PPFD Graphs and Analysis

[ConstantGreen]

If I remember correctly Meanwell drivers have a 7 year warranty, don't know about the boards though but some warranty for sure, those two are the only ''moving'' parts.
Running the boards on a dimmable driver makes it possible to drive them within a great range (mine can be set to draw from 30w - 170w @ 230v AC) However drivers lose efficiency when they are dimmed, I think I can run mine at half capacity and still stay above 90% driver efficiency (92% is max) This depends on the driver some are more dimming-friendly than others.
Dimming is stepless and on some drivers done directly on the driver using a philips head screwdriver, other drivers need a potentiometer.

Try watching the instruction videos by Growmau5 on youtube if you want to learn about DIY COB's

PW is Pennywise.

Thanks for dropping all that knowledge here! Definitely worth it to dim then, if you're dimming more than 2% lol. I should send you my PAR meter.

Although light scatters with LED similar to inverse square, its not quite subject to the exact inverse square due to inverse square only applying to a single point source of light in which light scatters equally in all directions. (like a star in the vacuum of space). With LED its a directed light at a focused beam angle, therefore the inverse square doesn't exactly apply, however the ratio of light dropping off due to scattering is similar depending on how narrow of a beam angle the LED chip is set at.

This can easily be demonstrated with a flashlight with a zoomable lens, where the output of the LED doesn't change, but the throw of the beam due to the angle does... same goes for LED's, the tighter the beam angle, the longer the throw, the wider the beam angle the quicker the dispersion and less throw, but the rate of light dispersion is not constant in comparison between the sources due to the focusing of the light particles.

A very very minor detail but figured I would throw out the correction BTW I love legos too

Thank you for clarifying that, don't hesitate to correct me and others! I was definitely lazy referencing the inverse square, because I do see in the graphs that the drop-off with LED's isn't as bad as the law says it should be. A good time to take a 2nd look at this comparison I made earlier on the 2x2 penetrations:

Average PPFD Loss per 6" in 2x2:
XPlus: 11%
CMH: 26%
Reflector 192 Bloom: 23%
Mars 1200: 23%
SE450: 20%
SE450 Lens: 14%

The CMH, even within a reflector, probably is most subject to the inverse square. The Mars LED's are not far behind with 120 degree lenses. Pretty sure the SE450 used 90 degree lenses on the monochromes, and 90 degrees for the secondary cob lens (14%). I'm not sure what the XPlus lens angle is, but all the other lamp dimensions were ~2x2 feet, and the XPlus is ~4x4, so it may have cheated that comparison a bit by penetrating the 2x2 from such a wider source. But the other's aren't competitive enough to compare in the 3x3 / 4x4 prints.

What lens angle do you guys think is best for LED? I'm having trouble justifying the secondary COB lenses for the SE450 if the extra penetration means it becomes too intense at the optimal height and has to be raised.

 

[ConstantGreen]

Duude I'm excited for you and your quantum boards! That's some tech I'm really looking forward to testing with, but it's not even on Fluence' radar yet and I don't know anyone else manufacturing quantum panels that aren't thousands of dollars.

Ok, I'm a fool. The Fluence SpydrX Plus IS a "quantum" light. At least, it uses the same Samsung 561C chips as the quantum boards. The customer service rep at Fluence had no knowledge of "quantum" though so maybe that's just like a pseudo-brand name for these new chips?

 

[PurpleGunRack]

Yes, the word Quantum is what HLG calls them, basically it's the same technology as COB's but with mid power chips spread out on a bigger board.

The chips are called what Samsung calls them, the tricky part is to stick them on a circuit board

There's also sun/wavy board, and probably more around or soon to be


Nicely spread out on the spider there is nice, do you now the Colour temperature of the chips?

 

[ConstantGreen]

Yes, the word Quantum is what HLG calls them, basically it's the same technology as COB's but with mid power chips spread out on a bigger board.

The chips are called what Samsung calls them, the tricky part is to stick them on a circuit board

There's also sun/wavy board, and probably more around or soon to be


Nicely spread out on the spider there is nice, do you now the Colour temperature of the chips?

Just asked Fluence about the color temp and the chip specifics. A previous email hinted that they use Samsung, OSRAM, and LG chips. Response:

"Regarding your questions about the diodes, I actually grilled engineering for about 20 minutes trying to get some answers for you. They want to relay that while the diodes are top-quality, bin 6 and 7 diodes, we actually purchase them from a variety of sources. We have main suppliers and also back-ups, and we purchase them from whomever is offering the best diodes at the time. These sources could be the manufacturer, or a reseller. In many cases, we don't even know this, as these suppliers sell stock to each other, as the diodes are fully commodified items. Essentially, we don't know if the SMT diodes in a given fixture were produced by Samsung, or LG. Even though they have different part numbers, and come from different factories, there is no way to tell them apart by looking at them, and we could buy from one and receive diodes from another. To complicate the answer further, engineering has told me that the individual color temperatures are a trade secret, as this is the source of the high performance of the fixtures. The spectra are a mix of warm color temps and cooler ones.

