Grow Room Mr.Sparkle’s Arduino Controlled 5 Gal Bucket Micro Grow 2017

[Mr.Sparkle]

Yeah was definite nitrogen toxicity, but on the mend now, just doing very light feed water till things level out, and started some basic scrog/lst work for now

So Day 26

 

[mcpd_refugee]

I am gobsmacked at the amount of thought and effort you've put into this.

If you get the chance, could you write up a tutorial on how you make your LEDs? Most people seem to be from one of a handful of camps: 1.) MH/HPS are the only way you're ever going to grow anything substantial; 2.) CFLs because I'm on a budget; or 3.) Full-blast industrial-sized LEDs. I've always thought that off-the-shelf LEDs were a viable option for grow lights, but I'm not able to really find too much informative about them - only one or two miscellaneous threads here and there. I'd really appreciate any information you could provide.

 

[Mr.Sparkle]

I am gobsmacked at the amount of thought and effort you've put into this.

If you get the chance, could you write up a tutorial on how you make your LEDs? Most people seem to be from one of a handful of camps: 1.) MH/HPS are the only way you're ever going to grow anything substantial; 2.) CFLs because I'm on a budget; or 3.) Full-blast industrial-sized LEDs. I've always thought that off-the-shelf LEDs were a viable option for grow lights, but I'm not able to really find too much informative about them - only one or two miscellaneous threads here and there. I'd really appreciate any information you could provide.

Sure its pretty straight forward though, but i'll answer the other question first before the led making info.

1. MH/HPS are nice but are not needed but it also depends on what your end goal is, if people are looking to fill a room then obviously a couple hps lights would be easier, But if the goal is to even fill a closet, mid sized tent, or anything smaller then you can easily get it done with screw in led's.

2. I use to run cfl's and in comparison there is absolutely no reason not to switch over to led's here's why, one cost wise compare to cfl your literally talking maybe a $1 a bulb, two they produce less heat, three they consume less energy for same light output, and forth led's are directional so the amount of usable light you actually get vs say cfl's is actually a lot more, and you don't have to worry about reflectors or anything in those regards.

3. The full blast COB led's i have and actually currently run in my pc cases just under driven, but i should of gone the route i did with this bucket with the dismantled screw in led's, as overall they are hard to beat.

But here's my take on that and why i think that.

First for comparison most what everyone talks about are the big super high powered stuff like say the cree 3590's or similar cobs like say Bridgelux Vero 29's which at $60+ and $35+ respectively and are expensive for an led in my opinion cause you still need to acquire ballast and heatsinks to support those, same goes for any of the smaller cobs like say the bridglelux vero 18 series which i use. Now at nominal rated power consumption all those leds are in the 140-160lumen/watt range, which is actually in the same range as 600w and 1000w hps but if you under drive the led's they beat the hps as far as efficiency goes, now side note i'm not gonna get into par vs lumens vs moles of energy vs spectrum of light and what our plants actually need vs what we see or how we should measure, so i'm just gonna use lumens as the measurement to compare as its an easy one to do.

Ok now with that out of the way once you incorporate a ballast into the equation those Lumen/watt ratios will drop because a ballast isn't 100% efficient, So say your ballast is 90% which most are above that your lumen/watt ratios of something that's say 150lumens/watt would end up dropping down into the 135 range, same goes for any light source whether hps, mh, or florescent.

Now take for example a standard 8w-14w screw in led bulb most of them are rated in the 100lumen/watt on the package, but usually actually consume less energy than stated and in my own minor testing are putting out closer to the 110-125lumen/w range with the ballast factored in, that's not that far off of a nominally run Big Cob led with a generic ballast, now if you factor in the cost difference you can quickly see where i'm going, as in say running 8 of the 14w led's at around $30-40 plus sockets, vs one cree 3590 at $60+ plus ballast plus heatsink's and ect and factor that cost vs the efficiency difference of running them at say an electricity cost of $0.20 a kw/h, and your looking at only breaking even of the initial upfront cost difference after 3 YEARS of straight 18/6 use, and my kw/h cost is less than half that example.

