Bridgelux Vero 29 LED Test

[PICOGRAV]

How many plants you got under that and what's the strain?

Just three baby's, started all six, one didn't make it past the first set of leaves, my fault, and the other two where males. Here is the strain:



Hmm, I talked to a friend that grows in a operation, he is the one that recommended the way I flush but it depends how long they will flower for, I cant tell myself about how long it will be, so I started early. I was planning to have it ready at about 95 days, or like 60 days of flower. Do they normally take longer? I have a microscope and there are only about 10-15% cloudy Trichomes.

 

[bbspills]

3/6 females is pretty good when not using femmed beans. Most of the strains on that site are about 9 weeks and I know my OG Kush #18s took a good 9 weeks, so 60 days might be just right. You can always harvest some later than sooner if you don't need the space right away.

If it works for your buddy, go for it. At least you give them another big dose two weeks later, so these next two weeks your ladies will be feeding off themselves, so don't freak out if you start to see a lot of yellowing and leaves dying off.

Your plants look super green, so they should have plenty of saved up nutes

Did you take any clones?

 

[PICOGRAV]

3/6 females is pretty good when not using femmed beans. Most of the strains on that site are about 9 weeks and I know my OG Kush #18s took a good 9 weeks, so 60 days might be just right. You can always harvest some later than sooner if you don't need the space right away.

If it works for your buddy, go for it. At least you give them another big dose two weeks later, so these next two weeks your ladies will be feeding off themselves, so don't freak out if you start to see a lot of yellowing and leaves dying off.

Your plants look super green, so they should have plenty of saved up nutes

Did you take any clones?

This is the one I took, its about 3 weeks old now, been bending and training and finally did what I had planed, I buried a curve in the stem back into the soil, so I can have a nice strong mother with a double taped root system , I have no idea what I'm doing by the way...

 

[PICOGRAV]

Some more pictures, everything looks good. I have been only giving them water for the last 2 days, the little round leaves in the middle of the larger buds are starting to get bigger, most of them look sort of oily and dense.

I think I will add another fan for air flow, help these bigger flowers stay dry.

 

[andyhot]

Hi picograv thanks for taking the time to document your results in this thread. I have read your thread all the way through and another one where someone is using 2 cree chips. The results are encouraging me to think about building myself a light with 2 vero 29 but would like to ask a couple of questions to avoid making mistakes and wasting time and money.
Do you think 2 leds would be enought for a 2ft x 2ft tent?(i think it should be as I read 50w sq/ft is recommended) I was thinking of getting 1 2700k and 1 3500k do you think they would be ok or would you suggest different k ones?
and lastly would a 200w 36v 5.9a power supply be suitable to drive the 2 leds.
I am sorry for all the questions but would like to get it right first time.
I appreciate any help you could give me.
Many thanks andy.

I am sorry for posting this here. I have just seen your diy thread and am sure this would be much better there rather than filling your grow log with questions.

 

[bbspills]

Hi picograv thanks for taking the time to document your results in this thread. I have read your thread all the way through and another one where someone is using 2 cree chips. The results are encouraging me to think about building myself a light with 2 vero 29 but would like to ask a couple of questions to avoid making mistakes and wasting time and money.
Do you think 2 leds would be enought for a 2ft x 2ft tent?(i think it should be as I read 50w sq/ft is recommended) I was thinking of getting 1 2700k and 1 3500k do you think they would be ok or would you suggest different k ones?
and lastly would a 200w 36v 5.9a power supply be suitable to drive the 2 leds.
I am sorry for all the questions but would like to get it right first time.
I appreciate any help you could give me.
Many thanks andy.

I am sorry for posting this here. I have just seen your diy thread and am sure this would be much better there rather than filling your grow log with questions.

Hey Andy, sorry to jack your question to PICO, but if you are set on using 200Ws, personally, I would spread that out instead of 2 LEDS.

You'll get much better coverage if you put a 50W LED for each squarefoot, not to mention you'll be able to get the lights closer as you don't run the bleaching risk near as badly than with some over powered Vero 29s. You'll notice PICO has already had bleaching occur with the buds closer to the light.

The CXA3050's start at 50W and can be driven all the way up to 100W, so you could theoretically turn your 200W light all the way into a 400W light if you wanted some extra umph in late flowering.

If you are set on the Vero's, I think that power supply might be a little short as they require 39V @ 2.1 AMPS, so even if you ran at parallel that would would be giving each 36V at 2.95 A and I'm pretty sure you need a higher voltage when you up the amps with those LEDs.

