Hi everyone! Big things coming :)

[dik666]

I tried. didn't find any yet. I'll take a closer look.
thanks.

@Futuregrow,
if you are going to be selling these, is it inside EU or US?
if It's EU I would be interested when we get the prices.
thanks.

[Futuregrow]

I will be first selling these lights in New Zealand and hopefully branching into Australia shortly thereafter, but my US based partner and I are also pushing toward establishing distribution in the US.

As far as Europe is concerned, I haven't looked into it yet.

[majorana]

To answer your question, I'm not contracting anyone Many hours of design time, and many more hours and late nights of hard work painstakingly assembling fixtures, fitting PCBs, running wire etc. They're pretty labour intensive to build to my exacting standards, and everything is within less than 1mm tolerance. I do have help from a buddy who is involved thankfully, and have taken pics throughout the build process.

You're mounting the SMDs on the PCBs yourself? That's either hard to believe or very impressive.

[Futuregrow]

Sorry I must have misunderstood your question, I thought you were asking who I got to build all of it for me. I buy the PCBs from a Chinese supplier, and build the luminaires myself. The boards are from Mufue, I've been dealing with Roget. I conducted extensive inquiries with multiple PCB manufacturers and decided to go with them. The quality has been fine, and the diodes are the real deal. They key now will be to maintain on-going quality for future stock.

[majorana]

Sorry I must have misunderstood your question, I thought you were asking who I got to build all of it for me. I buy the PCBs from a Chinese supplier, and build the luminaires myself. The boards are from Mufue, I've been dealing with Roget. I conducted extensive inquiries with multiple PCB manufacturers and decided to go with them. The quality has been fine, and the diodes are the real deal. They key now will be to maintain on-going quality for future stock.

I would inspect each and every PCB you get from Mufue. I, personally, have been screwed by Roget.

The LM561B+ (generously assuming that's what I got) is still a great diode, so I still did well with it, but it's not what I've paid for. The build quality was also sub-standard (connectors just popped off, strips that failed to light.)

If you conduct QC yourself and offer a solid warranty I wouldn't mind buying from you (including a premium on the stock price, obviously) even though Mufue are the producers. But again, I'd be very careful when dealing with them.

[Futuregrow]

I would inspect each and every PCB you get from Mufue. I, personally, have been screwed by Roget.

The LM561B+ (generously assuming that's what I got) is still a great diode, so I still did well with it, but it's not what I've paid for. The build quality was also sub-standard (connectors just popped off, strips that failed to light.)

If you conduct QC yourself and offer a solid warranty I wouldn't mind buying from you (including a premium on the stock price, obviously) even though Mufue are the producers. But again, I'd be very careful when dealing with them.

I understand your concern, particularly if you've been burned by them before, that sucks.

I inspect and test every single panel and confirm that they all work and light up properly. It smashes my eyes by the end of a round of QC, but so far every pcb has been mint apart from two which had a scratch on the white paint, cosmetic only.

I have inspected the diodes with a loupe and can confirm they're definitely LM561C, I also took some nice up close photos of the diodes with the loupe... I'll post them up later, they're the highest quality magnified view pics of these diodes I've seen compared to any images online. The voltages match with the top bin specifications as per the data sheet so I'm pretty confident I got a nice quality batch of PCBs.

I've been dealing with the Chinese for almost seven years now, and I have learned to be very thorough and specific with stating my expectations of quality.

I know it's on me to make sure I'm selling good stuff and I stand by it. I don't do things by halves and I'm not willing to foist rubbish on anyone.

[unkle_psycho]

So running at 30w per square foot, these get about 0.1w per diode? would they be running at 3% of max load, and what kind of efficiency does that result in?

Also, is it too early to ask about price? Seems to be pretty top shelf stuff

Hey man! I designed these with running 50W/sqft in mind, and using a board per square foot of grow space. With my configurations, the boards are running somewhere between 47-50W. Each diode is therefore running at about 0.148125W.

So they're at around 26% of their max, and having done the numbers with the Samsung calculator I get 195.2 lm/W. That means a Quadra 400 panel is producing approximately 73944 lumens. Multiplying 195.2 lm/W by the par multiplier of 0.014505 (specific for the LM561C 3000k 80CRI) gets 2.831376 uMol/J.

