LED strip spacing for seedling/early veg

Hello all

Im building a light for seedling and some veg with some led strips with an impressive spectrum for veg. My question is, what would you recommend the spacing between the LED’s be? These will be hooked up to a dimmable driver so I can control the intensity. Here are some pics





These will be used to start off 2 seeds and then will be switched over to a different light. Anyone with recommendations on spacing between the led strips in the driver?

How big is your veg space? Can you sketch out the tent or footprint of veg area and how you plan to hang the fixture? Also how many watts are u running to each strip?

I would try to get it so that you have as even coverage over your space as possible. So if the board is centered in the space, then have each strip equidistant from each other and the walls of your space if that makes sense. But that will depend on wattage/sf ultimately.

Also, 2 seeds.. for now... Reality is you going to want some flexibility and will definitely find another use for those photons. If you find a killer pheno in one of those seeds you might want to take some clones, and they going to need a home too

So this is my first run at things and it’s gonna be done in a 2x2.5 tent. A full run veg-flower using autoflowers. The light will be hung off of that heat sink I just need to decide how far to space the led strips apart. It’s a quantum board hear sink so it’ll be hung with a ratchet strap and adjustable.
I’m running these off a hlg-60h-48B in parallel so each strip will run 31w @ .650mH each. This will also be dimmable as well

I had already invested money and built and diy cob light utilizing a chilled puck and some vero 29 se’s But after completing it more research showed that I should have went with both quantum board and pcbs/strips made but a company named cutter located in Australia. They’ve been producing some impressive things so looking forward to expanding the room after this first grow

As far as placement during veg, I would go with your first pic, and then just center the light in the tent.

This setup will be good for veg, but you are going to want double that for flower. 2x2.5 would technically be 150W to get to 30w/sf. I think you would want at least another set of strips and driver for when you get to flowering stage. Or throw one of your other lights in there to supplement. Sorry if I misunderstood. The first post you said this is just for seedlings/veg but then also said you were going to do a full autoflower run, but wasnt sure if you meant under these lights or if u are adding more.

Yea my bad I’m sure I diddnt explain things properly. I’m using this light to start the seedlings. And then when they show strength and resilience I will take that light out and replace it with the original cob light I built that’s around a 260w unit. A little over powered but it’s dimmable


That’s the spectrum of the strips I plan on seedling/early vegging under.
Then I will switch to this light which was the original light I built. 260w utilizing a chilled v3 puck in the middle and 2 vero 29’s ‘b’s on the outside


Spd simulation showed that the light is much better suited for flow hence the venture into lighting geared towards veg. My original goal was to keep it really simple and just build a fixture to employ full cycle. But after this grow I’ll be getting a bigger tent, building specific lights for veg and flower And start experimenting with the UV spectrum throughout plants life. As with all my hobbies, I’m going into as such

“Id happily get another CBR1000 babe and get back riding with the boys’ this hobby is keeping me home and alive so shut the mouth and go spend my money on your amazon or Etsy junk”

cool u are on the right track. i need to take a photo but I have a similar veg light for the top shelf of my veg cab. 4 of the EB gen 2 strips at 10w each on an HLG-40H-24b. do you have a lux meter yet? or even an app on your phone? since you only have 2 strips i might be tempted to use little loops of duct tape to temporarily hold them to the heatsink so u can test out a few difference placements and see what gives you the most even coverage.

I don’t have a lux meter. I’ll look into this especially if it’s something I can do with the phone. I’m also still waiting on the driver to arrive. Can’t to wait to get going

Cavemanej255 said:

I don’t have a lux meter. I’ll look into this especially if it’s something I can do with the phone. I’m also still waiting on the driver to arrive. Can’t to wait to get going

Click to expand...

using the phone is not perfect but better than nothing. this is the one I am using now, recommended by some other RIU users. eventually will invest in proper apogee ppfd meter.

First layout in your pic will be good.
Look forward to seeing how them strips work out with seedlings.
Super high cri ey.

just seen this, nice..... looks like you are using cutters new 4600k 99cri veg strip not just the straight 98cri 5000k. you can see the 2000k mixed in with the 5000k opti's.

id go with the first pic spacing wise, and dim it a lot!.

Correct! I am using cutters new 99cri strips. Very impressive spectrum and overall an extremely impressive company. Im surprised it took me so long to come across these guys, maybe being in Australia contributed. But I’m looking forward to giving these a try and hopefully expanding use on them. Cutter has an impressive product portfolio and I’m looking forward to trying out all of there UV supplementation boards down the road