 

[bbspills]

Here's the power specs for the Vero 29. So looks like that power supply would not be sufficient

Current Vmin Vtyp Vmax
2800 37.6 40.9 44.2
3150 38.2 41.3 44.6

 

[PICOGRAV]

Hi picograv thanks for taking the time to document your results in this thread. I have read your thread all the way through and another one where someone is using 2 cree chips. The results are encouraging me to think about building myself a light with 2 vero 29 but would like to ask a couple of questions to avoid making mistakes and wasting time and money.
Do you think 2 leds would be enought for a 2ft x 2ft tent?(i think it should be as I read 50w sq/ft is recommended) I was thinking of getting 1 2700k and 1 3500k do you think they would be ok or would you suggest different k ones?
and lastly would a 200w 36v 5.9a power supply be suitable to drive the 2 leds.
I am sorry for all the questions but would like to get it right first time.
I appreciate any help you could give me.
Many thanks andy.

I am sorry for posting this here. I have just seen your diy thread and am sure this would be much better there rather than filling your grow log with questions.

Hey Andy, thanks for looking I would like to look at the other thread you are following with the Cree chips also.

Andy 2 Vero 29's in that would be very nice, I still believe the 2700K CCT Array is going to give you the best end results but you have to choose whether you want the higher CRI 80 or 90. You will take a big hit in the lumen output by going with the higher CRI but you will have better control over the deeper reds.

So you have to choose, do you want high CRI or more total Flux? More and more I think we are missing something when we dont provide the quality of light these plants are used to. If you are a breeder and care about prolonging and developing plant breads I would use the;

BXRC-30G10K0-L-xx - 3000K - 90 CRI - 6820 Lumen 2.1 amp= 85ºC
BXRC-27G10K0-L-xx - 2700K - 90 CRI - 6440 Lumen 2.1 amp= 85ºC

If you would like to go for yield then my answer would be;

BXRC-27E10K0-L-xx - 2700K - 80 CRI - 8040 Lumen 2.1 amp= 85ºC
BXRC-40E10K0-L-xx - 4000K - 80 CRI - 8800 Lumen 2.1 amp= 85ºC

For the power supply, you want at least 40 Volts, its hard to get the higher voltage drivers and power supply's. There seems to be a big jump in price from 35V~ up to the 40-60v~ but you can find good deals on used PSU on eBay or even brand new bench top Lab ones,

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=bench&_osacat=58288&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR1.TRC0.A0.X0-60&_nkw=0-60&_sacat=58288

That should give you a few options, 0-60 volt DC power supply search results, just make sure you get one that has constant current mode and at least 5 amps output, 6-10 would be ideal for two.

 

[PICOGRAV]

Hey Andy, sorry to jack your question to PICO, but if you are set on using 200Ws, personally, I would spread that out instead of 2 LEDS.

You'll get much better coverage if you put a 50W LED for each squarefoot, not to mention you'll be able to get the lights closer as you don't run the bleaching risk near as badly than with some over powered Vero 29s. You'll notice PICO has already had bleaching occur with the buds closer to the light.

The CXA3050's start at 50W and can be driven all the way up to 100W, so you could theoretically turn your 200W light all the way into a 400W light if you wanted some extra umph in late flowering.

If you are set on the Vero's, I think that power supply might be a little short as they require 39V @ 2.1 AMPS, so even if you ran at parallel that would would be giving each 36V at 2.95 A and I'm pretty sure you need a higher voltage when you up the amps with those LEDs.

You can push the Vero to 3.1 amps, about 127 watts per array. Why wouldn't you use the Vero 18 if you wanted to split it out to four chips?

Edit: Also if you attend to your plants everyday, bleaching should never be a problem; anyone thinking about using the Vero's should read this,

http://www.bridgelux.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/AN36-Optical-Consideration-for-Bridgelux-Vero-Arrays.pdf

 

[PetFlora]

Hmmm, would a 4ft led tube aluminum heat sink work for say 3-4 Cree 50w COBs?

Literally 1/2 of the tubes are heat sinks

Thanks to 2 x 4 led panels replacing tubes for commercial office/building led retrofits, the price and min quantity of tubes are coming way down. The heat sink should be the same, so buy some cheap ones and make up a test panel or two

 

[JMD]

Hmmm, would a 4ft led tube aluminum heat sink work for say 3-4 Cree 50w COBs?

