Multichip LED, Remote Phosphor - Guess who it is.

Hey guys, it's Bumpished. Been here a little while and posted very little about my own grow, mostly because it's still not even ready for a journal. Been gathering odds and ends as I can and am just on the cusp of tying it all together. This post is sort of a placeholder for when I finish my last light project, and it's also to get people acquainted with what's in store for later posts from me.

I've purchased a 100W custom spectrum multichip LED and LED driver from VanQLED. Its ratio is:

45 x 440nm
45 x 460nm
10 x 660nm

It will be mounted onto a Super Micro SNK-P0035AP4 CPU cooler. I've also purchased a multichip LED reflector and ChromaLit CL-827 remote phosphor lens. This will be my main overhead spotlight for the flower tent. VanQ is still working on my custom order. It should ship before the 25th.

I will be growing in Super Soil. Nothing special, pretty much following Subcool's ratios on all the amendments, however, because I'll only be cooking maybe 5 gallons at a time, I'm guessing my measurements will be slightly off and on the low side just to make sure I don't fry any of my girls.

So, this is a picture of a supplemental panel that I made. I have three of them. They're ~30W.


And this is where I started:

That's a 50W Warm White on an SNK-P0035AP4. Just a little tomato plant in that sour cream container.

Tour of the flower tent:

Tied a grid work of string up top so I can hang a light from virtually anywhere I want. Probably overkill on the twine, bit it works. That's a Panasonic Whisper Ceiling fan up there for extraction. Doing it's job nicely and, yes, it's very quiet! Hanging everything with plastic chains, carabiners and sometimes zip-ties.

Second light:

That's a 20W Neutral White on an SNK-P0038P. It got waaay too hot so I retrofitted a little Noctua fan and some ducting onto it - problem solved.

Tomato getting older:


And what do we have here?

A little Chiesel that broke the soil just the other day. That picture's from an hour ago, or so. She's in the mother tent right now and I plan on keeping her there as long as I can. I'll probably transplant her after I'm done with this post. I'm hoping to take a few cuttings for cloning duty asap (probably when I top her around the 3rd-4th node).

And one last glamor shot of the tomato plant. I'm naming it Kid.



Well that's all folks. Stay tuned for some remote phosphor Chiesel action.

sounds like a hell of a lot of blue bro. You tested with that much before? Looking nice though.

Hey, man. Thanks for stopping by.

It is a lot of Blue, but that's because I'll by using a remote phosphor lens on the end of the reflector. Check out this pdf by Intematix on their ChromaLit series of lenses and take a look at the spectrographic analysis of the 2700K lens (then imagine a bump at 660nm). That's what I'm hoping for.

WoW ...Ver-very interesting ...
Can't wait to see how it goes !
Great !

Bump (ing) (update time!)

I wondered intensely how these ChromaLit RP screens would work. This will be interesting!

about 90W on this remote phosphor disk...cool,

...very expensive way to get blue light.

strong not here math!

http://www.molalla.net/members/leeper/L prize bulb.htm

Super cool, subbed up Pheda, what does the phosphor do to all that blue? checked out the pdf.. just didn't know what's goin on.

What you thinking with your 3 supp panels? perimeter around the tent?

Hey, all. Uhhh, update? I don't have much for you guys, lol. Still no word from VanQ. I'm assuming they won't just ship everything out w/o telling me. I'll check back in with them on the 25th if they still haven't contacted me.

As for the plants...

Little Chiesel lovin' life. 2" tall with leaf growth every day. I've got the exhaust from the flower tent running into this mother tent with passive exhaust (see that Black flap that I've rolled up?). I've resituated the ducting so it's blowing on the plant from a bit of a distance. She's wobbling a bit more, but I didn't want it to be too intense. I know it looks like she's doing fine, but I want her to be short and fat so anything I can do to keep the stretch down.
View attachment 2539253


And a look at Kid. Put in a tower fan that oscillates, increased the light on him, and cut off the first node since it was yellowing a bit. Healthy new growth, but it seems to be moving at a rather slow pace. Perhaps the transplant will help it along, the roots were all over the bottom of the sour cream container so it was definitely time.

If you're thinking that fan is way too big for my tent I agree with you. I went to two Goodwills yesterday looking for little oscillating fans with no luck. It won't be staying.

guod said:

about 90W on this remote phosphor disk...cool,

...very expensive way to get blue light.

strong not here math!

http://www.molalla.net/members/leeper/L prize bulb.htm

Click to expand...

Not sure what's being said here. Google decided to block that link of yours because of supposed malware. Can you take a snap shot maybe?

And if you're saying that the route I've taken is expensive, I'll agree with you somewhat, the actinic Blue multichip LED's cost way more than they're worth (on eBay the higher quality 50W'ers are like $45 each iirc) and this custom spectrum 100W LED + driver cost me $107 shipped! After all is said and done I expect the entire spotlight will have cost me ~$150. So, not the best $/W ratio, but not bad by any stretch, imo. At the very least I'd like to consider it a poor man's Kessil H350, but I suppose that's yet to be seen. In all honestly you'll probably get more mileage out of running run of the mill 50W Warm Whites all ove the place, or even those Cree arrays that have Warm Whites and Red's on them. Idk. I'm well aware this wasn't the most cost effective route to take, but... here we are.

