Ok, my second DIY LED panel is up and running, but, as expected, the bug has been well and truly caught and I'm now looking at the next project.
This time my plan is to step up to 24v LED strip, and ditch the blurple side of things, so am looking at two "colours" of LED, such as a mix of warm and cold white strip, maybe 2500K and 4000K, to give a good "spread" with a slight bias towards the red end of the spectrum.
Will be looking at the same plan as the one in the DIY section, where as good as 10 metres of strip fits onto a lump of metal around 1 ft².
So the basic idea is there, as I say I'm upping the voltage which should mean more emitted light from the LED's (research will be done to confirm that I will get a better output, if not then I'll stick to 12v strip) so the only question is "which colours". Obviously I can go a bit silly with dimmers and RGB strip, but that is not a route I want to take as things get unnecessarily complicated for no benefit, so sticking to two different Kelvin ratings is what I want. Each colour will be switchable, so I have, say, the 4000K (or higher, 6500K is max I can get off the shelf, I think) for vegging and then both for flowering, instead of it being only everything "on" or "off".
So that's the question, which "colours" should I go for?
PS. I know I can get cobs, or pre-made grow lights, but I see cobs and I see heavy heatsinks, cooling, etc, whereas my plans have a BFO passive heatsink called a square foot of 1/8" aluminium plate (maybe bigger, who knows when I get going, I'm the sort of person who would build a 4'x4' panel just because "I can"), and there's no fun in buying something that's pre-made when you can get the metal munching tools and soldering iron out. So DIY is the way forward, purely because "I can" and, well, a man is allowed to have some fun.
This time my plan is to step up to 24v LED strip, and ditch the blurple side of things, so am looking at two "colours" of LED, such as a mix of warm and cold white strip, maybe 2500K and 4000K, to give a good "spread" with a slight bias towards the red end of the spectrum.
Will be looking at the same plan as the one in the DIY section, where as good as 10 metres of strip fits onto a lump of metal around 1 ft².
So the basic idea is there, as I say I'm upping the voltage which should mean more emitted light from the LED's (research will be done to confirm that I will get a better output, if not then I'll stick to 12v strip) so the only question is "which colours". Obviously I can go a bit silly with dimmers and RGB strip, but that is not a route I want to take as things get unnecessarily complicated for no benefit, so sticking to two different Kelvin ratings is what I want. Each colour will be switchable, so I have, say, the 4000K (or higher, 6500K is max I can get off the shelf, I think) for vegging and then both for flowering, instead of it being only everything "on" or "off".
So that's the question, which "colours" should I go for?
PS. I know I can get cobs, or pre-made grow lights, but I see cobs and I see heavy heatsinks, cooling, etc, whereas my plans have a BFO passive heatsink called a square foot of 1/8" aluminium plate (maybe bigger, who knows when I get going, I'm the sort of person who would build a 4'x4' panel just because "I can"), and there's no fun in buying something that's pre-made when you can get the metal munching tools and soldering iron out. So DIY is the way forward, purely because "I can" and, well, a man is allowed to have some fun.