high power LED grow lights M.k2

Having played around with growing plants under LED lights before, I thought I'd have a go at building a larger system using high power LED's.

........ I do apologise if it looks like I'm flogging a dead horse, this will be my last instructable on growing things with LED's.....honest.
I haven't found any commercial units that use high power LED's (then again i haven't really looked, and I like to maintain the illusion I'm being original :) ), so i figure this is probably different enough from my other attempts to be worth posting.

I probably better say that you really shouldn't be attempting this unless you have a sound knowledge of electronics and have experience working with mains electricity. Also there will be high voltage near a damp environment, which is generally not the best of ideas.
It also uses really bright light, and can probably do nasty things to your eyes if you stare at it, then again if you can read this you probably don't spend so much time staring at the sun/bright objects, so hopefully common sense will prevail.

Basically be safe, and don't attempt this unless you are positive you know exactly what you are doing.

Step 1: Parts

Here's what you'll be needing:

1x Large Tub.
1x High current 5v/10v supply.
4x 3w high power red LED.
1x 3w high power blue LED.
2x STP36NF06L MOSFET.
2x 100K 0.25W resistor.
2x 0.47R 3W resistor.
2x BC549B.
1x Aluminium Box.
1x Mains Lead.
Some wire.

Comments

[boogiemanspud]

Good job. I know what you mean. I grow herbs (basil, cilantro, rosemary, chives), radishes and various vegetables in my basement year round with artificial light and anyone I know asks if I am growing pot. It's so annoying. To me it's just interesting, a good hobby, and a bit mad scientist like. I guess we are just wired differently than most people. But I think that's a good thing. I would be bored to tears if I couldn't experiment and play around with interesting stuff! I'm using CFL bulbs so it's not as energy efficient as LED. I joke that my radishes are probably $15 a pound, but meh, it's a fun hobby. Hopefully LED can cut some energy consumption down. By the way, hydroponic lettuce is next but I need to learn more about nutrients and such.

[dannyrob]

Really cool man! I wish I have the guts to make this awesome LED grow lights. I have some basic knowledge about electronics stuff but I not really confident about it. I guess I have to read more. Thanks for this idea.

[gegg]

Why didn't you just use one power supply?
Couldn't you just use all 5 leds in series with one current source?

[snotty]

Yup! I do this all the time. One controller and a bunch of LEDs. Put the LEDs in series if you have more voltage and in parallel if you have lower voltage. Then adjust the r3 value accordingly. Beware though: If you have LEDs in parallel on the same driver and one LED disconnects (or dies?), then the remaining LEDs can get overdriven and you could get a cascading failure. I think this is a bigger problem with fewer leds.

[flypeng]

my company could do.hello ,this is Fly ,pls have a contact with www.ct-lighting.com ,i would help you figure it out .my email address is [e-mail]

[Jack Corsair]

I am currently trying to grow some plants in my cube at work and have been looking for as much info on leds as possible. have been following you with your attempts. I have had hit and miss success.

I went with something easy but it is turning out to be kinda a crap shoot. im working with moss in small containers. glass bottles and what not.

heh "iamhonestlynotgrowingpot" XD

there are no windows in my part of the building. and I want something that will grow. cant have regular sized house plants because they turn the lights off on the weekends and they die a slow death. but if my LED's are plugged in the maintenance wont unplug it.

so yeah, just wanted to tell you. thank you for your research!

[skuitarman]

lol plants at a disco.....

[ricardovw]

The result

[borisgrishakov]

oy, so interesting!)))

[flypeng]

hello ,this is Fly ,pls have a contact with www.ct-lighting.com ,i would help you figure it out .my email address is [e-mail]

[flypeng]

China shenzhen ct-lighting manufactory,it's been leading in the led grow light and led aquarium light in China almost 6 years,so i am really eager to help you to solve the supplying problem with a best price,meanwhile perfect quality,satisfying sales after service.

website: www.ct-lighting.com.
sure we will not let you down,it's worthwhile to contact my company save your money.

[123cryderman]

Do the LED's work for growing plants? I thought you needed special bulbs for that???

[hanlin_y]

Would the yield be larger if you add more LED's. I see that most pre-made grow LED's are 90 watts or more for a small but open space but you used 15 watts here. Your container is about 8 sq ft and based on the recommendations for UFO grow lights, it looks like they recommend 45 watts.
http://www.growlightleds.com/pages/Grow-Tips-with-LED-Lights.html

[skaar]

using the same method of switching supplies to reduce the 10 volts to 5 volts, then a strobe for them could make them nearly as bright, but last longer, and produce less heat.

[codyg102]

Best affordable heat sink materials are (in order) copper, then aluminum - in case anyone's wondering.

