Bridgelux EB Series Build

PicklesRus said:

Hm. It was by where all the nuts and bolts were. There was a little stand full of angle aluminum and steel.


There's a section in the back that has some 8 foot long angle aluminum but it wasn't there. Some of the same angle aluminum was cut into 4 and 3 foot sections by the nuts and bolts but it was the same price for half the length. The tracks were there sold a two for 23$ cdn

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MMJ Dreaming 99 said:

Thanks. I will look around.

I recently found some lower cost L shaped metal but it seemed pretty heavy - it was not aluminum. This was at Tractor Supply in the USA. They have a few stores in Canada and one in London, Ont.

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brahbbyB said:

I think I am going to move forward with these EB series, but in the 40" length and go with larger 4' wide tent. I am looking at about 9 of the 40" modules putting me around ~407W @ 1000ma.

To drive them I was looking to use a bunch of the Mean Well LDD-1000H mounted on some 5UP PCB's.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ldd-1000H-5-channels-LED-driver-on-PCB-Board-/311516001741

To power 2x of these PCB's, I'll see how cheap of a 500W+ 36/48V AC/DC Power Supply I can get. I've got an Arduino hanging around that I can use for the PWM input.

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VegasWinner said:

try downloading the GrowGreen 6 channel controller for free here ->https://github.com/AvidLerner/GrowGreen get e few parts and you have the code available to build your controller for the LDD drivers. namaste

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brahbbyB said:

Thanks! Did you write these? I will play around with them. I was able to get the PWM module up and running with some basic tutuorial code. However I was looking to get a wifi shield for my UNO, I came across the ESP8266 for about the same price. It has the benefits of already having Wifi in addition to GPIO with PWM. I messed around with it and was able to get Micropython w/ Websocket running to control the LDD's with some simple python commands. I have a few temp/humidity sensors on order as well

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Seriousbuds said:

Serious question: why would anyone buy or build a CXB3590 setup now? aside from the Cree branding and hope of a longer lifespan

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brahbbyB said:

Been a busy week with the holidays & work, finally got around to constructing the frame this morning.

45"x24" 20 Gauge Aluminum sheet with 1"x1" Aluminum Frame w/ #6 self tapping screws. Feels rock solid and is super light.
View attachment 3864940 View attachment 3864941

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PicklesRus said:

Can you break down the cost of the metal sheet and rods and your power source? I feel like I overpaid for my driver at 75usd for the hlg 120h c700

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MMJ Dreaming 99 said:

Thanks. I will look around.

I recently found some lower cost L shaped metal but it seemed pretty heavy - it was not aluminum. This was at Tractor Supply in the USA. They have a few stores in Canada and one in London, Ont.

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PicklesRus said:

I don't think you should be using steel or anything other than aluminum or copper for heatsinking.
The steel is cheaper but I don't think it will work.

The aluminum track strips actually turned out to be really cheap.
I'll turn on the LEDs now and run them for 30 minutes and see how hot they get. Mine are at .7A right now but my next set will be on .9A.
hopefully they can be passively cooled like it says in the EB Series - Bridgelux Datasheet [PDF]

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PicklesRus said:

Can you break down the cost of the metal sheet and rods and your power source? I feel like I overpaid for my driver at 75usd for the hlg 120h c700

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brahbbyB said:

Build is pretty much complete, just need to cleanup the controller wiring. I also added in a DS18B20 temperature sensor (Plan on adding a couple more for my DWC water temps + air temp).

One n00b mistake I made was not accounting for the efficiency drop of the AC/DC PSU. This limited my overhead and is pushing the Wattage over its rating at full 1000ma. At ~900ma they are running @ 429W. Could probably bump them up a bit, but going to burn them in at this.

After running an hour @ ~900ma and they are measuring around 48C on PCB surface next to LED and 41C on the backside of the Aluminum sheet (measured by DS18B20).
View attachment 3866266 View attachment 3866267 View attachment 3866270View attachment 3866278

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brahbbyB said:

I'll try, Buck converters step down the voltage (as opposed to boost converters that output a higher voltage.) For the LDD series to work you need to provide at ~3V DC higher input than the forward voltage of the LED's. The LDD's will provide the constant current but need a few extra volts of overhead.

For the EB 1120mm strips, I am providing 48V to each LDD-1000H. At 1000ma (100%) will need 45.3VDC (Datasheet) so 48VDC should be close enough. So for each EB Strip/LDD-1000H you will need to provide 48VDC @ 1A, meaning I will need 9A for the 9 strips.

My AC/DC power supply is a 480W 48VDC 10A, so this should be able to handle them. However, I didn't account for the effeciency drop of the AC/DC PSU, resulting in not being able to drive the strips @ 1A as it exceeded 480W. Using a PWM I am dimming them to 90% (900ma), giving me ~429W at the wall.

*Another thing, the PCB's I bought have pull down resisters that require a PWM controller to turn on. If you just supplied voltage they normally would output the specified constant current, but in order to dim you wil need to provide a PWM signal.

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PicklesRus said:

So if I understand using a different example.

Driver: 5A @ 36v
Buck Driver: 1000ma @ 31v

If I put two bucks like that onto the driver, would the driver split 5A between the two, forcing each one to take 2.5A?
Or would they just take 2A and leave 3A at the driver leftover?

To ask another question using a different example;

Driver: 5A @ 36v
Buck Driver: 1000ma @ 36v

In this case the COB will get something like 33v - would that harm the COB or screw up my efficiency terribly? I know COBs have a small range they can operate within.

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brahbbyB said:

For the first situation, if the "Buck Driver" is a constant current buck driver @ 1000ma it would draw 2A total. The 5A on your DC supply is the max current (this shouldn't be a constant current supply).

For the 2nd example, in reference to LDD Buck Drivers, I am not sure what the actual voltage drop will be, but according to the data sheet it specifies 3V. In this case you would want you supply to be more like 39V.

Remember with the LDD CC buck drivers running off a AC/DC PSU, the current will be constant, you just need to supply at least 3 volts higher than your forward voltage.

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