Literally 1/2 of the tubes are heat sinks

If you have a link it would be much easier to provide you with a good guess
But my initial guess would be.. yes.

 

[PICOGRAV]

I thought about the plants a lot the last few days and also what people have told me about nutes and I decided to put them back on, finish things out with a bang!

I am now adding the tiger bloom ever other day for the about the next week or so, but at a higher or full recommended doses. Only after the one day and a half they got water, you could see the older leaves being sucked dry! All there are now pulling like crazy and the bud expansion is going very well. I moved a few top colas around and will continue to do so, I also added a little fan up top and have it set to low speed and I move it to different buds about 3 times a day.



Sorry for all the pics, I just like having the reference available for everyone.

 

[andyhot]

Many thanks for all the help and advice. I will have a good look into the power supplies but being in the uk always makes everything more expensive, by the time ive added shipping and import duties most of the prices are doubled.
Good luck, I will be following along closely.
Thanks andy.

 

[bbspills]

Looking good. If you are liking the fox farm nutes, I highly recommend their beastie bloom additive. Use it for a week or two and it makes your buds DENSE!!!!

You can get samples for cheap on ebay, or a 1lb bottle of it costs around $30, but will last you forever.

I used to run the entire fox farm line (liquids + solubles) with great results as you can see below

View attachment 2876641

 

[PICOGRAV]

Looking good. If you are liking the fox farm nutes, I highly recommend their beastie bloom additive. Use it for a week or two and it makes your buds DENSE!!!!

You can get samples for cheap on ebay, or a 1lb bottle of it costs around $30, but will last you forever.

I used to run the entire fox farm line (liquids + solubles) with great results as you can see below

View attachment 2876641

Love the little mini forest you got there, can you use the beastie bloom additive with the Tiger bloom?

 

[bbspills]

Hell yeah you use it together. Follow this guide

http://foxfarmfertilizer.com/images/pdf/SoilENG.pdf

 

[PICOGRAV]

So I have a little plan to make a few seeds from this crop. I just hate to think I will lose these genes at the end of all this. The plan is to pollinate some of the high, best looking buds, I want to get about 75-100 seeds for the next grow I have planed. I kept the top from the larger male I had growing before, and let it flower out in a bag, the sacks popped open about 4-5 weeks ago I think. I think its fine to use the same DNA to pollinate, I possibly want to do the bleached out bud and maybe a lower bud and then a really nice looking one and we can see out they grow out later.

The male that I had growing would have been a 6-7 foot, maybe taller plant, and if I do some buds on my main baby she would have been about 6-7 tall if I didn't bend her. These two should make for a good match :0

Some pictures of course, everything looking good, today was a feed day, and the soil look dryer then it has been, need to up the water again!

 

[bbspills]

Good luck with the pollination. You might need to let the parts you pollinate go a little longer so the seeds can develop since you are already pretty far along in flowering, so if you chop them down, just keep the other parts going.

 

[PetFlora]

Picog, 2 things

1. It takes 4-5 weeks for seeds to mature. I doubt it matters which part you pollinate. I go low
2. guod provided a link to a very interesting led study from Agro (I'm half way through) http://www.elforsk.dk/elforskProjects/340-040/340-040_Slutrapport.pdf

 

[PICOGRAV]

It's getting to the point now that I have to adjust the lights to a very fine degree to make sure the top flowers are getting the maximum with out bleaching, its actually pretty cool, it seems the more intense light they get the darker more purple they become before it gets to be to much. The top level canopy is very very bright, it seems once a stem gets high up enough it starts to pick up the purple lines and rashes, in the fan leaves and on the stems and then get starts pushing up hard and fast.



One thing I realized, is that there is no focus in my lights, which makes the peak intensity band very narrow so only a small portion of the canopy getting the relatively day like lumen levels. I feel this is a problem and would have an impact on how many flowers you could fully develop, I have plan too fix it with my next light test and it involves one of these:



Its a ETC Source Four, these are professional stage lights, I had countlessly set them up, focused and used them for 4 years back when I did pro sound and lighting. They have very nice Projector-quality, high contrast dual aspheric lenses with advanced AR coatings and special reflectors that remove 90% infrared radiation (heat) and reflect greater than 95% of visible light, I will be looking at retrofitting a few of these with water cooled Vero 29s.

Also mama clone seems to be happy