My purpose was to field ideas about using “something I already have” KISS is great, but right now my rule of thumb is BATSU - Being Able To Stand Up which is why I grow.
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I had not seen those before, and while they would work, they would still cost almost $50 for a dozen of them and, while they seem to be lower profile, they are still about 1-1/2" tall plus about 3" for the bulb (without the globe) still about 6" or more with any backing.
The whole reason for the post was to get ideas about doing it with just the emitter boards and with what I had. As I said in the OP, I thought about doing it as bulbs but didn’t want to lose the headspace in the shower. I had a friend who did renovations and thought I could get some vanity light fixtures from him to use the socket (they teld to be low profile) but, alas, he is doing new construction now.
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Each of those lights already has a driver and heat sink built in.
I would sacrifice one and take it apart and see how easy it would be to separate them.
Idealy, you could have the driver portions outside the tent to keep some of the heat out of the tent. You could then wire all the drivers together and run them off one 110v AC plug. The outputs of each driver would be wired to each LED board. You wont need any additional heat sinks as they are already working fine the way they are. You just need to mount them some way and run the wires.
That assumes the driver circuits can be easily separated from the LED boards. I have not done this, so dont actually know if its possible or not. If ti is, it would solve all your problems.
Edit: This will only cost you some wire to run between the drivers and LED boards and a way to mount everything. You will want to use larger wire than is now connecting the boards and drivers because you will have a much longer run. Id suggest at least 16 ga wire.
Im not at all sure you can connect the driver outputs in parallel. You would need to test that to be sure they will be stable.
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Like @anon32470837 said, I’d sacrifice one and see what’s inside, and if you’re not worried about heat you could probably daisy chain the boards quite easily. Keep in mind that these LED bulbs have warnings on them to not use in recessed fixtures so lowering their profile would of course be at your own risk.
Slightly off topic, but another option would be to salvage sockets from (modern) fixtures and daisy chain them together, it might not be pretty but it will work. If you’re super concerned about profile you could just offset it by training/scrogging like others suggested. Besides if you end up with more light, your plants will be shorter anyway.
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@WMoon518 for how to disassemble them, refer to @Mr.Sparkle’s excellent how-to! Sorry I keep suggesting things that won’t work for you, i’m only trying to help! I promise!
Edit: would help if I linked it.
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@anon32470837 nailed it. Take them apart, mount them on your U channel, extend the DC wires and run the AC wires in parallel off a single plug.
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Thanks, I was going to link that when you posted it. 
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I had forgotten about that tutorial. Its perfect 
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You are correct. I have taken one of them apart, The power board (driver) stands vertical in the case and plugs in to the LED Board with pins. They have a thin piece of aluminum, on the back, as a heat sink, I assume.
I saw a bucket grow from here on the site and it used 4 of these, with the board wired to each. He had said that you would probably need one board for each LED board, but my goal is to eliminate the “power board” completely and use some type of power supply/transformer, like from a laptop. The only other thing that I could tink of is to do a frame with a top and bottom. Run the power boards on the top, with all the wiring going to one of those multi-pole connectors and the emitter boards on the bottom with only wires going from one emitter board to one power board. I am guessing it could be all open, like the kit from SolStrip, but with additional strips on top as well. Should only be about an inch and a half to almost two inches thick.
One thing, is a bulb like a vape atomizer or connector, bottom pin is + and body(threads) are - ?
That is generally how it’s supposed to be, but I know from personal experience (not recommended) it will work both ways lol.
If you had all of the same boards, and knew the specs of the power supply, you could rig a whole bunch of these “cobs” together with a true driver. The bulbs I took apart output 36v I didn’t try measuring current though.
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@Lucy247420
I already have, see reply to @anon32470837.
@Jellypowered
I did see that and have conversed with Mr. Spakle already. I may just have to do it the way he did (one power board per emitter board. Take a look at what I said to @anon32470837. Let me know what you think. If I run the power boards up top and the emitter boards on the bottom, it should be nice and thin and have a frak load of airflow.
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Sounds like you’ve got a plan for sure. Can’t wait to see what you come up with. No reason it wouldn’t work.
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That will likely not work very well - if at all. LED’s really really need a CCCV type power supply or a driver that is designed to work with LED’s. Actually, LED drivers are just CCCV type power supplies that are adjusted to the correct voltage and current. The voltage AND the current output MUST match what the LED’s want or they either wont work or will die quickly.
