Combined LED and HPS Grow

[bilbo182]

Thanks for dropping in Bilbo. No I don't mind your pics (nice set up by the way) the more the merrier. Im using a persy grow box from the persy grow shop in Brighton. It comes with a 250w HPS and its over 5ft high so allowing for the lights it gives you a fair amount of head space as long as you don't veg too long. Regarding your set up is it ok to tilt the LEDs at an angle like you do ? I think someone posted somewhere that you shouldn't tilt them although I cant see any reason why not to.
Interesting experiment you are planning there and I was wondering why not try your hand at building your own lights while you are at it.

I've had a look inside the V240 and there's no earthly reason not to have them on their sides, the parts are all fixed firmly inside and the brass hanging bolts are suitably anchored to the frame of the panel to take the weight at any angle. The fans are dual bearing pc fans so might be a bit noisier the first time you turn it on at an angle but the soon find the balance point and quieten down.
I'm planning on building my own panel next year but I want to take one apart and play with it so I can get a feel for the units as a whole. I've seen a few of the heat sinks posted on RIU and they look adaptable for liquid cooling, slide a couple of thin HDD liquid cooling pads or even RAM coolers and you should be able to take a fair bit of heat out of the unit.
Love to get one of these and make it fit
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/7500/ex-blc-487/Koolance_HD-60_Hard_Drive_Liquid_Cooling_Block.html?tl=g30c203s506

The big difference in all this is really that when I'm building a gaming rig my aim is to get the individual parts inside the case to run as cold as they can so I can ramp up the voltage to get huge performance increases, 7ghz CPU O/C is hard to get stable and cool The heat that's taken out of the parts individually is all taken out of the case by good airflow and fans. With a grow tent I can get the led panels to run as cool as ice but it's pointless doing that if I can't figure a way to get that heat outside the tent without needing more fans and airflow. If I can have the liquid coolant running through to the tent from the cooled reservoir outside then it should make a noticeable difference to the overall temps inside.
Of course it might work out a bit cheaper and easier to just use a small aircon unit instead but that would use a lot more electric plus I'm not overclocking the lights themselves as yet, can led's be overclocked?

 

[aphrodisia]

I grew auto's on my first grow, ordered them by accident but after the long period of boredom growing 12/12 non autos that throw a hissy fit if I go near them in the dark I'm back on autos on purpose. I'm going to try DWC so I can keep the lights on 20/4 permanently and have plants at different stages of growth in the same tent. Probably just use fem non autos for the last grow of each season, I've kind of split my year into two 5 month grow seasons to give me a month to mess about with setup/go on holiday/etc. at the end of each season. I can see why autos are disliked but as a matter of practicality they suit me fine

I hear you on that one. There was a guy featured in weed world magazine who only grows aoto mazaars and harvests one every 3 weeks using the system you just described. The thing that puts me off autos though is that you don't really save any time on the total length of your grows. It will still take you roughly 3 months from seed to harvest a good auto plus your light bill goes through the roof !

 

[aphrodisia]

I've had a look inside the V240 and there's no earthly reason not to have them on their sides, the parts are all fixed firmly inside and the brass hanging bolts are suitably anchored to the frame of the panel to take the weight at any angle. The fans are dual bearing pc fans so might be a bit noisier the first time you turn it on at an angle but the soon find the balance point and quieten down.
I'm planning on building my own panel next year but I want to take one apart and play with it so I can get a feel for the units as a whole. I've seen a few of the heat sinks posted on RIU and they look adaptable for liquid cooling, slide a couple of thin HDD liquid cooling pads or even RAM coolers and you should be able to take a fair bit of heat out of the unit.
Love to get one of these and make it fit
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/7500/ex-blc-487/Koolance_HD-60_Hard_Drive_Liquid_Cooling_Block.html?tl=g30c203s506

The big difference in all this is really that when I'm building a gaming rig my aim is to get the individual parts inside the case to run as cold as they can so I can ramp up the voltage to get huge performance increases, 7ghz CPU O/C is hard to get stable and cool The heat that's taken out of the parts individually is all taken out of the case by good airflow and fans. With a grow tent I can get the led panels to run as cool as ice but it's pointless doing that if I can't figure a way to get that heat outside the tent without needing more fans and airflow. If I can have the liquid coolant running through to the tent from the cooled reservoir outside then it should make a noticeable difference to the overall temps inside.
Of course it might work out a bit cheaper and easier to just use a small aircon unit instead but that would use a lot more electric plus I'm not overclocking the lights themselves as yet, can led's be overclocked?

