COBs with integrated drivers? + Other on-the-cheap ideas

Better than nothing, that’s for sure. :+1:

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If you already have the 8 sockets, hell yeah. 120w of SI LEDs should put out much more light than 200w from a CFL, and it will be more evenly distributed. @TrevorLahey just pulled some phenomenal plants with em

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Did he ever! That blew my mind!

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China delivered. Decided to experiment with something inbetween screw-ins and solstrips/cobs.

@Palindrome, I ordered the dual strip dual color temp ones. Has your resistor hacking been proven successful with these yet? :wink:

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Yes
I have been running these hacked strips a week for 1400 mA with no problems, the 700 mA light have been running for a month.

I have changed the wires, they are a little too thin and got warm.

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Any one have an idea of the Power of this? About 25w?

The driver is 9 - 27.5 Watt max, so yeah 20-25 watt prolly ain’t that far off.

Thank you :slight_smile: wonder if it would work in my 11”x11”x 20” box…

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@Palindrome, so I did progress a little. After an untimely demise of my Chinese driver, found this baby on craigslist for a song.

Do you use thermal PSA tape? If so, any particular
one? I’m eyeing the cheapest amazon option…

Will be doing some aluminium chopping and screwing in the next week.

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How do you tell what wattage you’re running them at?

Im using double sided thermal tape from E-bay, same as the LED-s cheapest one I could find.

Haven’t been able to find one that matces the strip 100%, so I just went with a 9-10 mm a little smaller then the strip but close enough.

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A couple different ways are possible. One way is to spend some time choosing a driver that will only push the desired wattage. In my case, the driver I chose is 36V and is capabale of pushing a touch above 5A. With 5 COBs attached in parallel, each COB gets 36V x ~1A = ~36W. I could easily call that “close enough” for my comfort.

To be much more accurate, one could attach a multimeter to the driver and adjust the V and A potentiometers to the desired output. This method becomes particularly useful if one’s driver is far more powerful than necessary.

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This is what I ended up with for my 2x2 tent, which is used for early veg and seed runs, if i ever get to them…

About $20 for Chinese full-spectrum LED strips at around 3500k. 12x15w = 180w nominal. Not sure what they actually draw. If they burn out, I’ll know to dial her back.

Some thick heavy aluminium lumber I had left over

Wire nuts, $20 of hangers and thermal tape, some wire

Meanwell hlg-240h-12a on craigslist for $60

All in - $100 CAD

I’ll report on how they do!

Edit: heat sinks, after a few hrs, are at 47C, and the driver is at 50C

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