
32 4 ft strips with 4 xlg240l ab drivers testing one panel with 16 strips and 2 drivers 2’ away you could feel your skin getting hot but strips cool to the touch
One of the two panels
My driver board
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My lights in flower at 30w a sq ft cost overall a dollar a watt with everything I needed to build them.
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Thats very bright, that panel is 60w per sq ft real LED power, which in comparison to a HPS light would be somewhere around double the light emitted to 120w a sq ft roughly.
The heat your arm is feeling is it actually cooking from light radiation you could use it as a tanning salon 
Nice job on the build looks like a very solid construction. I like how you mounted the driver’s, mine are just hanging by wire down the side of the tent.
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Thanks for the compliments brother. No wonder my plants didn’t like it turned all the way up lol I’m running all 4 just over 50%. How well do you think the 32 strips would do in an 8x4? I could build 2 more frames and spread them out better. I was just thinking that 25w/sqft. Wouldn’t be enough, but that’s 25w of true power
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I think you could split the strips in half and run one 240w driver per 8 X 4 ft strips on a 2ft by 4 ft frame to bring it down to 30w a sq ft. Thats what I have in my flower room, and the plants produce the same as if they were under my 600w HPS,
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That’s how they are wired now but two drivers per panel. I’m swapping from a 1000w hps. I’m wanting to get an 8x4 instead of the 4x4 but not if I can’t maximise my yield. I could always get 8 more strips and another driver and run 40 for close to 1020 w which would only 32w per. How did you come up with 30 for the 4 driver setup? If I remember right it worked out to 812w after factoring driver loss
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You have 2 x 240w drivers running 1 frame of 16 strips covering a 4ft x 2ft area 8sq ft. 480w divided by 8sq ft is 60w per sq ft, when reduced by 50% becomes 30w a sq ft.
You say you are losing 148w from efficiency or 37w per driver, which I did not account for, I didn’t realize they lost that much power. If that is the case then my flowering lights are only giving 25w a sq ft.
So you have 406w per 2ft x 4ft light frame or 50w a square ft. So reducing the frames by 50% of the strips and 1 driver would give you 25w a sq ft or equivalent to roughly 50w a sq ft, if you were using a 1000 HPS ballast light.
With a 1000w HPS you would get 62.5 w per sq ft in a 4x4 ft tent equivalent to roughly 30w a sq ft, LED so you would need to bump it up another 40w per frame, for 4 frames, in an 8ftx4ft tent, if you wanted to keep it close to the output of a 1000w HPS.
Bearing in mind you have a better footprint of equal light distribution over the space, compared to an HPS 1000w light 62w per sq ft, 25W per sq ft of LED might not be far off.
Now knowing that I am only getting 25w per sq ft with my flower lights, I am even more impressed with these strips performance, which as I said, I find comparable to my 600W HPS light for growth.
Depends how much cash you have to spend I suppose, a few more watts of light is not a bad thing to max it out, but if you are only running at 50% because its to much for the plants going any higher. Personally I would try it at 25w per, with 4 frames of 8 strips, and see if its enough, if not, get a few more strips and add another driver to run the extra strips per frame. That’s what I would do, because I am broke 
there is no point for me adding cost of extra power or light parts that I cant use because I have enough already to get what I want.
You can test in the 4x4 with 2 frames of 8 strips and 2 drivers to see if it is OK, before scaling up too make sure. Its a lot of fucking about with the frames lol.
I hope that makes sense, these things usually do, in my mind after 4.20, but not everyone else lol.
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I’m thinking this plants problem is I swapped lights mid flower. Buds got super dense and really frosty but are foxtailing I guess you’d call it.
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That could be too much light. Try one of those free light meter apps on your smartphone. They’re not overly accurate, but it can give you a rough idea of how much light is going where. If you have another veg light or something going compare the readings with that to get your bearings with the new light.
I made my new veg space with cheapo screw in LEDs, I hung them like 12" from the plants. When I used a light meter I found that they were brighter there than my 400 hps at like 18" away. I have them like 2ft+ from the canopy now and it’s perfect.
Long stoner story short LEDs can be more intense than you’d think! 
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Yeah a sudden big jump in light will cause fox tailing, I had the same problem when I put my first LED homemade light in, half way through flower. I have also been light burning my veg plants forgetting that these Bridgelux strips are very intense. I am maintaining a minimum of 16 inches off the canopy atm in veg and 20-24 in flower as those lights are 40% stronger than the veg.
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@beacher I tried a few but I max them out. They even maxed out under my 1000w hps so they are pretty useless lol
I’m roughly 16" away. I turned half the strips off and bumped the others up to 75% I’m not going to sweat this run. I’m running a 150w cob and 2 4foot led shop lights that claim to be 250w each so they should be ok once getting into the flower tent. This is what my buds are doing
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