Yes gen6 90CRI. Ok, I guess I have everything I need in the cart. I’ll get it ordered. Looks like I’m going to be able to build 400 watts at about $1 a watt. Can’t beat that. Thanks for all the help so far.
No problem! That’s about as cheaply it can be done without sacrificing somewhere. Just wait til you see what you get for the money! I guarantee you won’t think those puppies aren’t bright.
I can only imagine how much better this thing’s going to be. I shut down the driverless Frankenstein light earlier so I can yank those crappy COBs off of the heatsinks and moved the autos that it was lighting out to the woods. The temp dropped 4 degrees in the room. The autos only have a couple of weeks left. Hopefully, the deer won’t try to eat them.
You’re gonna dig just looking at it lol. And like growing with them even more. Hopefully the heatsinks perform well. It can end up being a saving point instead of something that goes to the wayside.
If you are in an area with deer. they WILL eat them. Apparently deer love cannabis. Maybe you can find some welded wire fence or something to put around them. Or at least pee on the surrounding ground. I’ve heard deer don’t go near predator scent and naked monkeys are the worst kind of predator.
I put wire fencing around each plant but it’s 4" x 4" so they might could get their skinny snouts in there and get a couple of buds. Hopefully my 3 Goldens will raise hell to keep them away. They bark at everything else that moves.
I guess I’ll have to use the uv glasses I bought last summer because I thought I would need them with the Chinese lights. I didn’t.
Actually, these won’t emit uv. But they will be way too damn bright to look at. I know you won’t be able to resist, so wear the glasses anyway.
I know my Chinese lights have uv and was wondering how important it is. I’ve read several articles about it producing more potent buds. I think the High Times article uses the high mountain strains as examples of powerful weed due to uv.
There’s a lot of contradictory stuff about uv, so it’s more about who/what you believe. Here’s what I feel like are suported data I’ve been able to find. There are scientific studies that suggest uvb has the effect you’re talking about in weed. Uvb is below 350nm. There’s very few uvb diodes even produced, the ones that are start around $100 per diode and go up into the thousands. And there’s definitely not any fixtures on amazon that use them last I checked. About the closest you can get is 365nm which is uva. Most of the fixtures that actually have uv use something between the 365-400nm. And there’s not a lot of scientific data out there to support it has the same effect as uvb. There’s even less that supports uva does anything different to weed than the violet wavelengths which are between 400-450nm.
Even the heavy believers in uv don’t use leds to emit it. They use fluorescent or something like cmh. Somewhere along the lines the Chinese manufacturers found a way to sell more lights by including a single 385nm diode and telling people it made their light better. And their are plenty to this day that swear their 12 band fixture with uv and ir produces better weed. There’s just a lack of data to support it, and lots of things that point to a contributing factor of the quality of weed produced.
Here’s the spectral distribution graph of the cobs you ordered. It shows the difference in 3000k and 3500k we talked about. Also note it’s starts to show intensity plenty deep into the violets and all the way to infrared.
Yeah I liked the graph as soon as I saw it. For a $17 cob, it looks as good as some in the $30-$40 range. I have a blacklight left over from my son’s skateboarding phase somewhere.![]()
It’s just about as good as any of them. You could certainly spend more and end up with less if weren’t careful.
If you wanted to mess with the uv, I’d check out the ones the htg sells. But I’d look closely into how and when to use it.
Boy, the 4000 K is as good as any at blue and the 3500 K is as good as any at red. If you mixed the two you would get a superb spectrum.
I’d rather avoid uv. My doctor has told me many times that I’m a prime candidate for skin cancer because I have very fair skin. I pretty much refuse to wear long sleeves when I’m fishing and she gives me hell about it
You’re in good shape then. And I don’t feel you’ll have any issue with quality produced with this lighting, as long as other aspects of grow are in shape.
Hope you don’t mind, but @Growit is looking at doing a similar sized room. Thought I’d let him have a look at what you were doing and see if it’s something that will work for him.
You compare where you end up to where you start, there’s not really any reason to mix them. Especially with quantity discounts available at most electronic outlets. The 3500k is twice as much blue intensity as needed by just about any study published. Lack of offerings in 4000k high cri makes their value kind of tank as a flowering spectrum compared to the warmer colors that are available.
What most people neglect is that the spd charts don’t have a ceiling. It’s just how much of one light source compared to the other. So there never is a maximum amount. By adding 4000k to anything warmer it just makes the chart symbolic of something between the 3500k spectrum and 4000k spectrum. I haven’t seen any valid reason to do that. In the past you would see people add 660’s to 80cri because there was little representation. The 90cri shifts the spectrum enough to not have to do that. Saving money and keeping builds easier.
I welcome all that want to follow this thread. I also welcome any ideas about anything to do with this build, like active cooling. As I said the other day, I want this to be a community thing. So welcome to follow along @growit
The cobs and reflectors are here.
I’m shocked at how small they are. It’s hard to believe 8 COBs that are smaller than my regular sized smartphone are going to put off 400 watts.
Here’s the sad part. Out of the 40 holes drilled in the heatsinks I have, only 1 is going to work for mounting.
24 holes to drill and tap.
The reflector adapters don’t look like an exact fit.
I guess for now I’ll build a frame similar to @Daddy only miniature with 4 heatsinks and 1 driver to see how much aluminum will be needed to avoid active cooling. Any thoughts so far?



