All COB Users - Lettuce Grow Challenge!!

3GT

Well-Known Member
@robincnn if you could fill in blanks on the specs of the light it would be great.

So I'm excited to be doing a side project/experiment.

I have a lumileds @ 12.5

This strip is about 36 inches (i didn't measure before I mounted it)

It is pulling 26 watts at the wall, it is at 12 inches of the table, about 10.5 inches off the top of the rockwool, It is late right now, so i didn't cut the posts down. Any thoughts on how far off the tops it should be would be appreciated.

There are 2 seeds per rockwool cube. I have a mix of vermiculite and perlite in bottom of the container. There is light nutrients in the water.

The only consistent light these will be getting is from the purple strip. The lettuce was picked at random from my seed bin, they are in alphabetical order in the cubes. I have 4 varieties of lettuce.

I will run at 24 hours a day for the next 2 weeks.

Not sure what I will do yet after 2 weeks. There isn't enough space to grow 4 plants to full size. or maybe there is?

top left is buttercrunch
top right is cimarron
bottom left is parris island cos
bottom right is ruby
How much was that strip? Still haven't heard back from either robbin or Stephen but I'm very much interested in these 12.5% strips..
 

muleface

Well-Known Member
How much was that strip? Still haven't heard back from either robbin or Stephen but I'm very much interested in these 12.5% strips..
I think they are around $30 each



coming home tonight, saw this when I was driving down my street. I wonder what the neighbors think I'm doing. The picture doesn't really do it justice. My house is at an angle at the end a cul de sac, so you can see it from the far end of the street.
 

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pinner420

Well-Known Member
I think they are around $30 each



coming home tonight, saw this when I was driving down my street. I wonder what the neighbors think I'm doing. The picture doesn't really do it justice. My house is at an angle at the end a cul de sac, so you can see it from the far end of the street.
There's a greenhouse in the open here rolln blurple.. everyone just laughs......
 

RandomHero8913

Well-Known Member
Thanks and no problemo. Once this is over I'd love to try out the +95cri chips out there. The 97cri CLU048-1212 Super High CRI looks cool as well as some of the specialty Veros.
 

Tuclis

Member
I think they are around $30 each



coming home tonight, saw this when I was driving down my street. I wonder what the neighbors think I'm doing. The picture doesn't really do it justice. My house is at an angle at the end a cul de sac, so you can see it from the far end of the street.

Where did you get the Lumiled strip at? I've been eyeing the Lumiled sunplus line they released. I've been wanting to build a grow light exactly for growing lettuce/vegetables for personal consumption.
 

robincnn

Well-Known Member
Where did you get the Lumiled strip at? I've been eyeing the Lumiled sunplus line they released. I've been wanting to build a grow light exactly for growing lettuce/vegetables for personal consumption.
It was 1 pcs sample for testing.
I think it will be a while before these strips are available at distributors.
 

muleface

Well-Known Member
Two week update:
Hey, can we get an update. I would love to see the progress.

Lumided Update:

I put my seeds in on April 11th. Its now April 23rd.

So I have only 1 light strip, its pulling about 26 watts at the wall. to make this work, I had to make it into a circle and mount it on a pizza pan (these come in a tape like strip). I started running the lights about 12 inches off the table, then I moved it to about 6 inches, now its at 3 1/2 inches. When I moved them down to my current height, things started growing quite a bit faster.

Things I have noticed:

My light/rig isn't ideal. I would like to get about 10 of these strips and really give them an honest run. Run them in straight lines so i could make an even canopy.

The bugs really do seem to love this purple color. There are gnats flying around the light. I am sure I have this problem with my other lights, but they are far bigger so its harder to notice.

I have no complaints with the quality of these lights. When they hit the market I will get a larger set of them to really test them out.

Also, i have no idea how to really wire them. I just kind of made it work, but in a large scale, i would need some kind of connectors.
 

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Revco

Member
Since we're in the mood for updates, I'll provide mine. My plan is to raise around 600 garden starts under COB's this season. This will be from seedling to typical garden planting size across many different veggies.

I originally had intended to do a side by side between COB and T5. I was impressed after I bought my first COB setup that I decided to go all in with the COB's and do a little bit of experimentation while I was at it. So, I added a second quad Citi CLU48 1212 setup, so now I have one in 6500k and one in 5700k. I am decidedly on team COB now!

My COB's are at ~24 inches from my 10x20 trays, at full blast I was seeing light bleaching. (Could never do this with T5's!) I dialed in the lighting to roughly 24k lumens to the top of a short humidity dome. With a humidity dome, which is used until they get established, this results in about 15k-17k lumens to the plant. I haven't had any troubles after removing the dome, so this setting is probably perfect. The plants clearly notice the bump in light after removing it, but also get used to it after a couple days. The plants will naturally get more light as they grow up and I may have to dial one COB setup or the other back again once they get a fair bit taller.

