Anyone have any suggestions? Tapping can be a pain in the ass, as it’s easy to break the tap off in the hole. Hey man! When wiring up your CPU fan, you’ll need to know which of the wires on the fan are +12V and ground. Now that I’ve got 2 of these suckers finished, I just need to figure out where I’m going to mount them and start growing. This large DIY LED 2×4 grow tent grow light is big enough to contain many container plants. Laser cut your pieces If you think back a few steps with an altitude of the distance between each LED you will get an area covered that is equal to the distance between the LEDs. on Introduction, thank you very much! For now, check out this post on wiring in series and parallel. This DIY PVC grow light stand will become useful when you are starting seeds indoors. My boss gave me these particular glasses as a joke, since they’ve got this goofy yellow color to them. I really like the connector I used to terminate for this example because it’s waterproof and provides excellent stress relief for the cable (if the wire gets tugged on, it won’t rip it out of the connector). Reply If it reads +12V, then the conductor you have your positive probe touching is the positive conductor. Everything but the driver in this tutorial was provided to me by the good people at Horticulture Lighting Group so a special thanks to them for helping out the DIY community and be sure to check out their kick-ass Quantum Boards! For a double diffusion the full distance between each LED is not needed. lol. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Wiring up the LED driver to the COB is pretty simple – it’s even easier if you can do it without having to solder. 2 years ago. The part that proved most difficult in the early days was finding a heat sink for your DIY COB grow light, but now there are all sorts of heat sinks available that come pre-drilled for a variety of popular COBs, so I think it’s worth revisiting this and giving it a little revamp. 4000K will work full cycle but 3000K is likely better. Find out how it was made in the video. LEDs are a light source that emits light from a very small point in every direction evenly. Diffused light means that we don't have a single source of light, but a large one. Learned a lot through this and growmao5. What is attached is only a sample of a possible shape. I do have pretty extensive mechanical and electronics aptitude as well as basic math skills so it should not be hard. The first photo shows a LED strip put halfway into the extrusion with a depth of 10mm. Our lighting products are all designed with you in mind, whatever space you're illuminating, our wide range of energy efficient, stylish lights makes it easy to create a space you look forward to using. i use 4 cpu fans and i plugged all of them together (positive together and negative together). It is normal wadding used in teddy bears and such stuff. Using the examples above, you’d be looking at 16-24 COBs total. Hello, i am currently trying to install led strips on ceiling cove (see 1st attached image).Does it matter if the light is smooth/diffused or is with hot spots since it's hidden anyway?Also, as i cannot find any aluminium extrusion that allows for double diffusion, i am going with step 7 which is to increase the distance.I am using the same type of led strip which has about 17mm of distance between LEDs so i am assuming i need 35mm of distance between the top and the bottom.However, i cannot find any profile with that depth without getting one which is very wide. also at this time sand the edges of the contours, this will rough them up and allow the edges to glow bright. Without the fan running, the heat sink gets very hot, very quickly. Plug the neutral into the connector with the LED driver neutral. The CPU coolers do a great job of dissipating heat and keep the COBs nice and cool. Perfect man! Both should work just fine, so it probably is more a question of aesthetics.There is special milky acrylic with the right amount of diffusion, usually called opal. I’ve read that the heat transfer on the adhesive stuff is not quite as good as the regular thermal compound, but it may be good enough for this application. Since each 5050 LED module can use 60 ma of current, 150 LEDs will draw up to 9 amps.
I do want to get full spectrum for flowering and veg so as to not have to change setup.
this doesnt require any advanced soldering and is pretty easy. I’m Going to use same CPU coolers as you and hope to find a charger that might have enough power to power all 5 but will probably use a few. If you go the thermal compound route, put a pea-sized amount of it on the back of the COB and spread it out with an old plastic card: If you’ve purchased the right heat sinks for your particular model of COB, they will have come with pre-drilled holes that match the mounting points of your holders.
Lets see if the math we looked at in the last part adds up and we get a good distribution of light. The holes I drilled were pretty clean, so I had hardly any grinding to do at all. Does it matter if the profile is wide though? These are the basic steps i used when modeling in Rhino Great DIY article! But trying to figure out what keywords I can search online to buy something. There are many more ways to achieve this like using acrylic light channeling but those are more complex and it is usually easier to use either single diffusion with enough distance or double diffusion. Place the COB and line up the holes. The driver you get will depend on whether or not you need it to be dimmable. There are acrylic sheets with a light transmission of 79%, these are usually used in bathroom installation as a privacy protection. Use this control to limit the display of threads to those newer than the specified time frame. You can use a connector like I did, or a number of others like a NEMA 5-15P or IEC-style power connectors. You experienced a problem that is quite common.
Find out how it was made in the tutorial video. Since I was not happy with the results so far I was looking for a way to get an even better spread of light. 150 LEDs are what you would get with a single 5 meter LED strip with 30 LEDs per meter. My feeling is sandblasting transparent arylic is better. Check out in the video! (3ftx6ft ish). So it can be more or less diffusion then the milky acrylic. Also Read: 12 DIY Vertical Vegetable Garden Ideas. Starting from the bottom build the rectangular risers and glue them one on top of the other with the large contours between. 1 year ago. I’ve used this grow light to grow a Moruga Scorpion pepper from seed all the way to fruiting, and it’s done a fantastic job: If you end up building your own LED grow light, leave a comment below with how it went and what (if anything) you did differently. There are no stock extrusions that do it quite right. Some may have information printed on the case of the driver – mine tells me that the brown wire is my line (hot), the blue wire is neutral, and the green wire is ground. Making your own light is a lot of fun and if you put money towards creating your own light rather than buying a premade unit off of Amazon or eBay, you’ll end up with a final product that’s FAR more powerful and efficient. The first layer of diffusion has hot spots, that is true, but only a little distance away from these the light from all the points in this hot spot overlap so much that it is not visible any more. This LED grow light project requires repurposed items. I’m a complete noob about it (less noob now, after read your article)… #6 Screws are definitely overkill for this application, but they fit in the COB holes and I had them handy, so I made use of them. Excellent. I’m liking the gpu fan and heat sink because of cost it seems. LEDs are a light source that emits light from a very small point in every direction evenly. The LED Gardener is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. One tube does 4 COBs. 4x 120mm Pin-fin heat sinks from Horticulture Lighting Group. If you’re open-air, you could benefit from them. Lets take a look at the two aluminium extrusions of the last step. The third photo shows a LED strip put halfway in the extrusion with a depth of 17mm. This is a step by step guide on how to build your own modern LED lamp from a 3D model, using a laser cutter and some simple electrical components .
DIY Aquarium LED Light.