My guess is that they just copy and paste the figures from Epistar or whoever, so that’s your baseline for the “testing” side of things, and I can say it’s at a steady 27°C at it’s hottest with passive cooling, and with the actual current dropping in a guess of around 13w/m on what I have now, based on actual draw of 13.9w/m including losses as the voltage does drop quickly on these 12v CV strips so there are serious losses, we can get an idea of things from that C&P data.
Obviously there will be some play on the voltage, and therefore the current and brightness side of things, but I think temps would rise quickly as soon as you started ramping things up, and bringing things down won’t do much anyway. So, in my case anyway, I’m just as well running them “standard” as they are only there temporarily as the “main” light.
The joys of the idea is that by using a PC side panel it is easy to bend things to the shape you want, so can be used as “shaped” side panels when a better, probably decent CC strips and not a QB, “main” light is made once I figure out what I want, ideally around 45cm/18" square and up to 150/200w I think but obviously price dependent.
Sink is 1°C lower than the “face” of the LED itself. Obviously a metal probe temp sensor is not going near anything like a connection to check all the little chips, but there certainly isn’t enough of a difference to make you think about moving a finger, maybe another half a degree or so.
You see, I have 2 fans, one high and one low, so the high one also blows air over the panel. Helps keep things down
I haven’t seen any of those styled strips with them, but most of the stuff I’m using has test points to check case temp with probe. Lowering the sink temp lowers case temp, but it’s always a little higher. Around 5c I would say is normal, but I’m sure there are exceptions.
See these LEDs on the QB under your chips? They’re 5630/5730 (5.6/5.7mm x 3.0mm) iirc so you ain’t getting a test point for temperature, hence putting the temp probe directly onto the LED “face”.
So the €27 of stuff is ordered, I expect it in 2-4 weeks as is the usual with China Post to Belgium, so when I carve up another side panel and put everything together we’ll have a voltage and current of 1176 of them lickle Epi 5730’s, including losses, so I’m sure someone can figure out how underdriven they are.
But there’s a degree of difference in temp between the “front” and “back” of the panel with the strip as it is now, effectively nothing and I doubt it contributes much to the warming up of the room everything’s in.
I myself have found that I’m wasting electricity using side lighting for the amount of extra yield’s I got. I used a dozen 3000k 15watt led spots in 2 of those bathroom vanity fixtures that hold 6 lights each. The 180 watts they were using didn’t seem to make the lower buds any denser. I’m sure others have had better luck, but I would rather bombard them with really bright penetrating light from above. Thanks for the info about the good strip lights though. I have something in mind where I can use it @anon35207245
They aren’t on the individual diodes, but there’s copper trace on the pcb. I agree with @Aolelon, definitely on all the stuff he mentioned. That was just the only pic I had on my phone you could clearly see it.
To be honest, I never looked to see. But, suffice to say, temps are not an issue with these strips as I reckon they are way underdriven at 12vdc.
Will see when next rolls of strip arrive, they’re waiting for pickup in China (as much as you can trust the tracking on Ali), so, as I say, anything from 10 days from now we’ll see but I doubt there is such a thing on that supercheap stuff.
I bet the junction-to-heatsink temperature difference on strips is better than you could possibly get with COBs or individual LEDs. Their heat sink surface contact area is much bigger.
Hey everyone. I am putting together plans to build a 20’ x 15’ grow room. with 7’ ceiling The actual area of plant canopy will be roughly 12’ x 18’. I have been looking at allot of different types of lights and I was just curious what you guys would recommend for this grow room. Should I do light rails with less moving lights or am I better off with more stationary lights? I look forward to reading what you recommend.