I can tell you that the yellow ones are cool white, the orange ones are a warm white, and that our overall color temperate is around 4000K."

(In the above picture of the X Plus, the chips are not actually all orange, every other row of 3 chips is yellow or orange) Guessing by his hint, it must be half 3000k, half 5000k?

 

[PurpleGunRack]

Just asked Fluence about the color temp and the chip specifics. A previous email hinted that they use Samsung, OSRAM, and LG chips. Response:

"Regarding your questions about the diodes, I actually grilled engineering for about 20 minutes trying to get some answers for you. They want to relay that while the diodes are top-quality, bin 6 and 7 diodes, we actually purchase them from a variety of sources. We have main suppliers and also back-ups, and we purchase them from whomever is offering the best diodes at the time. These sources could be the manufacturer, or a reseller. In many cases, we don't even know this, as these suppliers sell stock to each other, as the diodes are fully commodified items. Essentially, we don't know if the SMT diodes in a given fixture were produced by Samsung, or LG. Even though they have different part numbers, and come from different factories, there is no way to tell them apart by looking at them, and we could buy from one and receive diodes from another. To complicate the answer further, engineering has told me that the individual color temperatures are a trade secret, as this is the source of the high performance of the fixtures. The spectra are a mix of warm color temps and cooler ones.

I can tell you that the yellow ones are cool white, the orange ones are a warm white, and that our overall color temperate is around 4000K."

(In the above picture of the X Plus, the chips are not actually all orange, every other row of 3 chips is yellow or orange) Guessing by his hint, it must be half 3000k, half 5000k?

Wow, that answer is weak and slippery at the same time...

The answers should have been:

We use xxxxxxxxx brand and model of chips.

There are xx 2700K in the lamp
There are xx 3000K in the lamp
There are xx 4000K in the lamp
There are xx 5000K in the lamp

It's simple information that should be available to the customer!

Not like it's hard to reverse engineer the lamp if one would like to copy it

That they don't know the brand of chips they buy is just not true. At least they should know where they bought the batch of chips they put in your lamp.


Yet another reason to DIY

 

[ConstantGreen]

Yea, the answer was a little confusing. Though it sounded believable since these chips are notoriously out of stock. I expected an answer like yours when I asked them the first time before even buying it, but sensed some secrecy then too. Maybe they do know and just won't say. Pretty much would be giving away their recipe if they stated it openly. I've never even heard of LG chips that are identical to the Samsung 561c. Trying to look up what that might be but I didn't realize there's sooo many LED chip components out there. That's one thing that's been putting me off DIY is taking the time to learn every detail about LED's is daunting. That ChillLED guy at certain points looked like he was being consumed by his research and development and it was kind of depressing. I can hardly juggle the plants so I'm a bit willing to fork out the cash to save me time and research.

The quantum boards save a lot of work but I'm not turned on by the rectangle designs. They're cheap enough to link up multiples, but quantum bars seem like the way to go. If there were 8x 90w quantum bars out there that I can configure like the spydr legs, I'd be all about it.

 

[PurpleGunRack]

I think the boards have that format because it's the easiest for heatsinks and shipping, a long bar would easily break, the boards are like 3mm thick.

The only way Fluence can legally protect their lamp is by patenting the spider format, chips and drivers are available to everybody and pretty easy to put together.
It's like knowing the specs on engine, transmission etc. when buying a car.
Most growers know that in the world of LED growlights a company not saying what hardware they use is the same as saying they use crap hardware, so not a clever route to take for someone actually making a decent lamp.
The evasive answers they give is what you would expect from some greedy lamp pusher who uses sub par hardware.

If you have about $200 to spare, try ordering a 4 COB lamp kit from Kingbrite and see how easy it is to assemble a COB lamp
You don't have to know everything about the chips and drivers, there are many DIY'ers here and on other forums ready to help you figure out tehnical stuff.

