InTheShed Grows Inside & Out: Jump In Any Time

[PurpleGunRack]

All right, the LEDgardender strip DIY build site is a good place to be inspired, but ut hasn't been updated in a while.
The Q-series are not worth getting for anything but small clone lamps.
The F-series are nice, but like I said go with H inFlux it's the best strips you can get.
Q and F are bendy plastic strips that has to be taped onto heatsink/U-channel, H inFlux are sturdy aluminium strips with mounting holes so it can be screwed onto a heatsink/U-channel.

H and F use LM561c diodes.
Q and H inFlux use LM301b diodes.

Keep in mind that thermal tape is hella sticky, so you have to be very precise when attatching the strip, you only have one try to get it right, the 1120mm strips are a nightmare to do this with.

Or is 12 strips overkill?

Yes, 8 is on par, 6 is sufficient.

If I ladder them with 22" strips, how many would cover 4'?

Mind melt please use metrics

If I only knew what I was pricing out! F series, H series, Q series? Should I use the LED DIY recommendations? There are so many options when I click the digikey links that in don't even know how to narrow down those choices in the columns because I don't know what the columns mean! And I haven't a clue about amps and corresponding drivers.

H inFlux narrowed down to 2:

64 (L04) or 88 (L06) diodes - 3000K - 560mm x 24mm - they're both 24V, L04 is 1,6A max and L06 is 2,2A max.

LED Lighting - COBs, Engines, Modules | Optoelectronics | DigiKey


Choosing driver(s) is easy when you know the forward voltage and max current, figure out which strips you want then we'll talk about drivers

 

[nobodyhere]

Cool discussion on lights. I have an observation shed.

In veg I am running a kind 300, which is 175w with those pesky noisy fans, and that 100w vero cob about a foot off the kind lamp. I went out of town and placed my BBa which is just putting on weight/height in stretch, and it damn near kicked a 90 to aim at the cob versus the kind directly over it.

None of the other plants under the lights are doing that. It's PPFD.

And I am just bathing in all these numbers being thrown around.

 

[CraZysWeeD]

It's hard when u look at all the numbers but when it clicks it's very easy to understand them. @PurpleGunRack you should do a spreadsheet on this, which strips and how many on one driver.

I'm surprised how easy it was to order from Digi-Key. Those sites usually don't let the little people order from them and not one or two strips.

 

[InTheShed]

Mind melt please use metrics

If I ladder the width with 560mm strips, how many should I get to cover the 1.2192m length?

Yes, 8 is on par, 6 is sufficient.

8 strips to cover the entire 1.2192 x 0.6096 meter space? Graytail and I were discussing 10+.

10 strips at 25 watts each (1050ma),
14 strips at 17 watts each (700ma) or
20 strips at 12 watts each (500ma).

Has something changed?

Okay, just to be clear, the difference between the L04 and the L06 is 3960 lumens vs 5630 lumens? That's a 30% difference in lumens for a 25% difference in price. That makes the L06 a better deal though the L06 seems marginally less efficient.

If I plugged the correct numbers into the online calculator, they both draw about 35 watts/strip (22v, 1.6a) which means that I need to keep my strips at 7 or under to stay under 250w draw. Have I got that right?

7 L06 strips would be 39,410 lumens. I'm I in some ballpark here?

Thanks for continued help!

One last question for now...are quantum boards just Samsung strips pre-mounted?

 

[Amy Gardner]

8 strips to cover the entire 1.2192 x 0.6096 meter space? Graytail and I were discussing 10+.

That’s just bc Gray and PGR have different approaches. He doesn’t specify there, but I’d guess that PGR would most likely suggest driving those 8 strips a little harder than what Gray is suggesting in his recommendation.

The less diodes, the harder you have to drive them. More diodes means you can drive em softer so they run cooler/more efficiently. Just different schools of thought. They both work

Fun weekend you have ahead

 

[InTheShed]

Fun weekend you have ahead

Thanks .

Can you or someone tell me how you change how easy or hard you drive them? Is there like a dimmer knob? And if you drive them at 100%, what's the percentage change in life expectancy of the chips? I can't imagine the amount of heat changes if you have to add more boards to make up for the loss of lumens, which would add more heat.

And if I drive the L06 board lower, I would need a lot more boards and that completely changes the pricing.

 

[Amy Gardner]

I’ll leave it Gray to ‘splain the efficiency thing. And others to ‘splain the hard drive approach.

But on the dimming, the A type drivers have a little dimmer you access with a small Phillips head screwdriver - it has a pretty wide dimming range. The B type drivers have wires to connect an inline dimmer knob/pot. I think the only real advantage to that is accessibility - which ain’t nuthin’ - and I think the built in ones have a bigger range (although I’d need to go back and check that).

LED gardener has good tutorial videos about the different drivers.

 

[InTheShed]

Amy!

 

[Graytail]

You can run the strips as soft as you want - they're merely rated at a specific amperage.

When I listed examples, that's how many strips you can run on that driver - you can use fewer.

I defer to PGR on the H-series. I haven't spent any time looking into the latest.

But the math stays the same. I have 120,000 lumens in my 4x4, so that'd be 60,000 for a 2x4, and that's a bit too much, so shoot for 50,000 or so.

