How many of you growers are using driverless COBs

I appreciate your input, but you are confused on some things. I already tried to explain this to you once in the other thread, but I’ll try a different way this time. When you size a driver and led configuration, you do it on the output side. A 36 volt cob at 1000ma is 36 Watts regardless of how efficient the driver is. At 2000ma it’s 72 Watts regardless of driver efficiency.

Now if you have a 36 watt cob (voltsxamps on output side of driver) and the driver is 50% efficient, it will pull 72 Watts from the wall. If the driver is 95% efficient, it will pull 38 watts from the wall. Either way the cob will be 36 Watts. Driver efficiency doesn’t have a thing to do with the output or state of your leds, it’s how much power the driver uses against how much it puts out.

Personally, measuring lumens and lux isn’t really worth a shit either. They have have varying par levels based on the spectrum of said light provided. Find a grow light using colored diodes and look at the lumen measurements vs the par measurements. Now for those of us using white leds, those units can have some value. But we’re talking about running the same led at different currents to either maximize the output or maximize efficiency. There is very little shift in spectrum doing that, so more is more and less is less no matter how you cut it. Even going from say a Cree to bridgelux in same color temp and cri, the spectrum is different but not by a ridiculous amount. So when we say one is 180 lumen per watt vs another is 150 lumen per watt, they’re close enough to assume that one has about same increase in par. But comparing the growing capabilities of a 6500k led vs a 3000k on lumens or lux is absolutely absurd and useless.

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I find it… It’s real price if you want to purchase it already built 1-1.2k$

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1k to spend on one light is not practical for a DIY if you ask me, I thought KISS and budget were important. Not everyone has the money you think is practical. What about the life of the light your attempting to build? INcreasing the output will vary the lifespan? Not only that but your now putting out more heat. Now you need a heat sink to compensate plus any additional exhaust or intake that is power and costs money, by the time you build up your setup your looking way much more $$ than a prebuilt fuxture.

Where is the sweet spot with you guys? Some of you are grumpy today :sneezing_face:None of that matter to you guys I’ll let you throwyour money. I’m out of this thread I’ll be growing my own :v: @Donaldj @dbrn32 @M4ur

And for the record;every thing I said made sense you immature little selfish person. dont swear at me, I don’t swear at people.Don’t put people down becuase of what they don’t know, or what they have isn’t the best money can buy. I apologize that my post are a waste to you. You cannot say that any of those measurements of light aren’t important to growing a plant. How else would it grow? It’s using the spectrum of light it is receiving. Where does it receive the spectrum of light? Your fixture. Up to your personal opinion on how much you need. I have50 true watts per square foot and I’m using cob leds. Never been happier

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@AmnesiaHaze

Merry Christmas man!! :slightly_smiling_face: I whip up a great egg nog to take the edge off :wink:

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I spent $60 got 15 30w cobs and thermal paste so wouldn’t say throwing away money so much as playing having a play project costing about the same as 2 cases of beer but offering far more hours of entertainment :wink: For me it is just about playing and learning so if I decided to invest in higher end cobs drivers and components I would have a better physical understanding of requirements and results. So far since getting cobs they have provided me with many days of entertainment and wet my whistle for further research and reading to me that’s rarely a bad thing. It would greatly depend on your personality but I am OCD and need projects to keep me busy :slight_smile:

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I wish you a merry Christmas as well @TDubWilly @Donaldj @dbrn32

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Calm down tiger. I said lumens and lux are “shit” for measuring light for plants. I apologize if you’re offended by that, but I’m referring to a light measuring method. Not swearing at you, your equipment, or any of your ideas. All you need to do is take a measurement of lumens or lux from a high powered halogen bulb (it will be high) and then try to grow with it. It won’t grow very well. And that should tell you everything you need to know about lumens and lux. It’s not any of us being grumpy, it’s passing along accurate info. You may choose to ignore it as you wish, but there are others that will go through theses comments. And I prefer they not be misinformed.

I’m not sure how else to explain that the output in an led driver doesn’t change with efficiency. That’s 0, none, nada, zilch difference in output in a 100 watt or any other size driver that’s 50,75,80,90 or 95% efficient. They will all have whatever output they are rated for, the difference will be in how much power they draw from the wall. So your life expectancy doesn’t change at all, nor does the size of heatsink needed. The only difference is that one will waste more power doing the power conversion than the other.

The $1000 light comment isn’t even an led. I’m guessing that number is high because he lives in Europe and will have to pay important taxes and international shipping. But depending on the space, one could easily justify spending $1000 or more on a diy led. @Covertgrower did, and he couldn’t be happier. But he has value in spending the money up from to be able to pinch pennies in the long run, by providing more light per watt. Thus needing to consume less Watts to maintain the same photosynthetic ability. If you don’t see the value in it, that’s fine, don’t spend your money on it. But bashing on the rest of us simply because you don’t understand or see the value in what we’re doing, doesn’t seem any better than what you’re accusing us of lol.