Im not too well up on LED technology but I think the answer to your question is yes, LEDs can be "overclocked". From what Ive been able to gather LEDs can run at a percentage of their wattage under or over the stated wattage, e.g. a 3 watt LED diode can be powered to run at 2 watts or at 4 watts although running it at 4 watts wont do too much good for its shelf life.

 

[bilbo182]

I hear you on that one. There was a guy featured in weed world magazine who only grows aoto mazaars and harvests one every 3 weeks using the system you just described. The thing that puts me off autos though is that you don't really save any time on the total length of your grows. It will still take you roughly 3 months from seed to harvest a good auto plus your light bill goes through the roof !

You don't save time on your grows but you can get closer to perpetual monthly harvests with just one tent and a propogator. I've built one from an old PC case that is good for the first 4 weeks from seed. The electric bill is actually cheaper running the lights in the tent than the heater I've got, that's my fault for buying a 1kw heater, though until the outside ambient temp reaches 18/19c I need it to keep the temps around 23 for lights off.

 

[bilbo182]

Im not too well up on LED technology but I think the answer to your question is yes, LEDs can be "overclocked". From what Ive been able to gather LEDs can run at a percentage of their wattage under or over the stated wattage, e.g. a 3 watt LED diode can be powered to run at 2 watts or at 4 watts although running it at 4 watts wont do too much good for its shelf life.

I'm guessing the led units are much like a CPU/GPU, if you don't overclock them but still add liquid cooling you extend the shelf life substantially(usually until the chip is outdated) or you crank them up and get the same shelf life as the original standard air cooled unit.
The thing is with a PC you know you can use any extra power but with an LED unit cranked up to 4w will it actually help the plants or harm them? Even more to the point, by the time I've done it all and tried a grow with it the 10w LED's will be on the market for half the price I spent turbocharging an old panel.
I suppose I'd experience the same feeling a gamer gets when they bring their expensive 2 year old gaming rig to me for a boost and I have to politely tell them it would be cheaper to buy a new rig, Moore's Law seems to apply to LED's as much as computers!

 

[churchhaze]

Getting watercooling for your cpu and not overclocking is totally pointless. I just can't understand when people do that.

"The electric bill is actually cheaper running the lights in the tent than the heater I've got, that's my fault for buying a 1kw heater"

This is to be expected unless you're using a 1kw lamp.

And you can't seriously be talking about Moore's law in 2014. Are you sure you aren't still living in 1998?

I'm guessing the led units are much like a CPU/GPU, if you don't overclock them but still add liquid cooling you extend the shelf life substantially(usually until the chip is outdated) or you crank them up and get the same shelf life as the original standard air cooled unit.
The thing is with a PC you know you can use any extra power but with an LED unit cranked up to 4w will it actually help the plants or harm them? Even more to the point, by the time I've done it all and tried a grow with it the 10w LED's will be on the market for half the price I spent turbocharging an old panel.
I suppose I'd experience the same feeling a gamer gets when they bring their expensive 2 year old gaming rig to me for a boost and I have to politely tell them it would be cheaper to buy a new rig, Moore's Law seems to apply to LED's as much as computers!

 

[guod]

And you can't seriously be talking about Moore's law in 2014. Are you sure you aren't still living in 1998?

zombies, hard to kill...

"Moore's Law is alive and kicking
The immediate future of Moore's Law isn't in doubt. At the 2013 Intel Developer Forum (IDF), Intel CEO Brian Krzanich showed off its next-generation Broadwell SOC chip. "This is it, folks," Krzanich exclaimed on stage. "14nm is here, it's working and we'll be shipping by the end of this year." Although dial down your excitement a bit, as manufacturing issues pushed Broadwell back into 2014.

Nevertheless, Intel seems confident that Moore's Law is alive and kicking as it moves to a 14nm process node, the next stop on a technology roadmap that scales down to 5nm. But while it might be possible to fabricate chips at 5nm and below, the technological challenges involved and the new equipment required surely won't make it cost-effective to do so.

So the question now is: how long does Moore's Law have left before silicon can't be pushed any further? Five years? Ten?