A laptop supply is NOT the correct type of power supply to drive LED’s. A simple transformer wont work either.
Use the drivers that come with the lights. They are free after all, and already work perfectly with these LED’s
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No. The screw socket on those lights is AC - not DC. The center connector is the “hot” side and the threads are the “common” or neutral side of the circuit. It is very important you keep them that way for safety reasons.
Edit: Here is a link to the page where they explain it a bit more.
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Didn’t read all the responses but i will back up @Skiball in just using them in screw in format is the best option.
Sure i have dismantled them and used them like your are wondering in the past, but consider i had very limited height. At 6ft minus pots and say a frame for lighting, that’s way more than enough space to grow, just learn a bit of training techniques or scrog it as mentioned.
For “Ease” and cost that’s what i would do especially at the wattage your considering, definitely not worth the effort to break them down for literally about 2" of height all said and done. Also a heck of a lot easier to replace anything if you need to, or swap color temps, but definitely pop the domes
You said sockets are expensive where you are, but if you have access to home depot like i believe you mentioned. What you want to be looking for are the Leviton Keyless lamp holders. They are about $2 here in canada and $1.50 in the states
but gonna go back and read through the posts now to further understand the question/choices
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@anon32470837 is bang on on all points, but ill try and back up with some specifics and more info just because i have played with these bulbs and breaking them down. Looks like very similar power boards and parts to the Philips 8-14w led bulbs found at HomeDepot.
First if you have time, cheap aluminum channel or other heatsinks on hand, and wire and soldering iron all warmed up, its definitely an option like larry mentioned on how about going about doing it.
Bulbs wise linearity i threw a note sheet about these out a couple weeks back but it had details i had written down through my testing… might be on another forum… one sec…
sweet alright, first as stated if you wanted to remove the power board all together your gonna need a separate ballast to light these things a CC ballast at least “constant current”.
Just to go right back to basics so as to level out confusion for possible others reading in the future. The built in power boards are there to power the leds, but they convert to usable power that the leds can use from what we get at the wall such as 120v-220v AC “alternating current” depending on where we are in the world. This 120vac transmission power need to be converted to DC power “direct current” to allow our leds to work.
Saying that i grabbed numbers for what was needed for the bulbs i broke down, but the 8w soft white bulbs ran at around 60vdc and 125ma, the bigger 14w Softwhites ran at around 86vdc and 150ma.
So say you made a parallel array of how ever many lights you have lets define it as “N” your ballast would need to supply at least that 86v and (Nx150ma) for the 14w versions, so say 10 bulbs thats 1.5amps, 30 bulbs 4.5amps, very few easily found ballast out there “laptop” will even fit in that range of say 86+vdc and home ever many amps you need.
So easy thing is just to use the prebuild ballasts that already come with the light, just requires 4 sides of every light to be wired depending on how they are mounter or remotely mounted with “proper” gauge wire to our points, AC “In” Hot and Neutral, and the DC side “output” positive and negative sides.
So that all aside lets talk about how many bulbs you should be running. Going general consensus is you should have between 35-50w of actual power per sqft for space with screw in led bulbs. For your 3x3 space with say going on the low end thats around 315w or 22 bulbs worth of those 14-15watters.
So if you already have the bulbs bonus, but if you can find the sockets above at same prices its really only around $50 out the door for them, and obviously if you need more bulbs that price goes up, wood frame and wiring excluded.
anyways can discuss this later, was starting to ramble on
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Check out my thread bro I’m using screw in bulbs
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Yeah, sorry about that. I actually know that. Guess I was getting a little punchy. What I was thinking was which goes to the + and - on the DC side. But all I really have to do is plug the power board back into the emitter board. (DUH!!)
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I never realized that there was that much voltage going into those LED’s, but you’re right. I actually looked at the board and it showed 86v (or 96. Even with my glasses it was tough to read. will have to break out the mag glass I guess).
The question is, could one power board supply the amperage needed for multiple emitter boards?
I guess I will leave it up to better minds to figure out.
Here’s a question for you. In all of your small grow things (bucket, PC Case, etc) what was to lowest wattage you used for lights? Not being able to post for a day (newbie) and doing the F-Day thing made me rethink a bit. Maybe doing a “micro grow” for my sis and bro-in-law. Something self contained and “cat-proof”. Though, would this be better discussed in the other thread?
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