Building your own LED light

Dj_Greenhouse

Well-known member
Hi everyone,

in this thread I hope to find somebody who can help with building my own LED board. My idea is to build an LED board consisting of different colored LEDs, however, my knowledge on electronics is limited. As far as I am informed, LEDs of different wavelengths use different forward voltages, which should match within one string of LEDs in series. So if you want to use red and blue LEDs you cannot connect them in series because they require very different voltages. These should rather be connected in parallel with different sizes of resistors. This is what I learned from the internet, however, the most examples out there only show how you can connect like 3 LEDs or many LEDs of the same kind in series. How would the design look if you want to build a quantum board consisting of a large number of red, blue, white, far-red, UV LEDs, all mixed? Should all LEDs of similar forward voltage be connected in series strings? That would give a string of red LEDs, a string of blue LEDs, a string of white LEDs etc. Should the voltage of these strings be matched between each other so that all the different colored strings have the same total voltage? Should they then be connected in parallel to each other? How should I choose the LED driver, and do I still need resistors when using a LED driver?

I hope someone has the know-how to explain to me how this works.

thank you and all the best

Dj Greenhouse
 
Hello DJ! well, on youtube, Green Gene's Garden, And Grow Mau5 do a lot of DIY led talk, and own companies to sell you what you need. if you watch those videos, you can find more related content. if you choose parts from a company like HLG, there are quite a few sponsored and non sponsored videos of people putting there kits together. I assume that if you call either the 2 youtuber's companies, or HLG or a similar DIY supplier that also assembles fixtures could answer your questions if someone here can't! sorry for soundign like an ad, I know nothing but want to help because I LOVE your planned light.

I am not big on doing DIY electrical. electricity and I, are not friends. we are business associates. reluctantly. I mean to say I am often shocked by equipment that doesn't shock other people handling it the exact same way.

My research led me to believe the UV diodes should be modular w/ the boards as they die the fastest, or they can most easily do harm to us, and the plants from over exposure.

I think that the HLG diablo boards could do w/ 5-10% of the white diodes being replaced w/ reds and far reds for some of the more outdoor oriented varieties. as I cant be sure if its me or the lights being too blue causing some sparse growth on 2 of the Devil's I am growing.
 
Hello DJ! well, on youtube, Green Gene's Garden, And Grow Mau5 do a lot of DIY led talk, and own companies to sell you what you need. if you watch those videos, you can find more related content. if you choose parts from a company like HLG, there are quite a few sponsored and non sponsored videos of people putting there kits together. I assume that if you call either the 2 youtuber's companies, or HLG or a similar DIY supplier that also assembles fixtures could answer your questions if someone here can't! sorry for soundign like an ad, I know nothing but want to help because I LOVE your planned light.

I am not big on doing DIY electrical. electricity and I, are not friends. we are business associates. reluctantly. I mean to say I am often shocked by equipment that doesn't shock other people handling it the exact same way.

My research led me to believe the UV diodes should be modular w/ the boards as they die the fastest, or they can most easily do harm to us, and the plants from over exposure.

I think that the HLG diablo boards could do w/ 5-10% of the white diodes being replaced w/ reds and far reds for some of the more outdoor oriented varieties. as I cant be sure if its me or the lights being too blue causing some sparse growth on 2 of the Devil's I am growing.
Good info. Thank you. Will definitely look into those youtube videos, although the ones from grow mau5 i already know.

You are right, too much of blue light can cause growth depressions and in tomato it was shown that about 20-30% blue is optimum. Here some literature
 
Dj_Greenhouse said: "I hope someone has the know-how to explain to me how this works."

Great questions, Dj_Greenhouse! I hope someone can answer your questions or send you to the right site for the answers! I would like to build my own LED lights myself. I have spent a lot of time looking this up but so far I have come
away with more questions and confusion than answers!

Longball
 
I've ordered a pre build panel just to try .


Was thinking 1 X red-blue 4x3200k and 4x6500k boards all on 3 or 4 switches.
Floodlight type but available in the above colours.
W D W
D C D
W D W

Heatsink I'm still out on.

