That’s encouraging/reassuring! I’ve currently got a 250W cfl on them as close as I feel safe having it, and they’re all at node three, nice and tight. I’m just not totally sure what to expect I guess.
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I find the higher color temperatures tend to greatly restrict stretch in bloom. I recommend 5000K if you expect to use the space for flowering sativas. 5000K strips also have the highest PAR output.
Contact me here on PM or at solstrip.com to discuss you needs. We ship worldwide, including to the UK, directly from our US facility. Pricing is the same, exchange rates and customs duties vary by country of course.
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Having not used them, I can’t speak for the SolStrips but would always support a brother with a good product. These seem well worth a look.
Otherwise the Samsung themselves IMHO are hard to go past.
I am running these at 1.35 Amps where they are pushing 200 lumens/watt. I have tested various temperatures of these for different stages of growth. In the end the 3500K for these is the sweet spot for for both veg and flower. It contains a good mix or reds and blues so you get short bushy growth in veg and solid bud structure in flower.
I’ve also added some 5000K strips to the veg cycle for a bit more of the blue spectrum, but to be honest it made no real difference.
Strips produce far less heat that is easier to deal with than COBs in my experience so I have come to prefer them. Some people will talk about penetration of the light being too low, however all research demonstrates that diffused light is actually more efficient for growth and if you manage things, this is not a problem.
All you need to use for heat-sink is an appropriate size piece of aluminium channel, not any fancy expensive heat sink.
I can buy 6 metres of 40mm 2mm aluminium channel for $30. I also use some thermal paste between the strips and the aluminium, but even Samsung say this is not 100% necessary.
I don’t cover the actual LED in any way to protect these and have yet to have a single failure in any of the Samsung strip variants I have used and abused. They are pretty robust.
Here is the data sheet
https://cdn.samsung.com/led/file/resource/2018/04/Data_Sheet_H_inFlux_Rev.1.2.pdf
They are using this chip, this data sheet has all the colour spectrum graphs for the different temps.
https://cdn.samsung.com/led/file/resource/2019/03/Data_Sheet_LM301B_CRI80_Rev.7.0.pdf
I use these drivers to run them
Because they are $9 AND they are genuine Osram so more reliable.
You can only run a single strip per driver with these, but I prefer this arrangement even though it requires more wiring, rather than run a whole lot of strips in series. With this arrangement if one fails then that is all it is, in a series setup you lose the whole light. Also this way I can power up the light with more strips in flower and turn some off in veg.
Also if you have never done any of this sort of wiring, then single driver to single strip is a lot easier and safer.
If you are thinking about going this route, let me know an I’ll be happy to give you some pointers.
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^ some great info there. I’ve been using, wiring and tinkering with all kinds of HIDs for years and still am totally lost when it comes to LEDs and the various drivers in series/parallel etc. Thanks for laying it out simply like that!
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