Proper thermal compound will vastly improve heat transfer (if you doubt that one, try running a computer processor without thermal material between the proc and heat sink... smoke will probably soon follow... and not the good kind ;-) ).

[arnookie]

If you are thinking of building a diy grow light please take note of this.
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.

[codyg102]

I have to agree with phlange and pansartax. The arbitrary wattage value makes no sense without some supporting documentation. Plants don't know from watts!

What matters is light output, normally expressed in lumens (or lux).

I'm sure that's what you're trying to get at, it's just that most people -including me - mentally equate wattage with the output of conventional lights types (incandescent, florescent, mercury vapour, sodium-halide, etc.) and can't "picture" what a 1-watt LED output looks like. It would probably be helpful to explain it in terms of output for comparison purposes.

[Electronics Man]

I have a question, since you think that it is so important to have 1 Watt LEDs at the min. then how many 5mm LEDs would it take to equal 1 Watt? Lets say they are Ultra-Bright red LEDs rated at 8,000mcd

Answers are appreciated

[flypeng]

hello ,this is Fly ,pls have a contact with www.ct-lighting.com ,i would help you figure it out .my email address is [e-mail]

[arnookie]

Just to clear a point up. If you make a 100watt pannel with 100x1watt leds you will benefit. But if you use 200 0.5watt leds to make a 100watt pannel it will not benefit the plant at all. The same applies if you use say for eg 10x10watt leds to make a 100watt pannel then you are only really getting 10watts overall because the extra 9watt per LED is just wasted as the plant will not benefit. SO using 100x1watt LEDs will benefit the plants by 100watts. 10x10watt LEDs would not because 9Watt of each led is just wasted giving the plant just 10watt of usefull light. Sorry but thats just the way plants absorb light.

[phlange]

arnookie:
can you please verify your references in this information.
it seems as though you have posted the "1 Watt only" rule in every 'LED Grow Light' thread in instructables.com
Hoping you could shed some light on where it came from.

Mike

[flypeng]

hello ,this is Fly ,pls have a contact with www.ct-lighting.com ,i would help you figure it out .my email address is [e-mail]

[pansartax]

Uh.. do you have a source for this? It seems very odd seeing as many 1W LEDs are comprised of 2x0.5W junctions or something similar, and all my 3W LEDs have 3x1W junctions.

I don't see how plants could distinguish light from 100 1W LEDs from light from 10 10W LEDs. The energy contained in each photon is defined as hc/lambda and does not vary with the wattage of the source

You are however correct in saying you need big LEDs. Using small 5mm LEDs, you would need an absurd amount.

[phlange]

coincidentally, what is considered the "very high output energy" LED's are of the One Watt gender. You pump a whole Watt into an LED and it will draw an exponential amount of power(in amps...i.e. the actual power of the light).

I concur with this "1-Watt LED grow light rule", but I must insist on a bit of reference, or a source for your view of it.

[andybuda]

can the high power led be used with a led transformer that outputs a constant current.... you can get them for a few quid and just connect directly.. + just found the ribon type leds on ebay check them out 12v and have 18 leds that can be cut in to 6 x 3 and there flexible there £7 iv started using the other one for growing but its a bc conection, cpc....they are 2 for a fiver and work really well there is a lense inside that focuses the beam but that can be removed

[LividMonkey]

Question: Would UV LEDs be helpful in this setup? I was thinking that plants like UV light so it would be beneficial to add some. What do you think?

[}{itch]

from what i've read plants use UV-b light during flowering, but i don't think there are any LED's that produce light in the UV-b spectrum (UV-n is the light that can give you skin cancer and other nasty stuff), but i think it is possible to get either "lizard tank" or "aquarium" strip lights that give out UV-b, so that might be something to look into.

[ovven]

both UV a and b are damaging to plants, though not sure in what quantities. UV b damages the pigment.

[newrev426]

For 1 awesome instructable. Just purchased all the supplies and am trying to get this thing together but am having a little trouble. The wiring diagram is a little hard for me to get for the different lights as the one seems a little generic and not for the specific lights. I just dont want to fry these expensive parts ya know... :) I have a 5v regulated 1amp power supply and aton of 12V power supplys. I purchased identical products except for the leds im not sure are the same. (3 watt 2.4V 700mA) Anyway if anyone can help me assemble this thing thatwould be amazing! I have all the supplies just need to know how to put it together.

[byerlee81]

or just buy this http://www.ledwholesalers.com/store/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=367

[daddyofsix]

Nice option and very reasonable.

