Good Score!! 
That is a beast and a half.
Looking forward to see what you are going to do with that.
Cheers
G
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I will be running it 12 feet above canopy. or was it 36? hmmm.
They actually removed dozens and dozens from a local parking lot.
I wanted to pick one up, but they were too heavy. Naw, it was because I did not want to go to jail. lol
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LOL Damned metric system 
Cheers
G
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Call out to all you LED gurus. I’m looking for a cheap set up for a columnar grow. Unit will be around 12” from canopy need 360 degree coverage and 30-32 “ long to hangin the center of a tube. I think maybe a heat sink the center. With any controller wired to be remote from the enclosed light?
I have an electrician (residential) that works for me who could assemble it with some direction.
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I’ve been thinking about how best to make a vertical collumn with the strips as well, I want to replace my Frankenstein lighting stack in my cab.
I keep coming back to ideas of a faceted collumn of aluminum sheeting or thin sheet steel like what they build ducting from. If you are just doing straight bends in thin sheet stock then you can cheat and use a couple of pieces of lumber clamped together as a ghetto bending brake. Then you can have a “tube” that still has flat faces to mount strips to. I just got some of the cheap strips discussed earlier from Future Electronics, gonna wire em up in the next couple weeks for a flat light, but I’m planning to just cut down an aluminum cookie sheet for the backing/heat sink. I’m pretty sure someone did the same earlier in this thread, and from what @Mr.Sparkle has said they should run cool enough for that if you don’t overdrive them. As long as my flat light works out fine I plan to try exactly what I’ve described above, as long as i can make the sorts of wattage I want without the diameter of the “tube” getting too wide. If the heat buildup becomes a problem the “tube” can be used as a duct, with air pushed up and through it out of the grow. If you are building your own led array you can mount the drivers wherever you want, keeping them and the heat out of your grow to begin with.
Anyways, that’s what I’ve been toying with over in my lab. If you’ve seen my beastly lighting stack you’ll understand I’m very keen to find a better solution to vertical led lights with the same goals you seem to be after. I’ll be sure to post up my attempt in my grow thread when I get to it, but I’d be very interested if anybody else has a better approach.
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Was at the hardware today picked up 4 1” FIP brass nuts with alum clamp for hose bib. Here… better at this
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No mass to collect heat
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Yep, as long as the strips run cool enough and the drivers are remote you dont really have much need to get rid of heat at all. The bigger reason I was thinking of bending up a big hexagon sheet metal tube was that I thought it would give the whole assembly some rigidity. The strips I’ve got are pretty thin PVC and they’ve got some flex to them. I kinda feel better about having them supported, so I don’t snap one when i ham-fistedly whack em with a branch when I’m pulling a plant out.
If this doesn’t concern you then I can’t see why what you’ve got there wouldn’t work. You could also use All Round strapping, (or whatever pipe strapping is called where you’re from) to fashion a great mounting ring with holes already punched into it.
How many watts are you looking to run?
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Need to cover a 24sq ft SCROG if it were laid out. Not at all familiar with LED, Controls?
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Oh yeah bring it, vertical led! I knew I wasn’t the only one crazy enough to do this!
Awwww… hell now I’ve gotta math out my cabs canopy “if it were laid out”. I should know this… I built it. Gotta find my notes, I dont wanna reach back in there with a tape measure right now. I just finished getting my arms de-glued after defoliation an hour ago.
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Now that I have the rooms pretty well built, it is time to work on the lighting. The plan for the veg room has has always been to have a wire shelf with LED strips on it. I would use two shelves for my bonsai mothers, a shelf for seedlings/clones, and maybe a shelf with a couple of autos. With the low price of the Bridgelux EB Gen2 strips, the choice there easy. I settled on twoBXEB-L0560Z-50E2000-C-B3 per shelf. I could match those eight strips with a XLG-150-L-AB driver and for about $75 USD (not including tax or shipping) be done with it.
But wait a minute, I’m an engineer! let’s over engineer this a little bit. First off, this driver will allow me to dim the lights, but all the shelves will have the same intensity. Clones only need a little light, while bonsai mothers need a moderate amount of light, and autos can use a lot more light. The simple solution is to buy four XLG-25-AB and run one driver on each shelf with a potentiometer (a bit under driven, but within specs). This setup is around $160 USD (not including tax or shipping).