"I pick about 2020 as the earliest we could call [Moore's Law] dead," said DARPA Director and Pentium processor architect Robert Colwell, when he spoke at the Hot Chips conference in 2013. "And I'm picking 7nm. You could talk me into 2022. You might even be able to talk me into 5nm. But you're not going to talk me into 1nm. I think physics dictates against that."
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/moore-s-law-how-long-will-it-last--1226772
-------------
"Many people in the industry, who have watched showstopper after showstopper crop up only to be bypassed by a new development, are reluctant to put a hard date on Moore’s Law’s demise. “Every generation, there are people who will say we’re coming to the end of the shrink,” says ASML’s Arnold, and in “every generation various improvements do come about. I haven’t seen the end of the road map.”

But for those keeping track of the road, those mile markers are starting
to get pretty blurry."
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/the-status-of-moores-law-its-complicated
-------
law of leds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitz's_law

 

[bilbo182]

Getting watercooling for your cpu and not overclocking is totally pointless. I just can't understand when people do that.

And you can't seriously be talking about Moore's law in 2014. Are you sure you aren't still living in 1998?

I love the guys who want all the cooling and gizmos just for bragging rights, they usually can't play games for shit either

I'd have to be doing more than cannabis to not hear we've come to the end of the shrink, I can't wait for the Maxwell 20nm Nvidia GTX880ti, finally a GPU to match the best gaming CPU (Intel i5 2500k@6ghz)

 

[aphrodisia]

All 3 strains Im growing are sativa dominant strains. But whereas the NL#5 x Haze and sugarpunch are exhibiting classical indica growth patterns the BLZ Bud is definitely showing classical sativa growth patterns. Amsterdammer did say you do get a 1 in 25ish chance of lucking across this phenotype.

 

[churchhaze]

Going down to 14nm after this much time is hardly keeping up with moores law. Moores law is already dead now. It might become undead later, but shrinking to14nm after this many years isn't going to cut it. Even then, things are already breaking down at 14nm. Shrinks in size no longer have the associated reduction in switching time, so it's harder to justify being smaller to the end user, other than the ability to pack more transistors in. Manufacturing process shrinks used to lead directly to higher clock frequencies. It seems like ~3ghz is "the frequency" now.

If any company admitted this, shareholders would flee the market. And yes, I know people have been saying moores law will end since it was originally quoted. IBM is about 10% of the DJIA. It should be against the law to speak poorly about the semiconductors industry!

"the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years."

Double me again please. At this point in time, they're only doing shrinks to increase yield. The latest intel chips actually shrunk total surface area. Things still are improving, but it's hardly the rate we saw throughout the 90s and early 00s. This will be compounded by the fact that people will see less reason to upgrade with fewer improvements per new model, thus making it even less profitable to make those improvements, especially as each improvement becomes one step closer to impossible.

This is why i think high end keyboard are all of the sudden becoming trendy. People are having problems justifying computer upgrades directly, and thus buying high end peripherals to upgrade their machines instead.

zombies, hard to kill...

"Moore's Law is alive and kicking
The immediate future of Moore's Law isn't in doubt. At the 2013 Intel Developer Forum (IDF), Intel CEO Brian Krzanich showed off its next-generation Broadwell SOC chip. "This is it, folks," Krzanich exclaimed on stage. "14nm is here, it's working and we'll be shipping by the end of this year." Although dial down your excitement a bit, as manufacturing issues pushed Broadwell back into 2014.

Nevertheless, Intel seems confident that Moore's Law is alive and kicking as it moves to a 14nm process node, the next stop on a technology roadmap that scales down to 5nm. But while it might be possible to fabricate chips at 5nm and below, the technological challenges involved and the new equipment required surely won't make it cost-effective to do so.

So the question now is: how long does Moore's Law have left before silicon can't be pushed any further? Five years? Ten?

"I pick about 2020 as the earliest we could call [Moore's Law] dead," said DARPA Director and Pentium processor architect Robert Colwell, when he spoke at the Hot Chips conference in 2013. "And I'm picking 7nm. You could talk me into 2022. You might even be able to talk me into 5nm. But you're not going to talk me into 1nm. I think physics dictates against that."
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/moore-s-law-how-long-will-it-last--1226772
-------------
"Many people in the industry, who have watched showstopper after showstopper crop up only to be bypassed by a new development, are reluctant to put a hard date on Moore’s Law’s demise. “Every generation, there are people who will say we’re coming to the end of the shrink,” says ASML’s Arnold, and in “every generation various improvements do come about. I haven’t seen the end of the road map.”