[buddah30]

Why are you having problems attaching the heat sinks to the box? Are you running votage to the box? They should be attached to it to help with grounding and heat. Also why are you putting eletronics in with moisture. Attach them to the outside of the box. As for cooling, look for computer fans. Small ones can get attached to your electronic box for cooling and bigger ones can be used for blowing on hte plants. You could even use some of the wasted power from your leds to power them.

[bountycrops]

I agree. You are absolutely right when you said that before attempting to build a high-powered led system, it is a must that you have the proper knowledge about electronics as well as the flow of electric current to prevent any untoward accident. By the way, congratulations on your system, it was truly a job well done :)

[derrekito]

One thing that needs mentioning is that plants are very picky about what kind of red light they absorb. Often the frequency range is normally outside of commonly found red LEDs. In fact, I have yet been able to find any purchasable in the specified range. according to the image in this comment, most red absorption occurs at ~ 600-625nm. Many LEDs are in the 630-660nm range, so be cautious.

[aspalmer]

Warm White seems to match that distribution pretty well It's mixed with 2 peaks, at 450nm and 600nm. http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=516-1975-5-ND

[zeroemission]

it would look like simple red & blue LEDs aren't sufficient then. if anyone here can do reflow soldering, then the most economical & possibly superior way to build grow lights is by mixing spectrums using luxeon rebel lights. i was researching this last night and found they have a red/orange bulb no one seems to be using whose wavelength is 617nm (LXML-PH01-0050) which looks like it's output is right in the phycocyanin peak on this graph and more practical than 425nm+ red bulbs where the dropoff starts. not only that, but i saw that a red/orange 3w luxeon star puts out just 190 lumens and costs $8.44 while a pair of rebels would put out 200 lumens and cost only $5.48! figuring out how to solder them would be a real pain though. having just learned about reflow soldering last night, i imagine someone could just etch a circuit to solder onto. if it could be done, the smaller rebels offer the most lumen bang for the buck. one could even mix 617 red/orange with 426nm reds. surprisingly, in all of my research claiming that LEDs just don't offer the same light penetration as house heating sodium & halide lights, there's a simple solution... train your plants horizontally. then you can place your bulbs within mere inches of your plants as they aren't going to get burned. i'd like to start growing exotic veggies & spices for curries, but live in a town where you just can't get them at all. i'd like to not only grow them cheaper & eat fresher, but i'd also like not to heat my apartment up even more on hot summer days. i think if you combined LED tech with training techniques, you can greatly improve light coverage. if everyone has success using LEDs for sprrouting, then horizontally trained plants should provide similar results. put the lights as close to the plants as possible... problem solved.

[derrekito]

Just a heads up: It may not be useful to base a grow light system's performance on the SI unit Lumen. It may be luminous flux, but it is based on the perceived light by the human eye. The visible spectrum is between 450-750 nm. This leaves out the absorption frequencies for beta-carotene and chlorophyll a. It might be better to depend on radiant flux provided that there isn't too much electromagnetic energy being emitted below 250 nm or above 700 nm - otherwise your power/efficiency ratings will be offset by wasted energy you wouldn't want to consider. Ideally we would like to have a rating that could tell us something about the amount of energy generated that could (in theory) be used by a photosynthetic plant. Additionally such a prospect may be futile as I doubt all photosynthetic plants absorb precisely the same amount of light per frequency - thus the absorption rating would need to be plant specific.

[zeroemission]

i'd want to grow a lot of different plants, particularly onions i think as it seems every recipe i'm trying needs onions. i can't find curry leaves, fenugreek, black mustard, green coriander & a few other common curry spices anywhere here. i'd also like to try a few different medium hot peppers like pasilla & poblano as well as more common spices. i tried this delicious spicy basil once called cinnamon basil i wanted to buy at a market but was told it wouldn't grow indoors on a window sill. if i had my way, i'd just have my own plot of land and grow all of my needed veggies. i miss old school acidic tomatos that have that cherry tomato flavor and can't stand those flavorless hothouse ones. i was taking it that the chart was a display of all of the wavelengths plants use for photosynthesis and not a chart for some specific plant, i hate apartment living i tell ya.

[AlexCphoto]

Thanks for this chart,.. iv been looking for something this detailed,.. due to this data iv decided to add in a few (12) 573nm LEDs to increase my Phycocyanin coverage and also add in the gap I was completely missing for Phycoerythrin. with that change I still miss the primary Chlorophyll a peak just a little, but have the secondary Chlorphyll a peak (which is only a bit lower in efficiency) fairly well covered. I certainly would like to hit 425nm but im not finding any ultra bright pink LEDs out there,.. Ill run with this for a bit and see. (LEDS at 1/5 power for photo)

[flypeng]

any color ration could meet your requirements.hello ,this is Fly ,pls have a contact with www.ct-lighting.com ,i would help you figure it out .my email address is [e-mail]