How do you organise the pots right now, whats your basic foot print? If you want to do 4x4s and dont have any obstacles to larger fixtures, going down close to the cannopy id rec fotops totally. If you cram in 3xfotops / 2400 diodes over a 4x4 with a 480 driver you will have a hell of a grow light. We had slightly more spaced out and at 150w per board, using no heatsink, none needed at those levels, and it flowered the shit out of any cannopy at around 8-10 inches. If you want extra reds my recommendation is to try to get as much red out of your phosphor whites as you can rather than adding red diodes.
If you want a really nice quality light and have the $$ id look into
@Grow Lights Australia s boards, they have some very nice offerings but it would cost you probably the same as those Growers choice. They work with authentic Nichias in specialty spectrum, with high CRI and extra reds. As far as ive seen in side by sides and our old grow these +90Cri diodes have a nicer flower finish than added red diodes give. It was noticeably faster, nicer and heavyer tray for us
But if you need to go a cheaper way you can get the fotops for as low as 80$ + shipping which probably works out around 600$ for 6. The shipping on these are a bit steep cause of form factor but if youre ordering in multiples 6 you get the most out of your $.
Meijiu offer 90cri diodes if you order enough, but only in lm561c which is a slightly older diode than lm301b. But if you build this kind of extremely spread out design as the fotops offer this does not matter very much: the formfactor and closeness to cannopy you can achieve makes up for this completely. Other lights will lose much intensity to walls due to having to hang high.
Id atleast try this setup against anything you might wanna buy cause i can tell you it works for around similar prices to what their asking for lights: 400ish for a 4x4.
Check out
@WeedSexWeightsShakes old updates. You can even see the difference in light levels in the old updates, when he had one of these strip type lights, all though i think it was another brand.
DIY is definitely worth it but if you want to buy make sure their light has a +2000 diode count for a 4x4 with guaranteed diodes. To many places lm301b means any 3030 diode with the same led housing as 301b.
