White Haze DIY LED Arduino Control Attempting Flowering With 10 Hours Of Dark - 10/10

[tobler]

Hey to all.
First time poster.
Have lurked here and other forums for quite a few years and I thought I'd share a bit of an experiment with you all.

While I call these "white haze" they are a cross I did a number of years ago with Nirvana White Widow and Haze skunk.
I have had these seeds over 5 years, was very surprised when I attempted to germinate and they did.

Anyway this Journal is more about experimental flowering light regimes.
So
Veg'ed two months in 50liter cabinet with 39w of leds.
Ran out of room so there are a few spots where leaves touched the leds.
Two plants. One topped and one mildly super cropped.
Hydro around 1000ppm.
The mini flower cabinet is built for a winter climate (has a peltier heat exchanger)
Temps are good at the moment, slightly high at some points (arduino logs temp)

Where it gets interesting is the light schedule I'm attempting.
It's currently set for 10 hours light and 10 dark, with the dream/hope they will flower...

The 10 hours of light is further broken down into 9 hours all on with the last hour only the red strings and IR LEDS lit.
At the 10 hour mark the IR LEDS stay on for another 5min.

So kick back and enjoy a few photos and lets see if this idea crashes and burns.
(Days are calendar days not day/light cycles)
Day 1

Day1 Let there be light

Day4

Day6

Day6 Stretch

Day6 All Red on

So currently at day 6. When the cabinet is next at the start of a cycle I'm planning to change the code on the arduino to exclude the IR from the first 9 hours, which I hope may reduce the rate of stretch.
I still have a few other bits to wire up on the cabinet.

 

[PerthPiper]

Re: White Haze DIY LED arduino control Attempting Flowering with 10 hours of dark. 10

Cool experiment you have there I can't make up my mind what the conclusion will be lol

 

[PerthPiper]

Re: White Haze DIY LED arduino control Attempting Flowering with 10 hours of dark. 10

And to I'm new here also

 

[mobudds]

Re: White Haze DIY LED arduino control Attempting Flowering with 10 hours of dark. 10

got to see this one im always one to mess with things as well just to see what happens

 

[tobler]

Re: White Haze DIY LED Arduino Control Attempting Flowering With 10 Hours Of Dark - 1

Hi Guys thanks for the kind words.
Progress to date is a whole lot of stretch, The easten side of Krondor is in the midst of a record breaking heat wave with 5 days of 40-44deg days and 28deg nights.


And a few brownouts to add to the fun.
I should have shut off half the red to try reduce the stretch.
The cabinet does not have a lot of height, stretch is what I was hopeing to suppress.
Had changed the code to exclude IR from the first 9 hours of the day before the heatwave kicked in
I also changed the logging function which seems to have created a memory leak so the light cycle last Sunday had the lights staying on.
So lucky plants got an extra hour of light that day and ended with 5min of IR. (missing the hour of red only).
(I’m in two minds about the pissy amounts of IR that 4 IR leds can provide in relation to stretch and the whole Pr thing)

I’ll add some underwhelming pictures of stretch this weekend.

Ok now into some boring technical detail

DIY LED fixture list of wavelengths.
Blue
420nm X 4 (42mil Junctions) @ 700ma each (radiant power claimed around 600mw)
430nm X 4 (42mil Junctions) @ 700ma each (radiant power claimed around 700mw)
450nm X 2 @ 1400ma Cree XT-E (Running flat out)
460nm Led Engin 5w @ 1400ma (Running outside of spec)
All on one string (around 23V @ 1400ma) 32 Watts
Red
630nm Prolight 4 @ 750ma
660nm X 4 Luxeon ES Deep-Red running at 750ma.
660nm X 2 Led Engin 10w @ 750ma (Yes under driven from the 1amp max rating)
660nm X 2 Epiled 9 X 42mil Junction devices @ 1500ma
665nm X 2 Epiled 9 X 42mil Junction devices @ 1500ma
Red is on two strings, from memory 27V an 37V so 96 Watts
IR
730nm X 4 45Mil Junctions @ 350ma (radiant power claimed around 25mw)
A huge 2.66 watts of electrical energy into 4 X 730nm LEDS.

UVA/UVB
UVB 10.0 Fluro tube 18W. Driven at 30W
(Tube is not installed in this pic)


The theory for whats its worth.
Why I’m bothering to waist some time on weird light timing.
10/10 is based on a number of Biology references quoted over the years on various cannabis related sites.
To begin with Photoperiodism in short day plants. Conclusion been give cannabis a flash of IR at the end of the day, convert all the Pfr present into Pr and save two hours on the night cycle.
Two hours been classified as “dark reversion” the time it takes for Pfr to decay into Pr in the absence of red light.
I have seen it discussed but never a journal implementing a 10 hour dark cycle.
In the same article under “Problems with the Hourglass Model” it goes on to talk about the relationship of flowering with the circadian rhythm.

If flowering was solely based on red light only and the decay of Pfr to Pr then we could feed the plant blue light all night with no impact to flowering.
Have read blue light all night journal with the conclusion of plant went back to veg.

There is also a pretty radical flowering regime of “PAD” (Photosynthesis Artificial Darkness) floating around.
From what I can see they have a shorter blue period and then feeding it heaps of RED and heaps of far red into the night.
Ending with a short real night.
(I have not read the “PAD manual”)

So the simplistic idea is to hopefully entrain the circadian rhythm to a faster day and use IR at the end of the light period.
Run blue for 9 hours giving an effective 11 hours “dark” period in relation to Cryptochromes stimulation.
Run Red and IR for the remaining hour (twilight), to get the Pfr Pr cycle a bit more excited (whatever the “cycle” does)
Another 5min of IR to end with Pr clearing the way for mythical Florigen signal to materialize.

