I am glad it went ok for you, yeah the lights are brite, and hot careful if you reach underneath them, they will give you a 60Hrtz grid pattern tattoo. There are little silver circles on the strip’s which are soldering points and will give you a shock. They really should get something over them, you can use silicone or liquid electrical tape.
I used a 10 ft extension cord to run between the light and the Driver, do I can move it out of the room in summer, save on cooling.
Going to use left over cable from a remodel to remove the driver from the room. Also, thank you for the reminder for everyone’s safety… Allready handed the lady the liquid electrical tape. Shes better at painting toenails then I am.
Haha I love it…upgrading the farm first thing!
I don’t have to worry about anything freezing here unless hell freezes over lol already been in the 90s here
I have some reading to do to catch up, so apologies for asking this if it’s been covered. I’m finishing a bottle of barleywine, I reserve the right to have missed something.
Is there even viability to building COB setups these days? The prices per COB doesn’t seem to have come down and Qboards and strips seem to be all I’m seeing in the DIY crowd…any opinions?
EDIT I see @lefthandseeds point about thermal issues, but IMO if you know what you’re doing and understand heatsinking, the potential for fire hazard/safety issues shouldn’t be an issue. Are strips putting out better PAR readings or is it just a better way of “spreading the light” over the canopy?" This is where I would think strips and boards would pull ahead.
For strips, heat is much less of a concern. For COBs, if you know what you are doing, you can still easily start a fire. I see people talking about using voltage regulated supplies. DO NOT DO THIS. EVER. If you are attempting to DIY a heatsink solution, you NEED mechanical connections to the heatsink. DO NOT USE THERMAL EPOXY. EVER.
Any little misstep with a COB, and your house might get torched. Worth it? Not for me. I went from 100% COBs to 100% chip LEDs in a matter of days after my first one burned up… It wasn’t cheap. I should have never messed with those things to begin with. Lesson learned.
ahhh…man IDK if i completely agree with this. I don’t mean it in an argumentative way but heatsinking with adequate material and weight is every bit as safe as any HPS or metal halide I’ve ever seen or used. It’s just a matter of doing the math. Most people fuck up on COBS by yes, using thermal epoxy, or by undersizing their sink material. OR they try to run them at maximum milliamperage which is just silly. I’m not saying they are better than Qboards or strips…i mean I honestly don’t know that much which is why I was asking. But idk, i think their fire potential is just a tactic to get people to buy the newer board/strip setups in my opinion.
I’m not trying to say they can’t be done safely. I’m just saying that unlike HPS and metal halide, COBs are often a DIY solution, which combined with their ability to easily start fires under the wrong conditions makes them dangerous.
I’ve taken an electronics class. I understand how semiconductors and LEDs work. I still started a fire with one. I learned my lesson and I could probably do it safely now. But I learned an even better lesson, and that’s to use a safer solution. I’ll never advocate for a new build using COBs. In my opinion, there’s no good reason to use them anymore with all the alternatives that are available.
are cobs still viable, yeah to a point what they can offer is say adjust ability for say light hang heights above plants to have them stay within certain ranges with differnt sized plants in the same room/tent, or bit easier way to light up odd situations, or if you want to have a higher hang height you can provide an intenser single point light source
But as said by @lefthandseeds, even if heatsinked properly, say you have one fall face down its not gonna take long before than thing is melting or getting whatever its now resting on damn hot or to even combustible ranges, and this is all compounded the higher up the power levels you go, so say your cree 3590’s vs say the 1830 its just packing more heat potential into not much bigger of a package.
So from that aspect distributed chip boards or strips with reduced heat output is definitely better by folds if looked at from that aspect and safety should be paramount.
As for voltage regulated power supplies yeah can run into the situation of current run away due to possible driving at a higher voltage and or the chips heating up, and or pulling on the driver too hard where it also heats up significantly learnt that the hard way once with cobs in the past.
Also strips are just damn cheap especially the bridgelux eb2 still, and they will only get either cheaper and or better as time goes on.