Overall, I haven't had any major problems to report across probably 60+ different varieties of veggies and flowers. Raising everything from traditional herbs to tomatoes, squash to kohlrabi and other greens. Pretty much everything you'd see in most large gardens. Also several flower types including portulaca, carnations, petunias and mallows. I did see an unexpected death of my early cilantro crop, but think this was related to a late transplant to a bigger cell. I'm seeing very compact growth across two 2'x4' tables covered by four COB's in a linear setup for each table. Overall, I think what has impressed me the most are the very healthy root systems. I don't have the T5 to directly compare to at this time, but I would say that root growth is much better under both COB's but actual plant growth is just slightly slower than I'd expect under 6500k T5's.

It's still somewhat early in my testing, but I think I'm seeing similar results to RandomHero8913. This is across many different varieties. The 6500k, which common agricultural knowledge would would say is "best" for early growth, appears outpaced by the 5700k COB's. I can most easily judge across 36 tomato starts, as I have a tray of 18 plants under each light, and the 5700k is easily outpacing the 6500k. I haven't been able to find a point yet where this balance changes at all, but intend to see this configuration through the season until I change anything.

Additionally, I was rehabilitating a few house plants under the COB's early on and saw much faster growth than I'd ever seen before. This was true under both lights. These were relatively mature plants as well as a couple newer cuttings, both did exceptionally well. I kind of expect that as the garden starts mature, I will see much more rapid growth than I did under the T5's. I think it just takes the plant a bit of time to get to a point where it can use the energy.

IMG_20170424_204115124.jpg IMG_20170424_204123839.jpg IMG_20170424_204139807.jpg IMG_20170424_204202341.jpg IMG_20170424_204115124.jpg IMG_20170424_204123839.jpg IMG_20170424_204139807.jpg IMG_20170424_204202341.jpg
 

RandomHero8913

Well-Known Member
2700k

3000k

3500k

4000k

5700k

4x CXB3590s 3500 + 1x 6500k, 1x CLU-048-1212 5700k, 4x Samsung M282C_G2, 20x Red, White, and Blue monos.

9x V18's. 3x 70CRi 6500k, 3x 90CRI 3000k, 3x 90CRI 3500k
 

RandomHero8913

Well-Known Member
Just a quick update. I grabbed a new driver for these, a HLG-185-C1050a. So these are running at 700ma now instead of 350ma. I'll see how the plants react and if I need to I can dim or brighten.
 

muleface

Well-Known Member
This thread appears to be quite!

So I am experimenting with some cheap red/blue lights from amazon.

They were sold to me at 45 watt lights, when i plugged them in, they were really 27 watt lights. which annoyed me. So I took them apart, ripped out the drivers and rewired them. Now they are true 45 watt lights. Actually they are 46 watts, i hope i don't burn them out.

Each light has 3 - 15 watt red/blue led boards, I am using a 185-1400ma driver and have the 3 boards wired in series, then 4 of the fixtures wired in parallel.

The lights cost me $25 each, the driver 50, so about 38 dollars per light.

I am hoping they do a better job of growing lettuce then my cheap integrated leds did. They did a good job, but i am hoping for better.

I did notice the red/blues put out less lux per watt then 6500k lights, do you suppose even though they has less lux, i shouldn't be concerned by that?



2700k
3000k
3500k
4000k
5700k
4x CXB3590s 3500 + 1x 6500k, 1x CLU-048-1212 5700k, 4x Samsung M282C_G2, 20x Red, White, and Blue monos.
9x V18's. 3x 70CRi 6500k, 3x 90CRI 3000k, 3x 90CRI 3500k

Want to share an update on this? i really would like to see how this is going...
 

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RandomHero8913

Well-Known Member
This thread appears to be quite!

So I am experimenting with some cheap red/blue lights from amazon.

They were sold to me at 45 watt lights, when i plugged them in, they were really 27 watt lights. which annoyed me. So I took them apart, ripped out the drivers and rewired them. Now they are true 45 watt lights. Actually they are 46 watts, i hope i don't burn them out.

Each light has 3 - 15 watt red/blue led boards, I am using a 185-1400ma driver and have the 3 boards wired in series, then 4 of the fixtures wired in parallel.

The lights cost me $25 each, the driver 50, so about 38 dollars per light.

I am hoping they do a better job of growing lettuce then my cheap integrated leds did. They did a good job, but i am hoping for better.

I did notice the red/blues put out less lux per watt then 6500k lights, do you suppose even though they has less lux, i shouldn't be concerned by that?






Want to share an update on this? i really would like to see how this is going...

Well the 90cri 1212's experiment is over. We're moving to CO in a couple of months so everything non essential is starting to get packed up. Conclusion: what everyone expected, high CCT gave shorter stockier plants whereas the 2700k stretched more. I liked the quality of the 4000k light so to keep some leafy greens going I grabbed some $2 Samsung strips from arrow and made a light panel out of them. I have 22 of them running at 350ma. I'll take some pics when I get home.
 

Yodaweed

Well-Known Member
Well the 90cri 1212's experiment is over. We're moving to CO in a couple of months so everything non essential is starting to get packed up. Conclusion: what everyone expected, high CCT gave shorter stockier plants whereas the 2700k stretched more. I liked the quality of the 4000k light so to keep some leafy greens going I grabbed some $2 Samsung strips from arrow and made a light panel out of them. I have 22 of them running at 350ma. I'll take some pics when I get home.
If you ever in colorado springs hit me up i always like meeting forum members and talking grow :)
 
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