(F series -canceled) Vesta build with side lighting

[unkle_psycho]

Oh, Showme I think you will always get higher yields with higher plant counts, but I want to go 2x4 because I will only run two plants. In the 90s you would get charged by the size of the area you grow. Now they just go automatically with plant count. 2 plants is the limit that the prosecutor can decide to ignore the case. Six should be pretty ok, and from 10 plants up they will start assuming your a dealer. 40 plants would mean a serious offense etc.
I used to run 30+ clones per m2 with ridiculous results, but today you would make it to the newspapers if you were caught for something like that. So I'm going to spend some time figuring out how ridiculous a 2 plant grow can get.

Looking for a tent, and would not go for 180 height. I want 210. I shifted from a fluence style design to a flatter ladder style to cut 2cm from my lamps thickness, and I wouldnt want the drivers on the lamp either, because I would loose a few cm of my vertical grow space.

[unkle_psycho]

Well I pulled the trigger, and got 8 75w drivers, 9 2ft vestas, and 16 1ft vestas for side lighting. Will run 6 drivers with the 2ft vestas and 2 drivers with the 1 ft vestas as side lighting.

[tazztone]

that's a shitload of drivers

[unkle_psycho]

Yeah I also got another 2 and some vestas for a friend who was rambling about buying a 50e plant lamp at Ikea. I think he was looking at a lamp around 10w. He will get 150w for a little more money.

I think later I'll be using these drivers for my veggie projects or around the house. Don't expect them to be available for much longer. All the rest of the series is already 30-50e.

And getting 10 I only payed for 9

But I only got 2 drivers for 16 1foot vestas for sidelighting. Forgot the overkill, so if I want to flower with 2700k I'll have to rewire or something. Should have got 2 more drivers.

[unkle_psycho]

I have 4 of the 2-footers with a 200w Inventronics driver. There are 6 plants in that picture.

All of those you mentioned are good, but IMHO, it's best to find a deal on secondhand drivers and then select strips that will work with the drivers' output. You can get 150/180/200w drivers as efficient as Meanwells for $30 or less on ebay if you're patient and look at other brands.

Also, total cost of aluminum should drive the design after driver selection. F-strips work fine with cheap 1/8" Aluminum channel as heatsinks, but the total build cost might be higher if you use EB strips with a less-common extrusion profile. Don't forget about the weight if you have a tent. The TCI beast is definitely stressing the skinny tent structure.

I too have been thinking about the 3D growing, and I think the best setup would step the plants like stadium seating, or have taller ones in back. Basically a steeply sloped canopy instead of a level canopy. That's just about the most surface area you can fit in a cube. It gives you headroom for filters and fans and allows you to grow a few different sizes of plants.

How far from the plants are the side light bars now? Can you dim them? Would love to have some ballpark figure on how many watts per foot seem sensible if the light is 5-10cm from the plant...

And how high up the plant do you think it would make sense to start using side lighting? How deep doyou feel you get optimum penetration from above?

[unkle_psycho]

So I'm pretty sure my drivers and strips are arriving tomorrow, but for some reason I havn't heard from this modular company that I'm supposed to get my 'heatsinks' and frame material from.

I googled local suppliers of aluminium, and it seems there is absolutly nothing available for less then 10e/m... It seems odd to me, that the cheapest thinnest alu strips are that expensive but that is the nature of our socialist utopia.

It would really be cheaper for me to double the strips, then to buy anything of quality here, or ship airpost from asia.

So it leaves me wondering how many watts per foot would a vesta handle if i crafted a frame from wood (in true finnish style) holding the strips from their ends, and ventilated them with a fan from above... wood looks good in warm light.

25% nominal? 12.5% nominal? the point that its possible must arrive somewhere, and perhaps I'm dumb enough to be the one to find out.

Also Vestas are almost double as wide as f-series right? its got to count for something in terms of cooling right?

Somehow I feel its wrong that someone is making this awsome strip with a million bulbs for 6e, and I would pay double that for an extrusion that costs 50c from the factory....

[sdfoster22]

If the vesta are like the eb series it's more of a plastic. I think I have seen people run them without anything, if you do that you would have to run them soft. If you decide to not put them on aluminum, be careful they seem easy to break.

[tazztone]

I googled local suppliers of aluminium, and it seems there is absolutly nothing available for less then 10e/m...

maybe you could buy aluminum curtain rail

[unkle_psycho]

I googled local suppliers of aluminium, and it seems there is absolutly nothing available for less then 10e/m...

maybe you could buy aluminum curtain rail

Aluminium curtain wire is over 10e per m.

Finally the cheapest object I found was 1mm thick L-channel, 30x30mm for 12e/2m. Exactly the same price as doubling my strips. The strips are 1mm wider then the channel, but the cheapest 40mm wide object I found would be the cost of tripling my strips.

So this leads me to a technical question, I would love input and corrections to this: I saw a german engineer build a led lamp from mono diodes onto a U-channel. The engineer was emphasizing how you must not put over 50w of leds onto a meter of u-channel. Thats like a little over 25w for the 2foot length were dealing with. If its all about surface volume, that would suggest a third less for L-channel, and just a third for a flat aluminum 30mm wide.

So I see myself choosing between two options:

A. I pay for ability to run hard
B. I double my strips, which should immediately halve any heat generation, besides other obvious benefits.

I feel I should be able to calculate the hard numbers relating to option A. I do see people calculating heat dissipation capabilities online. Is there some magical qualitative dimension to this, or is it all just quantity?

[unkle_psycho]

If the vesta are like the eb series it's more of a plastic. I think I have seen people run them without anything, if you do that you would have to run them soft. If you decide to not put them on aluminum, be careful they seem easy to break.

I guess I will have a moment to do some temperature tests when they arrive.

The way I see it is that I can only be forced to run hard, and allowed to run soft, since soft is where all the benefits are at. The only negative (cost) seems to become a non-issue in Finland, where visiting a public toilet costs 2e.

I did read about people saying strips were flexy, especially the 4foot ones. Yesterday i saw a video on the bridgelux youtube page, where they drove over a vesta cob 4x with a car, then set it up and showed it still worked