Grows (or thoughts) of using only LED light strips

[SunandMoon]

I may never end up building or growing anything... but I'm drawn to thinking up designs and innovations

$50 dollar led box for 2

heres your before and after pics 1 week apart nothing but the box you see

It appears the poster has been away for a while, so the only details know is that it's a SMD 3050 strip..

Homemade LED Panel For Less Than $100 - Trainwreck - Cotton Candy - Pineapple Express

The strip is 3050 leds I ordered from china think I paid $20 including shipping. It was 15 meters but I cut it into 4 ft pieces and jumped the wires. it came with instructions... Very easy. Lets just wait and see, should be good though I tested the strip and blue pin lights in a small cardboard box with a seedling for 1 week a while back with pretty amazing results

How much wattage there is is a question. There's the light strip, and also blue pin lights stuck in the lids of the box.
Flexible light grow strips are about .47" wide. using that to extrapolate from the photos, the box looks to be about 14" or 18" long. If it's a 14"x8" box about, then the number of windings of the light strip would make it 200" long, or 5 meters. So it might be a 5 meter strip. 16.4ft.

After seeing a lot of the 5050 light strips, the hard ones seem to be 6 watts per foot, and the flexible ones all seem to be 2.4watts a foot. Some have been listed as 9w a foot, though not sure if it's an accurate number.

So a 16ft SMD5050 strip could be from about 40watts to 100watts, and likely nearer to the 40w area. For SMD 3050, I couldn't find any watt/length numbers for SMD 3050.


Question is - for LED light strips of red+blue.. how much actual watts are required per sq ft. And what is a good ratio of red to blue.

Also, if these are in a small cabinet or box, where they are at least covering the ceiling, would the watt requirements change if the LEDs had a beam angle of 180.

And, any other grows using only LED strip lights?

 

[GrowHydro1454]

Re: Grows (or thoughts) of using only LED light strips.

Interested to see how this turns out

 

[Steviodaddio]

Re: Grows (or thoughts) of using only LED light strips.

At 6w for a 12" strip, that's typically 24 chips. Being .25w's each, I wouldn't waste your time. They say 1w are extremely underpowered and that's when hung from above the plant directly on the canopy. Most diodes and lights are using or requiring at least 3w, many 5w, to get best results. Now if they make a 48w strip in 12" (2w's a diode) you might be looking at something different but would most likely require heatsinks and bigger drivers.

Unless it's being wrapped around would make a huge difference, I doubt it would have any luck penetrating the canopy. All you can really do is just try it. Might be good for seedlings and clones that done need crazy amounts of light but for a growing youngling or full grown plant I wouldn't put my hopes on it. Hopefully someone else might have a better insight than me but just my .02.

 

[VladimirPutin]

Re: Grows (or thoughts) of using only LED light strips.

Not to be a negative nancy, but those strips will not last the 50,000 hours that they are supposed to if you install them in an array like that. They don't have a heatsink. If you put too many strips and the heat accumulates, they will gradually lose lumen and burn out. Yup, that's China engineering! No warnings until it's too late. And anyway, those will only work before you actually start getting deep into flower, then it will be wispy buds a'hoy! Just a kind heads up before you blow a few hundred dollars on them. DIY is great, get yourself some proper power diodes drivers and aluminum and get to work!

Electronic Engineer 10 years in the field.

 

[chlorophyllAb]

Re: Grows (or thoughts) of using only LED light strips.

love the idea wish it worked but I know from experience this is about to start disappointing you. I always thought that this picture kinda looks like someone had your idea on a much bigger scale

 

[zero244]

Re: Grows (or thoughts) of using only LED light strips.

Give them a try and see how they work. Your plants look great especially if you started them under the led strips.
If they don’t work or last your only out 50 bucks. I think we all have lost money in this hobby some more than others.

 

[chlorophyllAb]

Re: Grows (or thoughts) of using only LED light strips.

oh yeah what zero said. keep going knowledge is powerful. there are several projects my wife wishes i only lost 50 bucks on one she reminds me of when ever she gets pissed lol plant does look nice.

 

[GoBanana]

SunandMoon, I too am interested in testing SMD strips as many others have, but using 5630 chips.

I get what everybody is saying about lack of penetration, wattage, heat, longevity... The the same was said about CFL's years ago. But creative lighting fixtures and plant training, has resulted in successful yields for thousands of home/small growers.

I have not seen yet a proper test using a serious amount of smd chips with higher intensities. I have been reading about the latest in LED growing for the past year and it seems like high power, highly efficient white LEDs (Cree/Bridgelux 2500K-6500K) are growing with amazing results. Also the reef aquarium crowd are having great results with DIY strip LEDs, keeping hard to grow corals.

SunandMoon, the ceiling of light is a good name. 1200 mixed spectrum chips, heatsink, theoretically 600w. Wife approved experiment of less than $50. That's a good test.



Did I mention I'm building some crazy shit?
GB