… Now side tangent been thinking measuring and doing some rough calculations, but what is everyones thought on say “required” PPFD or lux light outputs, depending on grow and atmospheric conditions and say how that factors into DLI values cause DLI’s can be the same whether autos or photos, your just gonna need less light with autos due to longer light schedules
So I can’t comment too much on what lux levels or ppf are best as I find it really varies. I couldn’t get my 3 Bears OG auto at more than 25k lux without seeing issues on the leaves closest to the light on an 18/6 schedule.
At the same time, I had a photoperiod doing fine in 12/12 at over 90k lux with same COBs and spectrum.
Shane from Migro does a lot of great light reviews on his youtube channel. He also recently did a video where he took his par meter and mapped it to a lux meter at 3 different spectrums of white LEDs.
Here are the graphs:
I find it interesting that 30k lux with white LEDs is actually quite a bit of light.
yeah i saw that vid with the lux meter conversion, but im gonna say it was quite possibly inaccurate not that he couldn’t accurately measure off his lux meter with the “right” conversion factor compared to his par meter, but that only in comparison to that specific lux meter and its own accuracy or how it was reading and not say other meters or even if that one was measuring off or not as his conversion factors compared to other sources were quite off which puts his info into question…
oh and ^^^ all those 1lux = 0.whatever in the graphs above he was missing a 0 as well so it should read 0.023, 0.022, and 0.024 umol respectively
Saying that though other sources such as HLG for say their 3500k boards have the conversion factors closer to 68-70 lux = 1 umol/m2/s (ppfd) where as above shane has his factors at 45ish lux = 1 umol which is a big difference…
so i don’t know truly whats what because of the conflicting info.
But as for your 3 bears only being able to take 25k i have read that strain specifically too not just autos doesn’t like brighter light, and if you say work out that light level at 18/6 to a 12/12 comparison it would be 37.5k over the shorter timespan, and thats the thing say that same photoperiod could still flower and be an auto if under 24hrs of light it would only need half the light in a perfect math world at 45k to accumulate what it would get from 90k at 12/12
But DLI and ppfd from my understanding usually refers to what a plant will fully receive across the whole plant not just the tops, so that 90k if on the tops may of been 45k else where if you get what i mean.
Also hang height and grow environment such as reflective wall and what not all play into this as well so its kind of a rabbit hole of how far down you want to go.
My recent measures was to try and determine certain levels that would ball park me around certain supposed DLI amounts i was basing it around a determined light schedule aka 18/6 for myself, and a hang height of 18" but i tabulated my info further into a KWH a day factor to = DLI , based on my setup such as lights and environment, but was kinda shocking how even it worked out in that with my setup to be almost 1kwh consumed a day would equal a dli of 20 at 18" “which is 0.33kwh per sqft per day = a DLI of 20” but it worked up from there in almost linear fashion so that way different lights schedules could easily be incorporated for what wattage i would need to hit chosen DLI points.
In the end though wont know till i run at some of these levels, and ultimately the plant will tell me “if i listen” to what it actually needs or wants.
Rejoice! So I finally received the lights, drivers and aluminum pans.
Just need to get some wire and get to building. Can’t wait to get some plants under these, which might be sooner than later.
Still need to tidy up some wiring, and properly finish a few things. Like make grommets for my wiring holes in the frame. Was forced to transplant and move a few girls to a different cabinet. The cantaloupe haze and strawberry eclair rebounded quickly. Thank You again to OG for this. Just checked my power meters/timers…using a 1/3 less energy then the 600 watt MH, that is turned down to 50%.
Looks great man 
what’s in the center of the light where the wires go in?
Very nice!
Now I am on the PC I can see they are small strips, I didn’t realize you could get them that small.
Naw, had to overlap the strips due to the cabinet where it will end up. Wiring is back left. Middle “wire” is a haphazard pulley string. Havent had time to tidy it up, and it’s only a temp atm.
Yeah I can see it now, did you use drywall corner beading for the frame, looks good, whichever plant gets under the middle will get some bonus light.
What did you use to attach the strips? Kinda looks like plastic bolts or rivets.
