Budsbunny
Well-Known Member
YES you read well…., well at least I am giving it a good shot! I will give a brief explanation for now as I have to leave for a few days but the result is too good to keep it for myself . You can draw your own conclusions for now (I am very interested in those though…please don’t hold back) but later on I will give you my thoughts about this “whole thing”.
History
I have an army chest standing up 45 x 45 x 150 cm (18” x 18” x 58”) and I want to grow one plant in it with alternative lights. As I have sorted out the system (bubbleponics), I focused on light management. Now, I have enough power/lights to put this chest “on fire” but I have always been charmed of the simple and cheap led bulbs. Now I know what you’re gonna say but hear me out….
I spent a few hours investigating and trying to understand The Inverse Square Law, which is simplified in the picture below. It shows that the concentration of light is very close to the light source and gets very fast less when the distance gets bigger. So I thought “what if I can re-direct the full power light to a further distance” and I decided to give that a try.
This is the led bulb that I used for the tests.
I’ve done many…MANY tests, the image below shows less than half of the tests I did.
For now, this is how far I came until now, showing the start and end result.
Explanation:
I’ve done a test with a 16W 2700K led bulb without re-direction and my test bulb give more light density in the area shown than the 16W version and I used only 9 watt.
That’s it for now, don’t get fooled by the shape under the bulb as it is just a cover for now. I don’t want to show right now as I think I can improve density with 15-20% with better materials and possibly some more adjustments. (not trying to change the shape of the dark area)
Let me know what you think.
Cheers.
History
I have an army chest standing up 45 x 45 x 150 cm (18” x 18” x 58”) and I want to grow one plant in it with alternative lights. As I have sorted out the system (bubbleponics), I focused on light management. Now, I have enough power/lights to put this chest “on fire” but I have always been charmed of the simple and cheap led bulbs. Now I know what you’re gonna say but hear me out….
I spent a few hours investigating and trying to understand The Inverse Square Law, which is simplified in the picture below. It shows that the concentration of light is very close to the light source and gets very fast less when the distance gets bigger. So I thought “what if I can re-direct the full power light to a further distance” and I decided to give that a try.
This is the led bulb that I used for the tests.
I’ve done many…MANY tests, the image below shows less than half of the tests I did.
For now, this is how far I came until now, showing the start and end result.
Explanation:
- On the left you see the led bulb hanging in the closet.
- Image 2 is the same bulb, same image, but I inverted the image to make the density of the light more clear. Basically, all the light in the chest is now shown as black, the more black, the higher the density. You can clearly see that a lot of light is lost next and above the bulb.
- Image 3 shows my latest test result, all the “lost light” is now re-directed to below and a higher light density area is shown starting 150 mm (6”) below the bulb. This area is about 60 cm or 24” high. Also, you can see that the floor of the chest is getting more light. (it is more dark)
I’ve done a test with a 16W 2700K led bulb without re-direction and my test bulb give more light density in the area shown than the 16W version and I used only 9 watt.
That’s it for now, don’t get fooled by the shape under the bulb as it is just a cover for now. I don’t want to show right now as I think I can improve density with 15-20% with better materials and possibly some more adjustments. (not trying to change the shape of the dark area)
Let me know what you think.
Cheers.