If I'm not mistaken, that's extremely efficient... enough so that no cooling gear is required, and after 45+ minutes of PPFD testing I am able to put the back of my hand on the back of any of the PCBs and on the driver itself, and leave it on there (got videos to prove it). Water from the hot tap is about 55°C and is too hot to leave your hand under... so I estimate these to reach about 40-45°.

FYI, that's inside a zipped closed grow tent with no exhaust fan and no circulation fans at all, just as you see in the testing pictures. I'm pretty confident in a properly set up grow environment with fans etc they'd be cooler still.


Awesome, thats a nice product, and crazy values... I never saw LEDG trying to limit discussions of price etc, there is even a thread just for purchasing tips. I'm quite disappointed that many growing sites have decided to leverage their user base to control discussion. I think its a very short term strategy.

50w per f2 seems like co2 territory, you might want to calculate values for 30w/ f2 too, because the efficiency will be even higher. That way you have values for both co2 and not.
I haven't compared the efficiency and total light outputs to what the other Samsung diode light guys are doing, but I imagine my panels aren't too far off theirs, while still using quite a bit less power.

I'll wait for LEDG to chime in on whether or not he's happy for me to talk prices on the forum. What I can tell you is the pricing is fairly competitive for what you get. For now, PM me if you want more info and I'll do my best to help you out.

[Futuregrow]

Awesome, thats a nice product, and crazy values... I never saw LEDG trying to limit discussions of price etc, there is even a thread just for purchasing tips. I'm quite disappointed that many growing sites have decided to leverage their user base to control discussion. I think its a very short term strategy.

50w per f2 seems like co2 territory, you might want to calculate values for 30w/ f2 too, because the efficiency will be even higher. That way you have values for both co2 and not.

Thanks! Yeah I cottoned on to the "light field" concept back when I was fiddling with cobs a few years ago, so decided to use that approach here, rather than very powerful small light sources.

I've seen a bit of squabbling and tantrums on various grow forums, and to be honest I'm not even remotely interested in getting involved in these sorts of politics. That's why this is the only forum related to this topic that I have joined (for now), as I haven't seen anyone being a dick here. I just want to build sick lights and give people a fair price for them.

The numbers on these are definitely impressive given the energy usage. Check out the spreadsheet.

If I average the PPFD across the measured area and then divide by the power draw from the wall, you can see the Quadra 400 is more than twice as good, energy efficiency wise. This isn't even weighted to account for the fact that it has a much higher quality spectrum for growth. I should really mess around with calculating YPFD because then it becomes McCree weighted which would put into context just how much better than HPS these lights are. They're definitely way more than twice as good if you account for all the other advantages including coverage and easier temperature management.

My understanding based on a study that I read about was that 1000 PPFD at the canopy had been established as the upper safe limit for certain types of plants that some people grow, without the addition of CO2 into the grow environment. So that has been my target, to develop these luminaires into being able to hit 800-1000 PPFD reasonably easily. If lower is desired, there's the option to use the dimmer, or to raise the fixture to reduce the PPFD at the canopy.

Of course, when you have much higher light intensity at the canopy than with oldschool grow lights, you can run the grow room hotter (~30°+), and just have to make sure the room is sufficiently cycling the air to keep enough CO2 in there. I imagine CO2 would indeed quickly become the limiting ingredient, followed by water.

[unkle_psycho]

Awesome, thats a nice product, and crazy values... I never saw LEDG trying to limit discussions of price etc, there is even a thread just for purchasing tips. I'm quite disappointed that many growing sites have decided to leverage their user base to control discussion. I think its a very short term strategy.

50w per f2 seems like co2 territory, you might want to calculate values for 30w/ f2 too, because the efficiency will be even higher. That way you have values for both co2 and not.

Thanks! Yeah I cottoned on to the "light field" concept back when I was fiddling with cobs a few years ago, so decided to use that approach here, rather than very powerful small light sources.

I've seen a bit of squabbling and tantrums on various grow forums, and to be honest I'm not even remotely interested in getting involved in these sorts of politics. That's why this is the only forum related to this topic that I have joined (for now), as I haven't seen anyone being a dick here. I just want to build sick lights and give people a fair price for them.

The numbers on these are definitely impressive given the energy usage. Check out the spreadsheet.

If I average the PPFD across the measured area and then divide by the power draw from the wall, you can see the Quadra 400 is more than twice as good, energy efficiency wise. This isn't even weighted to account for the fact that it has a much higher quality spectrum for growth. I should really mess around with calculating YPFD because then it becomes McCree weighted which would put into context just how much better than HPS these lights are. They're definitely way more than twice as good if you account for all the other advantages including coverage and easier temperature management.