Basically all you need is:

Meanwell driver(s)
Latest generation chip(s) like Luminus CXM, Citizen CLU, Bridgelux Vero and new better chips keep hitting the market so it's only about knowing a little about the latest stuff on the market.
Heatsink(s)
Framing, which is usually aluminium profiles or whatever you want to use plastic, treated/painted wood.
Soldering iron, cutter and screwdriver
Wires, connectors, nuts and bolts

Many COB's running soft = high efficiency
Few COB's running hard = Low upfront cost

 

[ConstantGreen]

Sounds easy, but it's hard to keep up with the latest tech. Last year, Cree CXB3590 was the trend, and DIY'ers and commercial companies are still just starting to understand and build with them. Now no one's interested in Cree, I guess it's Citizen, Bridgelux, Vero, Samsung, LG, OSRAM, etc. The options and variations seem overwhelming. I was just looking at the LG page, at one section of their High-output modules, and there was over 100 different chips, with different wattages, voltages, color temps, etc. A lot of them look the same or like the chips any other brand would make. Without knowing what you're looking for I think it would take a lot of time and research to find the next best chip and spectrum configuration. The quantum board kits sound more like assemble-it-yourself than do-it-yourself. How do I know HLG's color temp combination is better or worse than Fluence's? What color temps do you use on your boards, and why? Unless you've played with the chips and spectrometers and whatever else the engineers go through to research, you're just like anyone else paying to rely on someone else's design.

I'll try pressing them harder for a solid answer on the chip components, cause I was grilling Mars pretty hard recently about their chip bins and component quality, so I should expect the same openness and reliability from Fluence. Although with the SpydrX Plus, the PPFD numbers all match the website and my expectations of a 4x4 performer, so the specifics of their spectrum and chip selection is curious but not as concerning to me since whatever the recipe is, it works. I'm sure the QB boards work great too so I'm not sure how special the CCT really is in the end. 3000k for veg right? 5000k for flower, or I guess a mix of both for a hybrid.

I don't think the bars are so difficult to ship either. If the choice was between bars or boards, I'd pay an extra 50 for the bar's packaging to be improved. The Fluence box was probably 50% thicker than a standard cardboard box, and had really high-density molded foam inserts that cradled the legs like an egg carton. Ideally the bar would be pre-molded to a heat sink so hopefully that'd help keep it intact too.

I count 2,112 chips on the SpydrX Plus, which runs at 660w. 0.31 watt per chip
The 135w HLG kit has 288 chips, runs at 135 watts? 0.47 watt per chip, 50% more.

More chips, lower wattage mean the XPlus is more efficient? Efficiency is important for small stealthy growers as well as large economical growers. 660w in HLG (five 135w kits) would be $925, vs $1500 XPlus. Hmmm, I mean the warranty, efficiency, secret spectrum, bar design, time/effort saved, vs $575 saved... might be close. I guess in the longterm, let's say they both last 3 years, and each produces 3 crops per year. The XPlus would have to produce $65 more flower per harvest to be worth it. In 2018 prices, let's say that's 13 grams more needed per harvest. If I had a 4x4 PPFD graph of five QB 135w kits, we could maybe calculate whether the XPlus could theoretically yield 13 more grams than the HLG system.

 

[PurpleGunRack]

On HLG's Quantum Boards it's one CCT per board, I have 3000K which is good for flowering and full cycle, 5000K is ideal for veg.
2 of the 320w kits(3 boards + one long heatsink + driver) would set you back $900.
Once your up on 6 boards the spread is very good, of course long bars can be shipped I'm thinking more in the lines that they are more finicky when handling them in the factory
Efficiency is also about the driver, what's in the Spydr?
You can run boards how you like and with 6x 110w you'd be looking at around 2,5 micromoles per watt.

I would love to do some PPFD measuring, but a meter is not on top of my to-buy-list, and no growers I know have one...

Cree is releasing a new chip to follow the CXB3590 soon, can't remember the model name but I know some growers on RIU had a batch for testing.
Try window shopping a little on Kingbrite's, they have most of the latest tech except for Luminus products but they're in The States so getting their stuff is certainly worthwhile if you live there, in europe not so much.

Building a QB lamp for 4x4 yourself:

6x QB 288: 6 x 75 = $450 - HLG
6x heatsink: 6 x 14,49 = $86,94 - HLG
3x Meanwell HLG240H-C2100A drivers: 3 x 70 = $210 - Mouser
(boards will be dimmable in groups of 2 this way, you could get 2x driver for 3 boards, can't remember which is fitting but can easily find out, would lower the cost a bit, so would getting heatsinks for more than one board)
Wires, power cord, connectors, nuts, bolts etc. = $20 - electricity/hardware store/online shop

Total = $767, lets say a little shipping fees and extras like hangers are added and you're looking at an even $800 for a powerhouse of light with adjustable output and 6 points of light that can each be hanging at different heights
All you need for assembly is a small phillips head screwdriver and a pair of scissors.

Adding some IR and Far Red and maybe even UV for like less than 30 minutes after lights out would be killer