415friendly
Well-Known Member
I've been away from 420 for a few days, and don't really have time to catch up on all my reading, but I thought I'd post my own DIY build here; it was several weeks in the making...Waiting for some parts to arrive and looking for some deals and stuff.
I went with the CLU048-1212 chips at 4000k, because I found a source on EBay for $10 a pop. I picked up a bunch of the Ideal solderless ChipLok COB holders as well as a couple of Meanwell drivers and some cheap CPU heat sink/fan combos.
The intent was to run the 6 in the front/back from the 320W driver (HLG-C320H-C1400B), pushing the COB's at 1.4A and around 50W, and then turn on the middle bank (powered by a HLG-120H-C1400B) during flowering. Each of the rows are discrete units which can be removed and reconnected (with some plug in attachments) so tthey can be reconfigured somewhat.
The drivers are outside of the tent and connected by a 10' 18AWG set of wires.With everything running, the heat actually still climbs up pretty high (high 70's) and it's not even the hot season yet, so they're all backed down to around 45W right now. If I have to keep it like this, I may consider just picking up a HLG-320H-C1050B driver and run them all from 1 driver instead of 2, swapping the middle bank out for one with 2 LED's, and run 8x40W or something like that; I'll see how things go.
It is damn bright; way brighter than my 600W HPS, but that may also appear that way because it's a whiter light as well. I do know that there is way more light down at the bottom of the tent so there must be quite a bit more light overall. Please excuse the tangle of wires; I'm still sorting that issue out, but I wanted to replace that HPS right away and start saving some electricity.
I used a screw in connector on the dimming leads:
I'm not exactly sure how I want to house the drivers and stuff, but this was a temporary fix that let me attach a pot without soldering to the driver itself. If I want to mount the pot somewhere, I can always just attach some longer wires or make an extension cable with a couple more screw in connectors. I really think maybe the way to go with the pots is to use a 50k resistor and a 50k linear pot...It seems to shut off completely when the resistance is still pretty high.
Looking forward to seeing how this works out; I may consider swapping out a couple of the middle bank COB's for a 2700K or 3000K to vary up the spectrum a bit, but the 4000k seems to be pretty good all around.
I went with the CLU048-1212 chips at 4000k, because I found a source on EBay for $10 a pop. I picked up a bunch of the Ideal solderless ChipLok COB holders as well as a couple of Meanwell drivers and some cheap CPU heat sink/fan combos.
The intent was to run the 6 in the front/back from the 320W driver (HLG-C320H-C1400B), pushing the COB's at 1.4A and around 50W, and then turn on the middle bank (powered by a HLG-120H-C1400B) during flowering. Each of the rows are discrete units which can be removed and reconnected (with some plug in attachments) so tthey can be reconfigured somewhat.
The drivers are outside of the tent and connected by a 10' 18AWG set of wires.With everything running, the heat actually still climbs up pretty high (high 70's) and it's not even the hot season yet, so they're all backed down to around 45W right now. If I have to keep it like this, I may consider just picking up a HLG-320H-C1050B driver and run them all from 1 driver instead of 2, swapping the middle bank out for one with 2 LED's, and run 8x40W or something like that; I'll see how things go.
It is damn bright; way brighter than my 600W HPS, but that may also appear that way because it's a whiter light as well. I do know that there is way more light down at the bottom of the tent so there must be quite a bit more light overall. Please excuse the tangle of wires; I'm still sorting that issue out, but I wanted to replace that HPS right away and start saving some electricity.
I used a screw in connector on the dimming leads:
I'm not exactly sure how I want to house the drivers and stuff, but this was a temporary fix that let me attach a pot without soldering to the driver itself. If I want to mount the pot somewhere, I can always just attach some longer wires or make an extension cable with a couple more screw in connectors. I really think maybe the way to go with the pots is to use a 50k resistor and a 50k linear pot...It seems to shut off completely when the resistance is still pretty high.
Looking forward to seeing how this works out; I may consider swapping out a couple of the middle bank COB's for a 2700K or 3000K to vary up the spectrum a bit, but the 4000k seems to be pretty good all around.
