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As a kid, me, my brother and my mum used to make bottle gardens, the idea was to plant a load of plants in a bottle only through the neck (think of those ships in a bottle).
Anyway i was thinking of building an update to this: http://www.instructables.com/id/Growing-Plants-With-LED-Lights/ when i got bored and thought i'd put together an electric bottle garden in old water bottle i had lying around.
Although this is kinda similar to my other instructable i figure its different enough to be worth posting. Its also not really an entirely sensible project, loads of light leaks out the sides (but it looks pretty) so its more of an LED assisted bottle garden, and it would of been a hell of a load easier to just cut up the bottle, but i liked the idea of doing it just through the neck.
Anyway i was thinking of building an update to this: http://www.instructables.com/id/Growing-Plants-With-LED-Lights/ when i got bored and thought i'd put together an electric bottle garden in old water bottle i had lying around.
Although this is kinda similar to my other instructable i figure its different enough to be worth posting. Its also not really an entirely sensible project, loads of light leaks out the sides (but it looks pretty) so its more of an LED assisted bottle garden, and it would of been a hell of a load easier to just cut up the bottle, but i liked the idea of doing it just through the neck.
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Signing UpStep 1Building the lighting rig
I wanted to fit everything through the neck of the bottle, and i also wanted the LED's to cover as much of the soil as possible. So i figured some kind of expandable lighting rig that would fit through the neck of the bottle was the way to go.
To do this you'll need:
12 red LED's
1 blue LED
a square bit of plastic
thick copper wire
13 220ohm resistors
wire
you should also have a fair bit of experience soldering and making electrical circuits.
Firstly solder 3 LED's along a piece of copper wire at about one inch intervals, making sure they are all soldered the same way around.
To do this you'll need:
12 red LED's
1 blue LED
a square bit of plastic
thick copper wire
13 220ohm resistors
wire
you should also have a fair bit of experience soldering and making electrical circuits.
Firstly solder 3 LED's along a piece of copper wire at about one inch intervals, making sure they are all soldered the same way around.
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Each and every led needs to be atleast 1watt each. Anything below that will be useless so don't use old leds out of toys or old boards, they simply will have too little Total lumens versus lumens per watt. You need atleast 10mm LEDs with 1watt per LED to supply enough light to the plant anything lower will not work. A good combination is a pannel made from 75% 1watt red high brightness leds, 20% 1watt blue high brightness leds and 5% 1watt amber high brightness leds. somewhere in the region of 660nm for red and 460nm for blue
There is also no effective difference in penetrative power for horticultural purposes between a 1W LED and a 3W LED. So anything over 1watt is just wasted. This means brightness has very little to do with the benefit you will get once you use 1wat leds. Don't confuse this with a pannel made from say 20 LEDs rated a 10watt as to one with 10 LEDs rated at 10watt. As the 20 watt pannel will use the useless 0.5watt leds verses the 10watt pannel that uses 10x10watt 1watt LEDs that are ideal. This has been tested and proven that 1watt single LEDs have great benefit to plants and anything less is just a waste of time and has no benefit at all to plants. The same applies with going brighter than 1watt has no benefit either.
Hope that may help some of you. Especially if you are growing indoors.
Also LEDs are more efficient than any other form of grow lighting available.
The commercially available LED growlights outperform all other growlamps from HID lamps to including high pressure sodium (HPS) and metal halide (MH) lamps.
So prepare to see other grow lamps become obsolete as LED growlight take over.
The cut-in voltage can vary from LED to LED, and the current above the cut-in voltage rises very rapidly, so whichever LED turns on at the lowest voltage may carry a lot more current than the others - that's the whole reason you need a current limiting resistor!
On the other hand, LEDs in series are much better behaved. If you're feeding these LEDs off 5V or more, you're better off to put as many LEDs in series as possible. So you may only need to solder 7 resistors instead of 13. Check out The Guru at ledcalc.com for the optimal design for the LEDs you're using.