But for those keeping track of the road, those mile markers are starting
to get pretty blurry."
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/the-status-of-moores-law-its-complicated
-------
law of leds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitz's_law

 

[bilbo182]

All 3 strains Im growing are sativa dominant strains. But whereas the NL#5 x Haze and sugarpunch are exhibiting classical indica growth patterns the BLZ Bud is definitely showing classical sativa growth patterns. Amsterdammer did say you do get a 1 in 25ish chance of lucking across this phenotype.

That one I'm doing is NL x Big Bud x Ruderalis, mostly indica. I want to get a pure sativa again, the NL auto was amazing!

 

[pedrovski]

Im not too well up on LED technology but I think the answer to your question is yes, LEDs can be "overclocked". From what Ive been able to gather LEDs can run at a percentage of their wattage under or over the stated wattage, e.g. a 3 watt LED diode can be powered to run at 2 watts or at 4 watts although running it at 4 watts wont do too much good for its shelf life.

I have been building and experimenting with led panels myself since i started growing and gradually gaining experience in all of this, and to answer what your saying here the more you push the led the lower the efficiency, so the lower the efficiency the more heat is produced and the more heat that is produced the lower the efficiency so its all a vicious circle. an example would be that running a 150w panel at 100w would produce more light than if say you had a 100w panel running at its maximum. Just like with a computer processor they work more efficiently when kept cool which is why i have also wanted to watercool my led panels as then you would be able to keep the voltage up a bit without losing too much of the effieciency

 

[bilbo182]

http://www.iflscience.com/technology/new-type-computer-capable-calculating-640tbs-data-one-billionth-second-could

Should be quite useful for taking over the world and keep Moore's Law alive a bit longer lol

 

[aphrodisia]

The BLZ Bud is slowly beginning to build up and getting resiny. Its very slow in flowering compared to the other two so I don't think I will be getting as much yield from it although I could be wrong as it still has some time to go.


here are the skinny fuckers


NL# 5 x Haze

 

[GroErr]

Looking fantastic aphro, going to be running a combined CMH + LED next run, hoping to get these kinds of results

 

[aphrodisia]

Looking fantastic aphro, going to be running a combined CMH + LED next run, hoping to get these kinds of results

Hi GroErr and thanks. Yes Im pretty happy with how they are coming along. This particular BLZ Bud is what you might call a "selfie" seed. I grew out a BLZ Bud last year and I was very happy to discover one seed in one of the buds and thats the seed Im growing now. But the BLZ I grew last year had very different flowering pattern to this one. Oh well lets wait and see how she develops she might still surprise me yet.

 

[bilbo182]

Those are looking pretty awesome aphro, how long have you got left on the BLZ? What nutes/pk booster are you using? I can't find it in the thread but that means nothing if you read the next sentence you'll see how crap I am!

A perfect example of why I need a bloody calendar, turns out mine is 4 weeks today not last week, DOH!
So it's looking better for a 4 week plant than it did last week rofl.

 

[aphrodisia]

Those are looking pretty awesome aphro, how long have you got left on the BLZ? What nutes/pk booster are you using? I can't find it in the thread but that means nothing if you read the next sentence you'll see how crap I am!

A perfect example of why I need a bloody calendar, turns out mine is 4 weeks today not last week, DOH!
So it's looking better for a 4 week plant than it did last week rofl.
View attachment 3183153

Hi Bilbo. Your plants looking pretty good for 4 weeks. Im planning on taking these babies to 10 weeks or over, will have to see how they develop. Today is the 7th week of flowering and the NL#5 x Haze shows no signs of even nearing finishing. The sugar punch is starting to show some brown hairs and she might be the first to get done out of all 3. I use bat guano and some BAC organic bloom nutes I got from sannies seeds, its got alfalfa and molasses and kalivinasse and other trace elements in it. Works great. I might still be surprised by the BLZ Bud though. I checked them yesterday and the branches were surprisingly heavy for how they look, and they still have a bit to go yet !

 

[aphrodisia]

Couple more pics.

 

[bilbo182]

They look like they'll thicken up nicely tbh, that final big push