Now it is time to really over engineer this thing! Let’s add an LED controller! The simplest method would be to do the previous build (with four drivers) and connect them to a Bluefish LED Controller. This controller costs about $200 USD bringing the total cost up to $360. That’s a lot of money for 100 Watts. They sell a Bluefish Mini for only $100 USD, but it wont work with the 10V PWM of the XLG drivers. They will, however, work with the LDD-700H drivers. These take a DC input and give a CC output. I can run four of these off of a single LRS-150-48 AC DC converter. This setup is about $185 USD. Rapid LED sells a board that sells a LDD-H-4S board that happens to hold four LDD drivers as well as a SCW05B-12 to provide 12V power to PC fans! This brings my total up to around $220 USD.
Now, the nice thing about the LDD drivers is they work on a lower voltage PWM than the XLG drivers. I could, in theory, use an Arduino I have laying around to give provide the PWM signal to the LDD drivers. This saves $100 USD and brings the build down to $120. That’s cheaper than the simple build using XLG four drivers and has slightly more wattage. Granted, for that $100 you get the ability to control your lights from your phone, setup presets, simulate weather, and much more. Not to mention the time it would take me to program the Arduino, I could program for my job and make that $100 in far less time.
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@ReikoX, spend that $100 on a Raspberry Pi and some solid state relays, and install Mycodo. If you are considering an Arduino then you’ve already got the chops for it, but it’s so much more powerful and so much easier. You’ll get lighting control, from your phone, and so very, very much more in the long run. Bet that Bluefish controller isn’t going to calculate realtime VPD and dim your lights or change your fans to adjust for that. Seriously, just get Mycodo, you’ll be glad you did.
Hoping to get a post up detailing my new Mycodo controller build in the next week here, assuming life doesn’t continue to get in the way of what really matters, like gardening.
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I’ve seen you’re UFO with Mycodo. It’s some slick tech Rick. In my younger days, I would have been all over that. But nowadays, that just feels like work. I’m a software engineer and make medical devices for a living.
I already own a Bluefish controller, it has some fancy features like simulating weather and lighting hours of a geographic location, sunrise/sunset, and a preset picture mode. It was developed for the aquarium industry. Those reef guys go crazy for their gadgets too.
Only reason I mentioned the Arduino because I already own one.
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Hey you can’t argue with tech you’ve already got on hand, it was the spare Raspberry Pi sitting in my parts collection that got me into this mess in the first place.
I’ve wandered into the reef forums on occasion while researching various ideas for hydro builds. Those people are absolutely every bit as into their fish and all the tech that goes with it as we are into our plants. It’s funny how much we all have in common, if fish were illegal they’d be exactly like us!
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The 560mm 3500k EB2 strips are back in stock today at digikey for those interested.
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/bridgelux/BXEB-L0560Z-35E2000-C-B3/976-1734-ND/7907663
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Ordered up the parts in the LDD build above. Not really for any other reason than to tinker.
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Ok have it mapped out, I’m an off the shelf guy, Rigid 24” part with hexagonal mounting points and light weight material that will heat sink (tubular) for passive or active airflow. Does this work for a body, want it as slim as possible.
For this I have either 6-1” mounting surfaces or 1/2” with smaller nuts.
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How are you envisioning this assembly?
Cheers
G
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6 - 24” x 1/2” max strip size, thicker the better. What’s normal mounting procedure?
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Holy shit that’s a faucet supply line! Wow you really do want em skinny. I assume you plan on running several of these vertically? It seems like one of them wouldn’t give you a lot of wattage. As far as mounting is concerned I plan to screw mine down. The issue I see with that supply line nut is that you are going to have to drill and tap threaded holes into each side of that if you want to be able to sink a short machine screw into it. If you dont have a drill press, or at least a vice or a clamp and some patience you’re gonna hate that part. Plus, those nuts are gonna be nickel or chrome plated brass or steel. You’ve got a bunch of holes ahead of you, save yourself some hassle and get a cobalt drill bit, High speed steel cheapies will dull out quick. Use lube, go slow.
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