Again, you can run any strip at any amperage you like, within its limits. They're 20-25 volt strips, so the numbers I was working with still apply. You just find the maximum voltage the driver supplies at that current (500ma, 700ma, 1050ma, etc) and divide by 22v and that tells you how many strips you can run at that current. So if you can do up to 10 at 1050ma (max voltage is 238v), you can do 15 at 700ma, etc. And there's always the diode/sqft metric too - 80+ per sqft. That'd be somewhere around 700 total diodes? The L-04 have 72 diodes, so that's 9-10 strips. So, you're in the ballpark.

More strips run cooler and more efficiently, but it costs more, too. It's about finding what you're comfortable with. The fact that the H-series uses a metal substrate is a big plus for heat dissipation, too. You can avoid sinks if you run them cool enough and that saves money. @PurpleGunRack , how hot do you think you can run the Hs in the open air? Nah - did some math - probably only 10-15 watts - not enough.

 

[Amy Gardner]

Oh and that’s the meanwell drivers. There are others. But in your current circumstance I wouldn’t bother looking at them. The meanwells are great, standard, and designed for the purpose.

 

[Graytail]

Look at the mid-power diodes this way:

If you run them at max, you get about the same numbers that you'd get with a double ended hps - about 140 lumen/watt. But if you run the diodes softer, they get much more efficient, while the hps doesn't. At 1000ma, the H-series run at 182 Lu/W. At 1600ma they get 163 Lu/W. You've lost half your advantage already.

 

[InTheShed]

Okay, I understand that running them softer makes them more efficient (and lowers the heat/board), and that if I want the same lumens I'd need more boards. So running them softer means they're drawing fewer wall-watts per board so I can fit more boards in my 250w max headroom (insert "Max Headroom" reference here)?

I'm sorry if I missed it Graytail...did you mention a percentage that you run your boards at?

10 L06 strips puts me at $250 to start and yesterday we were talking about 20 strips for $200. Is that the price difference between the F and H series?

Do I sound like I'm slipping backwards in my understanding?

 

[Amy Gardner]

I don’t think so! Not backwards at all. It gets tricky!

running them softer means they're drawing fewer wall-watt per board so I can fit more boards in my 250w max headroom (insert "Max Headroom" reference here)?

This^^^ ... and it means you can get better spread across the space.

I love Max Headroom.

 

[Graytail]

I get careless when I start listing numbers. The L04 have 64 diodes, not 72, and the L06 have 88. And I'm looking at L04, not L06, so let me adjust.

L06 deliver 3960 Lu, and the F-series did 4400. The L06 are $18 and the F-series are $10? $14? (I'm forgetting numbers). There's your difference. The Hs are about 10 Lu/W more efficient.

I run my 304 boards at 0.14 watts per diode, and the 120s at 0.177 watts per diode. They're rated at 0.18 and max out at 0.6. Most people run them around 0.4 watts per diode. That's the LM361Cs - dunno about the 301Bs.

 

[InTheShed]

Let me ask about the watts/diode first. A board is rated at 0.6 and your running them at between 0.14 and 0.17? Isn't that 25% power? Which means you need 4x the boards for the same lumens? I'm not sure what the difference between "rated" and "maxed out" is especially if most people are running their boards way over the "rated" number.

If I run them as most do at 0.4 (66% power) then I need a third more strips to get the listed lumens/board, yes?

If the L06 are $18 and the F-series are $10, but the H series is only 10% more lumens/board (3960/4400 = 0.9), that doesn't seem to be worth anywhere near an 80% increase in cost. Is there another factor I'm missing or have I done the math wrong?

 

[Graytail]

Yeah, sorry, fugged up on the F-series price. They're $14 from Arrow.

The diodes aren't rated at 0.6. They're rated at 0.18. I saw a utube demo on the original HLG 304 and he ran it over max power for an hour, I think, and nothing failed. But you lose all the efficiency at that power.

It's all about how much you can rationally spend. So if you want to shoot for 0.40 watts per diode, and 250 watts, that's 625 diodes.

I can spit out numbers all day long.

 

[CraZysWeeD]

The less diodes, the harder you have to drive them. More diodes means you can drive em softer so they run cooler/more efficiently.

And then you can water cool them and drive them over the rating.

 

[Graytail]

I'm fuzzy about the H-Series, but if I have it right, the L06 in 3500K is SL-B8U3N80LAWW.
When I plug that into octopart, I get Digikey as the only current supplier at $23.46 for 10+. That's true for any color temp.

https://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data Sheets/Samsung PDFs/H_inFlux_Ver0.6_2-5-18.pdf

SL-B8u3N80LAWW | Octopart

 

[CraZysWeeD]

The 3500Ks are not as efficient in bloom as the 3000Ks.

 

[InTheShed]

Now I think I'm more confused. The boards are rated at 0.18 watts and most people run them 2.2x over rating? Is that safe or advised? (Water cooling notwithstanding )

But if that is okay, 625 diodes = 78 diodes/sf (625/8sf). If the diodes are .2 watts each, that's 15.625watt/sf. At 180 lumens/watt (I no longer remember which board had that rating!) that's 2,812.5 lumens/sf. Am I somewhere in the ballpark of "that sounds like a good amount of light for what you need"? And since I have completely lost track, can you tell me which boards I'm talking about with these numbers? LOL! Buying a car is much easier.