About to pull the trigger but need help with driver choice
Posted: Sun May 03, 2020 9:15 am
This is my first LED build, and I don't want to f it up.
2 x 4x4 flower spaces. 2 light fixtures, with 20 2ft Gen 3 each but using a 4ft bar. 2ft is all I can find available for the strips that I want.
For each fixture I'd like to go with a mix of 10 4000k 90 CRI and 10 3000k 80 CRI. My reasoning is that this is a good balance between increased spectrum range while keeping it at a decent efficiency. If anyone feels strongly that this is a bad idea please let me know and why.
Wiring all 20 in parallel for simplicity, but if required for the right driver I would do a combo of series and parallel. For the driver, at first I was going to go with HLG-480H because I thought I needed that many watts - still learning. Seeing others on the forum using HLG-320H for this amount of leds, so would like to do that.
Where I'm having trouble is with the specific driver. It seems like the HLG-320H-24 would be best for my strips, the voltage range for those strips is 17v-21v. But with that driver my current would only be about 667mA per strip which seems a little under powered. The light would be only drawing 252 watts, and the flux per strip would be less than 100%. I don't want to max it out or anything, I'd like to hit a mid range sweet spot of good flux, with decent efficiency and relatively low heat - I'll use aluminum angle at minimum for heatsink.
As I said this is my first build so I'm wondering if the drivers have some kind of control knob that allows you to increase current and or voltage? So I could tune it a little bit higher if I use the HLG-320H-24?
Also, I've been seeing people talking about efficiency in micromouls per joule, and weather a configuration will have too much or little PPF. How do I calculate these measurements given the driver build I'm considering using?
Newbie says thanks.
2 x 4x4 flower spaces. 2 light fixtures, with 20 2ft Gen 3 each but using a 4ft bar. 2ft is all I can find available for the strips that I want.
For each fixture I'd like to go with a mix of 10 4000k 90 CRI and 10 3000k 80 CRI. My reasoning is that this is a good balance between increased spectrum range while keeping it at a decent efficiency. If anyone feels strongly that this is a bad idea please let me know and why.
Wiring all 20 in parallel for simplicity, but if required for the right driver I would do a combo of series and parallel. For the driver, at first I was going to go with HLG-480H because I thought I needed that many watts - still learning. Seeing others on the forum using HLG-320H for this amount of leds, so would like to do that.
Where I'm having trouble is with the specific driver. It seems like the HLG-320H-24 would be best for my strips, the voltage range for those strips is 17v-21v. But with that driver my current would only be about 667mA per strip which seems a little under powered. The light would be only drawing 252 watts, and the flux per strip would be less than 100%. I don't want to max it out or anything, I'd like to hit a mid range sweet spot of good flux, with decent efficiency and relatively low heat - I'll use aluminum angle at minimum for heatsink.
As I said this is my first build so I'm wondering if the drivers have some kind of control knob that allows you to increase current and or voltage? So I could tune it a little bit higher if I use the HLG-320H-24?
Also, I've been seeing people talking about efficiency in micromouls per joule, and weather a configuration will have too much or little PPF. How do I calculate these measurements given the driver build I'm considering using?
Newbie says thanks.