Yes it will hurt yield but the point of the experiment is to see if flowering with 10 hours of dark works.
IR power might be an issue, while longer wavelengths have more penetrating power 100mw is bugger all.
Will available IR be strong enough to change Pfr to Pr?
If experiment fails will it be from lack of IR or its just a dumb idea to begin with.

 

[tobler]

Re: White Haze DIY LED Arduino Control Attempting Flowering With 10 Hours Of Dark - 1

A few pictures of calendar Day 13. (Sixteen light cycles).


Was expecting more progress than this.

This top has now hit the light and was a lot higher than every thing else.

Bend it over or cut it. Have taken it for clones.

 

[tobler]

Re: White Haze DIY LED Arduino Control Attempting Flowering With 10 Hours Of Dark - 1

Day 18 (22 light dark cycles).

Boy

Girl

Under whelming progress for week 3.
So excuses are in order.

• Week two the cabinet was running at 34Deg.
• Had to top plant.

Result at Day 18

Not so crowded.

 

[tobler]

Re: White Haze DIY LED Arduino Control Attempting Flowering With 10 Hours Of Dark - 1

Day 21.
Imported a girl from other location. Was flowered at 12/12 with a 30watt light with a lot of blue in it.
Started the Flower period at pretty much the same time. The light is for seedlings and clones.

Day 23 Bud of the original resident of 10/10 experiment.

Shot of Imported girl day 23.

Catching up for pistils but the change in spectrum has created some leaf issues.
The node spacing is a lot better.

Conclusion: Yes they will flower under a 10 hour dark period.
The IR flash used is only 4 X 1watt leds for 100mw of radiant power to speed decay of Pfr to Pr.
I don't think there is much point getting too excited by the slow flower development because the light itself is unproven. At this point I'm thinking it needs more blue.

 

[budsforall17]

Re: White Haze DIY LED Arduino Control Attempting Flowering With 10 Hours Of Dark - 1

can you explain to me a little about your DIY light, i want to build one but i am having trouble understanding what driver i need. how do i know how many volts and milliamps the driver needs to output??? this electrical engineering aint easy haha

 

[tobler]

Re: White Haze DIY LED Arduino Control Attempting Flowering With 10 Hours Of Dark - 1

Hi Buds,
Some gross generalisations to start with
All blue leds run between 3.1 and 3.7 volts.(forward voltage)
All red leds run between 2.2 and 2.4 volts.
All leds when the junction gets hot, the forward voltage drops.
Depending on the led they have a current guideline from the manufacture.
"1watt" leds are 350ma and "3watt" leds are 700ma.
Now onto a tangent...
As far as I can tell 1watt and 3watt are pretty vague regarding actual watts. The reason a 1watt led is considered "one watt" is because back in the very early days of Philips putting out the first high power leds the forward voltage was around 3.7V at 350ma giving 1.3watts.
As the led gets to operating temp the forward voltage drops but the 350ma stays the same hence "1watt".
Current blues leds from every one are more efficient and have a lower forward voltage. In operation they tend to be below 1watt. 3watts according to ohms law 3.4V X .9amp = 3.06watts
most "3watt" (generalisation) are around 3.2V X .7amp = 2.24watts

Now back to your question.
Let me start by saying it is way easy (and cheaper) to buy a led fixture than build one. It is a time sink.

For the blue in my light. The string is driven at 1.4amps. For the leds that are 700ma I have them paralleled(two) so each junction sees 700ma.
The string as far as the driver is concerned is 7 leds in series giving an expected voltage range of 23 to 25 volts.
"Cold" = 25volts give or take.
"Hot" = 23volts give or take. (really hot then maybe 22 or 21 volts)

I'm using a boost driver powered by a 24v power supply for blue.
For the red strings, I'm using two 240V drivers that have a range of 29 to 39 volts (1500ma).
One red string is longer than the other so one of the drivers is in the lower part of the voltage range.
This matters because the efficiency of the driver suffers if it is not in its sweet spot.

Note that manufactured led fixtures tend to run their "3watt" LEDS at 500ma to give better efficiency.
All LEDS suffer "droop", as the current density on the junction increases the efficiency decreases.
You can run a blue 38mil junction at 700ma (well heatsinked) A 42 or 45mil junction at the same current (same junction type/quality) will put out more light because of the lower current density.
Junction size is also a bit of generalisation, but I use it as a rule of thumb when looking at the lower quality offerings.

 

[tobler]

Re: White Haze DIY LED Arduino Control Attempting Flowering With 10 Hours Of Dark - 1

Day35 (Cycles 42)

PPM 1230 which has damaged some leaves.

Warm weather, should have logged how often the second RED string gets turned off due to greater than 27deg.
No real smell yet.

 

[David Bowman]

Re: White Haze DIY LED Arduino Control Attempting Flowering With 10 Hours Of Dark - 1

How did this grow turn out?

We would love to be updated with some pictures and info.

How about posting a 420 Strain Review?

If you need any help with posting photos, please read the photo gallery tutorial: Photo Gallery Guide: How to Resize, Upload & Post Photos

I am moving this to Abandoned Journals until we get updates.

Thanks and hope all is well in your world.

Love and respect from all of us here at 420 Magazine.

 

[tobler]

Re: White Haze DIY LED Arduino Control Attempting Flowering With 10 Hours Of Dark - 1

All is well in my world thanks for asking.

The grow proved that I can flower under 10hours of dark useing IR to shorten the dark period.
This grow suffered from a heatwave so stretched alot and cut early.

Next time I have time for experiment plan on doing 10 Dark/14 around 200W led.

Smoke report, developed some lemon aroma.
But cut early to early.

Under a HPS (clones of above) the lemon aroma developed but not much frost. (Currently cureing).

Not much interest out there for a shorter dark period it would appear.