I don't know exactly how they do it. I've seen several of this kind of board where you have a switch that activates a few more diodes all using one driver. Im not sure it's on separate channels, I believe that power is routed from driver + to whites and then to minus, and then when you flip the switch the extra diodes are are put in between white and minus. Maybe
@semaphore knows more about special PCBs.
If it was just on separate channels it would be great, but generally these Ali lights puts a premium on simplicity and one driver only.
Only seen true multichannel boards a few times, some chilled gen2 clones but with high MOQ. Then a really old qb version, +100V with 2 extra channels in the middle of the board but they didn't want to sell it to me due to some contract issue with their client. Fair enough but why show it to me, only to give me led blue balls!?!? I've also saw something like a half Fotop with a well spread out channel of red but again no board only, only full light and pricey iirc. This last one must have been a multilayer PCB by the looks of it, price would also indicate this.
I do have an idea for how to do a board with tweaked main spectrum, and 2 channels of monos in the centre in standard qb format and size but it would again end up 100ish V which is problematic for sale: to easy to fuck something up with CC drivers in parallel and connecting them in series means that you end up with +200V circuit which is to high to be desirable. All of this makes investing a moot point, especially since the market is so full of cheapish lights that kinda sorta does this, but not quite, that you'd be hard pressed to make the effort commercially viable. But if someone was interested in a group effort based on initial investment for finished boards I'd maybe be interested in the future.
But my fear is that since this all takes time and forums work the way they work we'd probably be at each other's neck at the first sign of problem, and problems are almost guaranteed to happen when dealing with the A-bubbs.
As for the led authority it brings me some giggles: I really don't know much more than what's in this thread and a few others, and what I caught on the gml show while I was following and some stuff I got from convos with LEDTEKNIK while he was here. Also read way too many datasheets. It feels like yesterday when I started reading and watching growmau5 videos (may you found peace and purpose somewhere Mau5, miss you and your content big time). It was a heady and interesting time, even though I only came into this at the end of the RIU golden led era; the way the growlight market developed seems intricately tied to what people diyed here on RIU, cobs and white light, bin-chasing and then Alibaba cobs and on and on. So I still feel noobish compared to my old gurus and happily admit I have glaring holes in my knowledge in some areas. But I do like to try to solve problems in my head, be they technical or understanding plant fisiology etc. I learnt all this in the hope to help a good friend growing commercial and we did really good for a while. That feeling when we had a perfect system between led rooms, CMH rooms and everything working was so great, we built it all ourselves. But my mate seems to have hit on harder times and I can't get a hold of him for ages. And now it's really hard for us to get any further due to the new space being to limited, in space and power. Maybe it's finally time to get Riutired...
So long rant then tonite, basicly I'm maybe not an authority just someone who spends way too much time here for their own good.
If I could get a board together and get some kind of work from home income I'd be very chuffed, as my day job is seriously affected by lockdowns and pandemix, and it would make me a bit more independent of living in a city. But chances are that it's a lot more hours on RIU when I'd be better of spending time on other stuff. Oh well ...