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$1000 is about the price of a LEP which is in HID family but par is awesome and lifespan is lacking for dollar value
@dbrn32 @AmnesiaHaze this is a educational debate and a thread where we are just bouncing ideas the 100% founded or accurate info is less important than the bouncing of ideas and theories when it come to DIY projects. It is always up to readers to choose what works for them and do their own research too. So no real need for anyone to get worked up about anything opinions vary and all but mine suck :stuck_out_tongue:

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Haha thanks for clearing that up, you seem to have an answer for everything lol. Should call you mr.roboto lol

I will say I learn a lot from you and just about everyone here sorry I intruded in your complex talk about drivers, I myself just have 85% efficient drivers, they will last for 50,000 hours of use, that’s more than enough life for the 165$ I spend per fixture, I have two 1200w cobs with 6 200w ocobs and they pull 250watts true from the wall per fixture. It’s 500 watts for my 2x4 tent, I’ll have 800 true watts for my 4x4 in LEDs and that’s probably maximum for it becuase of the intensity it’s giving off and the height I have. I’m using pots on stands to keep warm and light heights matter for me becuase of the high output, heat isn’t an issue though, steady at 78 degrees. tops of lights are around 85, I have a great dialed in setup. I am a happy camper. Thanks for teaching me my lesson of the day lol @dbrn32

I myself live in a non legal state so my views are much “boxed” if you will, I have to watch what I’m doing and I’m trying to be practical as possible, as I grow vegetables as well, I don’t sell commercially or anything like that, I grow 1-2 plants for personal use, that’s it. LOL

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@dbrn32 @AmnesiaHaze do I need to dig out the popcorn? or are we going to move on and agree to disagree like big people?
there is more to gain from different opinions in that they open ones eyes to further study if we all agreed and no different info was out there than there would never be room or drive to improve.

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Moving on! No pissing match for me I’m happy with my methods I was just adding to discussion. I got shot down lol

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not shot down it leads people to ponder things from other views if we all felt we knew what we were doing we wouldn’t have need to share or ask for others opinions.

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WOW think I killed the thread by suggesting there is always room to improve and learn even from opinions we may or may not agree with. Here is one other reason for DIY threads if led lights pre built on market were perfect than companies would all make exactly the same oddly most companies are moving towards white light and cobs.

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I tend to view from that random place in the brain, just learning everyday! Thanks for backup @Donaldj
I still believe my original thoughts in post #18 were relevant to growing and this thread for that matter, I was just getting you guys off the trail you were on and made you double take on your experiences. I did say wattage does matter but my views are on the other side of that. It’s what is coming out from that wattage, and it’s efficiency, that effects everything. It doesn’t matter what consumes/or anything as long as your happy. Maybe not to this exact thread and I apologize again. @dbrn32 your good with me bro! Thanks for your insights :+1::v:

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Don’t think of it as backup it’s common sense that diamonds are made from coal and even if I did or did not agree I may search for more info to either prove you wrong or confirm :wink: I am neutral and all is new to me so all worth reading and learning

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Haha :palms_up_together::ring: there you go not a proposal but a diamond in disguise

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It’s all good man, like @Donaldj said it’s all about learning. And take from it what you want.

85% efficient is pretty good. Good enough that I wouldn’t worry about changing them anyway. That stuff really just becomes important to the guy who is building and running a lot of led watts. A 10% increase on 1000 led watts is just about enough to run an efficient exhaust fan for free. When it comes down to that you are buying a driver anyway, an extra couple bucks for more efficiency makes sense in that scenario.

Just like the light measuring. I could probably justify springing for an apogee with quantum sensor, that’s pretty much what you need to measure light intensity properly for horticulture based leds. But I’d rather spend that money messing around with the new leds and such.

And trust me, I don’t have all the answers. I know a little bit about a lot of things with these lights at best. This just happens to be one of those subjects.

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All good by me. Trying to feed my daughter and respond at same time. I don’t understand baby jibberish well, but I’m pretty sure she was saying to put the spoon in her mouth lol

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Oh that meter sounds interesting I’m goin to do some research on it, apogee with quantum sensor :wink:

All is well and happy holidays I never got to mention and happy new year!

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Same to you!

The meters are neat, hard to justify for our use though. Outside of buying a bunch of different cobs and seeing which perform the best, measuring what you already have and don’t intend to change is pretty useless. Unless you wanted to hit the forums and brag about your par levels or something. I’m not really about that.

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