Scotch089 said:

Super cool, subbed up Pheda, what does the phosphor do to all that blue? checked out the pdf.. just didn't know what's goin on.

Click to expand...

Scotch089 said:

What you thinking with your 3 supp panels? perimeter around the tent?

Click to expand...

Not sure. I think it depends on how the plant(s) react. Right now that's pretty much what I'm planning, one hung vertically on each wall. But this is sort of why I like the idea of LED's being used as distributed light sources instead of a point source such as HID, plasma, etc.

As for the phosphor, light within the UV-Turquoise range excites the phosphor which then emits a range of different wavelengths in 360 degrees. Your Warm Whites, Neutral Whites, etc. are just Blue chips with a phosphor layer over them. This remote phosphor lens is an attempt to increase efficiency of that process, as well as reduce spectral shifts/increase the lifetime of the phosphor by reducing the amount of heat the lens actually sees. So, all in all, it's a glorified 100W White LED that's attempting to have near perfect spectral qualities for growing plants. I'm actually hoping guod, or SDS can explain it in more detail if what I've said isn't enough.

Edit - No idea why it's splitting your quote up, Scotch, I've tried fixing it. :/

Not sure what's being said here. Google decided to block that link of yours because of supposed malware. Can you take a snap shot maybe?

Click to expand...

a short of is on EDN
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/powersource/4311973/Leeper-tears-down-Philips-L-Prize-LED-bulb
the same link is at the end, its save goggle has no prob. here

what i mean is your rp-disk can´t transform that amount of blue light into white light(overload), so you will see a mostly blue
light. your red part is also to low (about 5% before the rp)

Whaaaat? Well that sucks. Back to the drawing board on the lens, I suppose. Different reflector, larger lens, more money. Grrrr.

So why is the Red too low iyo? RP losses?

Edit - Took another look at the pdf, I'm guessing if the RP lens was 100mm it'd be closer to what I need. Actually, the 95mm square looks close to perfect, it's just the reflector that would need to be worked out... Hrm. Anyway, thanks for the input guod. Much appreciated.

guod said:

a short of is on EDN
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/powersource/4311973/Leeper-tears-down-Philips-L-Prize-LED-bulb
the same link is at the end, its save goggle has no prob. here

what i mean is your rp-disk can´t transform that amount of blue light into white light(overload), so you will see a mostly blue
light. your red part is also to low (about 5% before the rp)

Click to expand...

The reason I'd stayed away from RP. I feared over/underloads (and my lack of such knowledge).

You're on the right road OP!

Contacted a few manufacturers on Alibaba about 100mm LED reflectors, and Digikey actually sells the same lens in a 100mm Round platform which looks like it's able to handle the number of lumens I'll be throwing at it. So, it might not be that devastating to my wallet if everything works out in my favor. These small multichip LED reflectors are usually around ~90 degrees which is right where I want to be given one of the efficacy charts inside that pdf.

Just wingin' it here, guys, bear with me.

PetFlora said:

When are you going to start a thread? Dying to see the Merkaba in action.

Click to expand...

blindet by the light, pet?

White merkaba from hawaii

Lol Fiora - its constantly on the frontpage bro

Kid's got a deficiency.



I added some Dolomite Lime and Bone Meal to his water. Right now he's sitting in maybe 2-2.5gal of just Roots Organic soil with no amendments so it's not like I didn't anticipate this a little. Still pretty early on, those are the only two leaves showing much of any deficiency so hopefully adding a little Magnesium and Phosphorus cures this.


In other news, no response from VanQ or any of the reflector manufacturers yet. If worse comes to worst I'm thinking maybe just build my own reflector out of mirror (I got a pice of mirror as scrap so no skin off my back) and build it to fit the 95mmx95mm 2700k lens which is even better than the 100mm Round looking at the estimated lumen output of each on the pdf. We'll see.

SDS doesn't think it matters, but there are things we can't see, feel, or touch that affect our lives- planting on a new moon, harvesting on a waning moon, rising tides from full moon, sun rise/sun set. I germ on a new moon, harvest on a waning moon, adjust my on/off light schedule to match Mother Nature, even though I grow indoors


Well on the contrary ...
I always take into consideration ,those you mention and some more factors ...
Thing is that for my current design ,as it is build and meant to operate ,with it's dinstictive features ...
It does not need any merkaba layout of leds ...
Neither will have a great effect ,the better homogeneity of light that merkaba offers ......
Moreover it will mess-up ,my thermal pad design ...Which probably will have, way stronger effect (" negative impact " ) ....

Furthermore ?
Those SSL leds are .....tiny ...
" Packing up " a dozen of them in a surface of ~ 48 x ~ 58 mm ( each mcpcb ) is almost considered as a single light source....
So ,even with the 80° emission angle ....light has great homogeneity ,not that far from source ...

...
Details ....

Bumping Spheda ,sorry for hi-jacking ...

Not at all. I consider it my day job to derail peoples' threads, I understand perfectly.