LED Grow Light

This is my first instructable, I've done a lot of things in the past but have always forgotten to photograph the steps.

Step 1:

What you need:

Some type of board that will be the base of the lamp.

LED Stripe with power supply.

Cats are always eager to lend a helping paw :P

Step 2:

Attach the LED stripe to the board, I hot glued the stripes to the board.

Step 3:

Solder connection cables to the LED stripes.

Step 4:

Hot glue the cables and soldering points for extra protection.

Step 5:

Check so that everything works.

Step 6:

Add a hanging device, I used 550 Paracord.

Step 7:

Hot glue the power supply to the top of the board and you are done.

Comments

[JakAminin]

any diagram

[RuneG1]

Hi. No use in white,green, yellow or purple. Only blue and red.

Wavelength on the led should be RED: 620-630Nm and BLUE: 460-470Nm

Normaly there is a datasheet for the led`s so you can check out if its correct for growing. Normal grow light have 66% red and 34%blue. But you should be able to change that depends of wicth period your in. Growing,Flowering, harvesting or sleep. You can check the fact by Google "LED Growlight" Good luck

[Jednorozec]

Hello!

Thanks for the input! It will come in handy :)

And thanks for the good wishes, It's already started to grow things in the pots :)

[diy_bloke]

ledstrips dont have a high penetration potential. I wonder if it would be a better idea to glue them on sticks that you stick in between the plants

[Jednorozec]

Perhaps, we'll see how this goes when we start growing. I'll get back when we have tried it out :-)

[diy_bloke]

i'd be very interested in yr results. Currently I am testing a mixture of cool white and warm white CFL lamps (100 Wat total) in one setting and a single 25 Watt White LED in another setting, all on tomato, chilipepper and basil.

[Jednorozec]

Ok nice, we have sowing soil (is that the correct term in English?) that we have taken inside to defrost, when it's warm enough we'll start the seedlings :)

[windkissed]

lol. Very good attempt... Potting soil. Yours makes more sense!!

[diy_bloke]

not sure it is the right term in English, but i understand what you mean

[msanders19]

are those a special kind of led strips? i cant imagine this to work with regular rgb led strips actually, how do these strips emit the spectrum appropriate for photosynthesis? i find pretty interesting so i started looking around for info and came across https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grow_light, hence my questions..
it sure does look nice!

[gunguru]

Actually, most commercial grow lights just use a high output RGB LED. And, since plants don't use the color green as much as red and blue they use an IC to program the array to output the best possible combination of red and blue to feed the plant and aid in photosynthesis. The big commercial lights actually use red and blue LED strips and control the strips individually. So, this would work even better with an Arduino driving the LEDs. The Arduino could also be used as a timer device to speed up or change the production cycle of the plants by fooling it into believing that the days are longer and nights are shorter. You could probably find code sketches for grow light controls online.

[Jednorozec]

Thanks for the input! This was just a first try at a Grow light and I'll probably do more later. I'll try one with Arundio at a later time.

[gunguru]

The only reason I suggested Arduino is because it would allow you to tune the combinations of color by changing the program rather than rewiring things.

[Jednorozec]

Ok, well with this particular LED strip I can change the colours on :)

And about Arundio, I'm very interested in trying it out since I've never done it at least not yet :P

[gunguru]

Try one of those Arduino (or a clone for that matter) starter kits. It should have LED control overview coding with it. This would let you not only control the colors of red, green, and blue but, any color formed by combining the three. And, it shows how to use the arduino to control the lights with timing or by triggering them from an outside source (potentiometer, switch, remote, therostat, wifi, etc.)!

[Jednorozec]

Ok thanks for the tip, I'll try it out soon :)

[KevinJ80]

Does it have to RGB, seperated LEDs or will White LEDs do fine?

[Jednorozec]

This one har RGB stripes, But I think white LEDs will work too.

[KevinJ80]

Ive been using white leds. One 1m white smd led strip and two high power white led components. The plants seem to be dropping their clorophyll. Most leaves has been turning white/transparent.

Just installed a 5m RGB strip and let it run for a week or two and see if I notoce any comeback in the clorophyll.

[Jednorozec]

Ok. What I understand plants use red and blue light more than other colors.