Lighting New Cidly Apollo 4 LED - Custom

[thetreeman]

Ive ordered a couple leds from cidly. Id do something like
8 660 red
1 460 blue
2 6500k white
2 2700k white
2 630 red
The 2700k whites will give you IR, instead of having a dedicated IR, you could still remove one of the 660s and add an IR but the ir leds are quite inefficient and id prefer to get my IR from the whites....
If you go to buildmyled site and select their custom light creator you can see what the different leds will do to the overall spectrum. You want to end up with about 20% blue and at least 50% red to grow ganja.
If you want more whites, ask them for their aquarium version of the apollo, which has higher voltage drivers and u can add more whites.

 

[Corgy]

The general rule of thumb is: there is no such thing as too much light, but you must take temparature into consideration when adding or removing lights from your grow area. Hope that helps a bit.

Peace
NB

http://www.growweedeasy.com/too-much-light

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecophysiology

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PI_curve

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoinhibition

Just saying.....

 

[Joehell]

Recieved my new growlight. Since prices were very reasonable, i got an apollo 6 . Looking forward using this one.

 

[LED Borg]

Yo all, this is a excellent thread!
I know its a bit old now, but I had to post my knowledge on this stuff, its for sharing after all.
your all bang on,. but you don't have to just rely on cidly to get LEDs, oh nooo.
get those little 3W diodes from anywhere & just solder them right in.
Interesting read about all those whites you guys have tried, ever tried 4400K? its got the highest peak of red in it @ 666nm <according to Weins law of converting Kelvin to Nm> plus 7400K has the highest or deepest peak of blue in it....
but stuff that, anyone thought of using indigo? instead of blue? blues do run at a lot more voltage and get a lot hotter, so replace one with a indigo, roughly 420 - 425nm and watch them grow.
We have been working on this for quite a while now and developed a good white led using the most robust & adaptable technology we had for upgrading and yup, that was the Cidly,. ours is one of the first generation GN Ms 6 spot LEDs tho, same thing I spose, pain in the butt to strip cos of those little led lenses falling out but apart from that, we all still love working on it and trying new spectrums ourselves, the modules are a doddle to solder new leds in, plus if ya gonna go that far, change the heatsink paste on the back of the led boards to silver based paste, the same you get for CPU's,, helps them a lot especially when your putting in Hot leds like blues and whites.
Working out what and how many leds you can put in one of those modules is pretty straight forward as was explained before, just add all the forward voltages that each led needs in each module, 15 leds each module, as long as that doesn't exceed the voltage given out by the driver then alls good. so, with those leds, the drivers pump out about 45w for each 15 led module, (one driver powers two modules) just don't go over that.
Will post some pics of the modified led we have been working with, youll notice all the secondary lenses have been removed, plus we blinged it up, sprayed it gold. lol. anyway main reason for lense removal was we wanted a wider spread of light, leave them in and if you have more than 2 plants underneath, they lean towards the middle. take away the lenses and no lean. Plus the leds run a lot cooler, it aint pretty but hey, it works. lol. it has been through a full grow as well over a bubba kush auto by another tester and I'll post some pics of that aswell for you good folks.
Its amazing to see people are now getting right into spectrums themselves, wicked stuff!

 

[LED Borg]

here she is as she stands now. we put a bit more red in the speccy cos we wanted more flower power. lol.
oops forgot to mention
shes just germed four different strains, bloody skunk auto, Chronic Ryder, Lavander Auto and Chemdoggin auto. All have just literally popped out the soil now. as you can see, some havnt uncurled yet.
we plan to leave them under that led for a good 3 weeks until they are transplanted into another LED cab and into bigger pots, and four more are brought in to replace the ones we removed. Gotta staging grow going on lol. happy dayz

 

[LED Borg]

and here is the led when we did the full work on her. quite some time ago now, she still gave off a sort of 'warm glow' but not spiderman light that's for sure, ill post the grow test aswell in a mo.

 

[LED Borg]

she was harvest at about day 71 and was strong as hell. lol. spun a lot of dudes out on that one, got 89 Gr Dry so not bad at all, but could be tweaked on the flowering side, hence more reds.

 

[thetreeman]

Borg, I had one of my modules burn out on my cidly apollo 10 so they sent me a replacement free. When I took my light apart I noticed that the paste wasnt spread well on many of the led modules so I redid it using computer paste. Also the original modules had more blue in them than I liked so I ordered 3 new ones using more whites and reds in this spectrum.
4 2800k white
1 460 blue
2 630 red
8 660 red
which gives off roughly this amount of light...
Blue (400 – 499nm)
9%
Green (500 – 599nm)
9%
Red (600 – 699nm)
81%
Far Red (700 – 750nm)
2%
They only charged $8/module, ready to plug in and shipped them free with my warrant replacement part.
I staggered these in the inside of the light and now it has a much nicer spectrum IMO.

This was my original spectrum for my apollo 10, which after I read some more, is too much blue IMO.

Blue (400 – 499nm)
27%
Green (500 – 599nm)
5%
Red (600 – 699nm)
65%
Far Red (700 – 750nm)
3%
- See more at: http://www.bmlcustom.com/custom-led-strip/#sthash.nILL0fos.dpuf

 

[HubbaBubba]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecophysiology

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PI_curve

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoinhibition

Thanks Corgy, good links. First time I have read about photoinhibition on wiki.

 

[LED Borg]

hey dude great to see another customised led, may i suggest trying another colour? im playing with it at the moment and my plants love it. 425nm Indigo, they do run a bit juicy like a blue so just replace one of them with it dude. also change your whites aswell, best peak in red @ 666nm is 4400K, blue is 7400K....you couldnt get these leds before but ya can now! i sourced them from alibabababa lol ....... yeah that paste they put behind the leds is rubbish white sticky goo innit? well done brto, computer paste is sooo much better,,,, just get a soldering iron dude and modify them yourself aswell, dont bother waiting for cidly to send you parts eh? one word of advice tho, those circuit boards cant handle a lot of resoldering,the copper connections break easily with repeated heating up. LEDs should be touched for max of 3 seconds with the iron, that way no overheating....hopefully....ive already eaten through 3 module boards to date lol. oh and i also removed all of those horrible secondary lenses, pain in the butt to put back and you get a nicer wider beam, not so harsh for seedlings for example.