QUADRA 400 vs 600 HPS 002.jpg

My understanding based on a study that I read about was that 1000 PPFD at the canopy had been established as the upper safe limit for certain types of plants that some people grow, without the addition of CO2 into the grow environment. So that has been my target, to develop these luminaires into being able to hit 800-1000 PPFD reasonably easily. If lower is desired, there's the option to use the dimmer, or to raise the fixture to reduce the PPFD at the canopy.

Of course, when you have much higher light intensity at the canopy than with oldschool grow lights, you can run the grow room hotter (~30°+), and just have to make sure the room is sufficiently cycling the air to keep enough CO2 in there. I imagine CO2 would indeed quickly become the limiting ingredient, followed by water.

Will google the light field concept. I hardly even use social media. My interests often lead me to RIU and other places but sometimes I even stop reading threads that interest me, because of the emotional pollution. This place is quiet, but very nice.

I have just built my first led, but only got to use it for about a week before the summer. I was amazed by the penetration, but ended up heating the room with more watts then I saved from switching out of HID I'm thinking about a well insulated box with CO2, since finally heat is something we have to generate here anyway. In hot environments leds are a no-brainer.

I think the potential gains in terms of penetration are greater then the gains in efficiency, although they are great too... I just visited a friend and he had some new gen HID which is almost as efficient as my leds, but I have over 1000 bulbs, and I can bring my lights crazy close.

If you run into any studies on max light intensity, I would like to see one. I've been goofing around, and doing my own tests, and assumed that the max intensity would vary by spectrum. I saw friends having problems with early chinese 50-200w leds, and their light intensity was not that high (in my subjective opinion). I went home and put a bunch of different sprouting plants (basil, parsley, coriander, some cabbages, chilies etc.) right under a 730w LG sulfur plasma... perhaps 20cm from the bulb. They all grew great. With HID it always seemed to me that any damage came from heat. The plasma farts all the heat from its rear side, and grows plants great even 2m away.

[Futuregrow]

Will google the light field concept. I hardly even use social media. My interests often lead me to RIU and other places but sometimes I even stop reading threads that interest me, because of the emotional pollution. This place is quiet, but very nice.

I don't know if you can google the light field concept, it's just something I figured out (something fairly obvious I would have thought too). The point essentially being to use heaps of leds spread across the whole canopy to blanket it evenly, instead of having a super powerful bright "sun" in one spot (think HPS, or a big bright cob).

This method happens to carry with it the advantages of greater efficiency and less heat too.

I have just built my first led, but only got to use it for about a week before the summer. I was amazed by the penetration, but ended up heating the room with more watts then I saved from switching out of HID I'm thinking about a well insulated box with CO2, since finally heat is something we have to generate here anyway. In hot environments leds are a no-brainer.

I think you can get those CO2 bags, I forget what they're called but they're essentially a sack that you put holes in and it sits there with microorganisms in it, putting off a bunch of CO2 as a metabolic byproduct.

I think the potential gains in terms of penetration are greater then the gains in efficiency, although they are great too... I just visited a friend and he had some new gen HID which is almost as efficient as my leds, but I have over 1000 bulbs, and I can bring my lights crazy close.

Hmm do you have old LEDs or something? Or are you just driving them hard?

If you run into any studies on max light intensity, I would like to see one. I've been goofing around, and doing my own tests, and assumed that the max intensity would vary by spectrum. I saw friends having problems with early chinese 50-200w leds, and their light intensity was not that high (in my subjective opinion). I went home and put a bunch of different sprouting plants (basil, parsley, coriander, some cabbages, chilies etc.) right under a 730w LG sulfur plasma... perhaps 20cm from the bulb. They all grew great. With HID it always seemed to me that any damage came from heat. The plasma farts all the heat from its rear side, and grows plants great even 2m away.

Here you go:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3550641/

Discussed here:
https://loudbank.com/maximize-cannabis- ... %B5molm2s/

And here:
https://www.rollitup.org/t/max-ppf-ppfd ... o2.921830/

Here's a nice simple graphical guide by Fluence:
http://fluence.science/wp-content/uploa ... .27.16.pdf

Also just found this which looks like a gold read if you're interested in these plants:
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... s_sativa_L

And one about CO2:
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... els_of_CO2