Cheap LED Strips : A Viable Alternative

Growroom Design
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@Jetdro Kinda partially went over the same build in our PM’s but for others sake…

Looking at that, you wouldn’t want to be running it at that 620+watts will unless its set at that but i believe you can adjust it, but that would put each board at running over 150w a piece which is right at there rated max.

First i can’t comment on the r spec which is just added red but compared to there v2 qb288’s at 4 of them running near 150w a piece, your looking around 102k lumens combined going off HLG’s provided info.

To get that with the bridgelux from the spec sheets you would need to run 21 of the 1120mm ones or 42 of the 560mm ones.

So say paring with drivers and the ones we previously discussed, you could pair them with the XLG-200-L-AB drivers at either 7 of the 1120mm strips per driver or 14 of the 560mm strips per driver.

So Multiply that by three and we’ve hit our target.

Price on digikey right now before trump tariffs for you in the states, taxes and shipping is

$304usd using the 1120mm strips
or $330 using the 560mm strips

And thats counting 3 of the XLG-200-L-AB drivers

Saying that i haven’t added in the cost of some 100k linear potentiometers ($1.30 a piece), wire, and whatever material you make your bracket/frame out of.

But you should easily be running at under half the price.

Now to bring it back up, at this level you should think about that penetration vs coverage trade off that was discussed earlier and if your fine with that, mind you your throwing a lot of light regardless, me id just run the Bridgelux’s but i also am not running stuff at that capacity/size so i honestly can’t comment on how well it may work, but id guess it probably would work just fine and running multiple strips for me would probably be preferable over the 4 boards Quantums boards grouped together.

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Thank you…AWESOME response!!!

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Over here a decent size MW psu is stupid money… so being a tightwad that I am have been using these step up converters to power my Samsung strips along with a 36v Nemic Lambda Power Supply I got hold of… I previously was using a 12v server PSU however the amount of amps carried on the 12v line when stepping up to 46 volts was insane and I almost needed battery cables :grin: Also with any step up converter the amount of amps you can output is dependent on the step up… so the less you step up the voltage the more juice you can squeeze out of them…

With my setup I am running the PSU to Busbar, and then use the step up converters to set the correct voltage/Amps… These seem to be rock solid as far as I can tell, no failures so far over a good number of grows. I have one of these running 400w of strips and it doesn’t even get hot enough for it’s cooling fan to switch on. Originally I did this because I had a light with a number of LED’s, some COB’s and also some strips of differing voltage/amps, but it works so well that it’s the only way I would do it now… also it makes ‘overclocking’ the LED’s real easy.

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/DC-DC-10-60V-to-12-97V-30A-1500W-Step-Up-Converter-Boost-CC-CV-Power-Module/143200721833?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

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I was pricing some of these strips on Digikey this morning and noticed the Bridgelux EB Series Slim Gen 3 strips are available. Looking at the data sheet, it looks like there are some pretty decent advances in both performance and efficiency with this version.

The nominally output 4980 L running at 700 milliamps@ 38.2V = 26.8 watts. One of the interesting things in the data sheet is that you can overdrive these by LARGE amounts, with the maximum drive current of 1.7 A .

Over-driving LEDs for the longest time has been a rapidly sliding scale of what you get in terms of light vs what you waste in heat, this is a characteristic that all LED manufactures obviously want to improve. It looks like these strips basically have linear performance gain up to their maximum current rating… See here

image.png689×801 78.1 KB

So basically we can drive these strips at 1.5 A for a 200% output from nominal. i.e. 9960L without a crippling decline in efficiency, providing of course you heat-sink for decent thermal dissipation… i.e throw away heat fast enough via a decent heat sink… That works out $14.81 USD for about 9K lumens :grin:

These are only 12.7 mm wide so could be run side on a piece of 25mm C Channel 4 mm Aluminium…
Pretty cool IMHO. I think I will get some.

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Are the Gen 2’s discontinued? I have been piece mealing a new light part by part and tonight I see they are all sold out with no ETA. Would be a huge kick in the nuts if so.

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Riu? Looking into making the switch from hps to led so all the info i can get my hands on would be helpful since i know jack shit about led

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Check other venders. Someone will stil have some. These are not precise searches, just an idea of places to look. Try Google the part numbers, ebay, Mouser, etc.

https://www.arrow.com/en/products/search?q=Bridgelux&filters=Manufacturer_name:Bridgelux;&selectedType=manufacturer

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Yeah, just got done checking stock on all the other vendors listed on the Bridgelux website including the one you linked. All sold out completely across the board with no ETA. The only thing that seems to be available are the 560mm 5000K strips and the 9" strips and their numbers are also not being replenished. I sent an email to DigiKey tonight to see if they can give some sort of an ETA or explanation but I doubt I’ll get the answer I want to hear.

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I think we know.who to blame… Right? :grin: I bet there are many people who are trying @Mr.Sparkle recipe…

@Mr.Sparkle if you are reading this, maybe you should start patenting your light and grow setup’s, they seem so popular :grinning::grin::moneybag::heavy_dollar_sign::dollar:

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Got an email back from Digi-Key. Apparently they were due on the 14th but never arrived and should be restocked “any day now”

The current lead time for part BXEB-L0560Z-35E2000-C-B3 was approximately September 14. They should be here any day now.

Someone must have bought them all out then? For all SKUs to be out of stock after being so abundant, sounds like someone capitalizing.

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Lot of people seeing the thread or people seeing the potential of them as viable solutions now…at least you’ll get your strips lol

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Not sure if this will allow a “rival” board’s link, but here goes.
RIU=rollitup @Daytripr69
https://www.rollitup.org/t/bridgelux-eb-series-build.928676/

And, FWIW, that same site has excellent content about quantum boards and competitors in that market.

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That site is also full of bullies and complete wankers :v:

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Truth.
It’s easy to ignore them, though.
Read what you need, everywhere, and come back here to get answers for your questions.

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I will be ordering some soon, for my flower room.

May wait and see what the gen 3,s are like.

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Mate at 12,5 mm wide and capable of 9k @ 1.5 A,. the gen 3. if you put four side by side on a 50mm C section of aluminium you can output 40K lumens. for $60 and maybe $10 for the aluminium… 3 of these is MORE that sufficient for a square meter of grow space. What I have been doing for other peeps is buying a cheap ass Chinese psu and swapping out the fan for a decent one. As far as I can tell, so much of the electronic components integrated use the same supply chains components that are so integrated now that the difference of components is often minimal…so I swap out the shitty fan, whack a thermal couple cut out relay on it as a last resort and in 2 years have had not so much as a hiccup on any $70 36V psu’s

Bang for buck $14.81 USD for about 9K L: or say 40 K L per 50mm channel equates to $240 of full canopy light…
$40 bucks for the step up converters, $45 for the cheap PSU, $10 for the decent fan… $335 for a grow light that will be at least as good as anything shit you can buy. This is the headpspace it would good to get OG peeps IMHO. Fuck money making commercial sharks…share the knowledge like the old days…

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Cheers for the info I am definitely interested, just sold a 1000w HPS digital ballast and light I wasn’t using so the money will be going towards these.

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How many watts is that PSU? I can get a MeanWell driver (top of the line) for close to $105…

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While the gen 3s look promising, there is still appeal to the gen 2s. The price is still cheaper than the Gen3s (I have a rig planned that will produce 50k+ lumens for less than $280 with the gen2s) and coverage would be better as well, all without over driving the psu.

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I’m really intrigued by the narrow ones. Gen3’s of those slims ought to be the shit.

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