Next people talk about penetration, sure a single brighter source will penetrate deeper in comparison, but when you have multiple points of light you can cover more area, and also get your plants closer without burning them whether light or heat, so that's all a moot point but i wont get into that.


Now getting out of all that topic and discussion before i go too deep

How easy is it for someone running a tent to make a light fixture out of some scrap wood some cleat sockets, and some screw in led bulbs with the domes popped off "which makes them more efficient" , we can all say its pretty damn easy.

Myself i specifically dismantled my bulbs specifically for height clearance issues, and if you have the space i wouldn't even bother to do so, unless wanting to make some panels or you want to remotely mount the ballasts but all it takes is dismantling your bulb of choice which each brand, type, and wattage will have their own differences in how they come apart, and mounting them to your heat-sink of choice and wiring them out using the stock ballast, pretty straight forward.

now if you want more info comparison wise and to see what some people have done with the screw in led bulbs, there is a pretty hefty thread over on another forum called "Off the shelf retail store screw-in LED and CFL bulb comparisons" but its worth the look.

but i should start up a thread here on AFN over in the led and or led diy section about using the screw ins as most people don't consider them or would rather spend their cash on the latest greatest thing .

 

[mcpd_refugee]

I apologize in advance for briefly hijacking your thread. After this, I promise to stop.

I have a cabinet that's about 44 inches in height. I have several hooks in the top of the cabinet to hang stuff. I was thinking about buying a bunch of these plug in pendant light holders at Ikea ($6/ea.):

And then taking the domes off some Philips 8.5 watt bulbs:

And running some tests. What are your thoughts? I have about 1.5 feet by 2.5 feet of grow space. How many do you think I'd need? Thanks for your thoughts and inspiration.

 

[Mr.Sparkle]

In those other threads most are saying 20-30w per sqft of screw in leds are good for dense growth, and really it's somewhat proportional in that if you can provide more light you will get more bud, in my case with this bucket i would be at 36w/sqft, but going by the previous loose standards you would be looking at 10-14 of the 8 watt bulbs or 5-7 of the bigger 14w ones, now buying that many cords is gonna be costly, but that could also be reduced if you use those Y adapters as shown below, but again the cheapest option would be to get some socket cleats, or lamp sockets, and making a fixture for them, as i know i can pick up some keyless lamp sockets that i use to use for cfl's builds a ways back for $1.50-2 a piece

And definitely pop the domes, and feel free to jump in to my threads that's what they are here for.

 

[Mr.Sparkle]

Day 30 Plucked some fan leafs to make things flow a bit better and prevent bolting, also separated out the bud sites, but hopefully we won't be touching much of it from here on out, things are just starting to flower and were about half way there, so we will see how this goes, hopefully my pruning didn't stunt it too much.

Oh also was still noticing a nitrogen toxicity so its been getting straight water for the last couple of days and will till things level out a bit, then ill add in some bloom nutrients.

 

[mcpd_refugee]

It's looking good so far!

 

[Mr.Sparkle]

Day 33 The Plant is moving along but i don't think it will yield as much as i would like just from current growth rate but we will see with approximately 4 weeks to go, its probably due to the nutrient fluctuation and toxicity but it's the first run so i wasn't really expecting to be dialed from the get go.

 

[Mr.Sparkle]

Day 36, Currently she's starting to throw out that final burst of stretch so if i planned it some what decently we wont have to touch anything, but if not i'll just bend the tall tops over and tie them down, nutrient wise things had leveled out and started to become deficient which was what i needed in order to level out the coco from my over fertilization, so now i have set the current water mix at around 0.76 ec or 380ppm composed of mainly maxibloom with a bit of maxigro still mixed in for added nitrogen, as now it will be transitioning to flower side of the nutrient spectrum.

So definitely not ideal, but not bad and on the mend.

 

[mcpd_refugee]

There's definite improvement from only three days ago. I think she might just surprise you by the end.