Also thought about bolting those floodlight frames together instead of the heatsink but with a fan as cooler.


You can off course get the Samsung version for 10x cost and probably 2x more PAR

EDIT. I noticed osram recently released a competitive LED .

Always trusted these for my 400w HPS

 
Last edited:
Dj_Greenhouse said: "I hope someone has the know-how to explain to me how this works."

Great questions, Dj_Greenhouse! I hope someone can answer your questions or send you to the right site for the answers! I would like to build my own LED lights myself. I have spent a lot of time looking this up but so far I have come
away with more questions and confusion than answers!

Longball
Hi longball,

same here. Playing around with electricity aint easy when you havent learned it. This goes a bit beyond what we all learned in school. But lets hope someone can answer our questions. Will also ask around in other forums and if I ever get an answer I will post it here as well.

all the best

Dj Greenhouse
 
I've ordered a pre build panel just to try .


Was thinking 1 X red-blue 4x3200k and 4x6500k boards all on 3 or 4 switches.
Floodlight type but available in the above colours.
W D W
D C D
W D W

Heatsink I'm still out on.

Also thought about bolting those floodlight frames together instead of the heatsink but with a fan as cooler.


You can off course get the Samsung version for 10x cost and probably 2x more PAR

EDIT. I noticed osram recently released a competitive LED .

Always trusted these for my 400w HPS

Hi wisp,

thank you for the interesting links. But as you already mentioned, those lights are pre built. I already have some viparspectra panels but would be very interested in building my own light from scratch as you can design a custom made light spectrum.

The reason is that most LED lights consist of 660nm red light and 450nm blue light. However, if you look at the absorption curves of the chlorophylls, you can see that chlorophyll a has absorbsorption maxima at 430 nm and 662 nm, while chlorophyll b has its maxima at 453 nm and 642 nm. So most light dont cover the 430 range and the 640 range. Some light like my viparspectra xs1000 include also one far-red diode of 730 nm but most pre-built light do not include UV light, probably due to security reasons. Therefore I would like to build a custom made LED panel that covers the whole PAR spectrum as well as a bit of far red and UV. I am thinking of purchasing some of these lumileds diodes


they need to be soldered on a PCB and then arranged on a board with a heat sink. I just have no concrete idea on how to design the electric circuit.

all the best

Dj Greenhouse
 
*most* LEDs work on DC voltage, not AC.
*some* have integrated inverters, *some* do not.
Voltage from my experience is usually 5-12 volts DC direct to the diode, I'm certain there are ones that fall outside this.
Don't assume just buying LEDs of a certain wavelength will get you anywhere, voltage, impedance, amperage, etc all have to be matched....and then there is inductance so as not to interfere with whatever transformer system you'll be needing to supply correct voltage to the diodes.
A bunch of wire, the correct electronics grade solder (rosin core is best) and about a 30 watt soldering iron.....and lots of patience because there will be LOTS of delicate soldering involved (ever seen the size of the leads on a LED?).
Yea, I do sparky.
 
sparky checking in/

cut some corners and buy the leds pre-assembled on a star pcb. Soldering those tiny leds is best done in a flow oven designed for it. And a true challenge doing it any other way.

the more leds you take the lesser each led has to provide to get to a dissired total power. Lesser trough a led means lesser heat to dissipate so a smaller heatsink can be used.

run leds on a constant current supply and connect leds in SERIAL it`s the way to go with leds. In constant current the current stays the same trough the whole string of leds in serial and the voltages add up. It not a problem the forward voltages differ between leds they just add up and have to be in range of the constant current supply. Typical they state it like CC 300mA outputVoltage range 5-25V. So you see there is a min and a max to what a cc supply can work with. So the total voltage of your string of leds needs to be between 5-25volts but this depends on wich cc driver you would choose.

but still alot more is involved to get to a solid design. Think about the efficiency differences between leds and manufactures quite important balancing out the different light colors.

i can suggest to look up growmau5 on youtube he`s showing alot about designing leds lamp. If ya been trough them all you should be able to design and calculate this kind of led lamp build You`ve got to learn some electrics before attempting this kind of build.
 
I guess I forgot to mention that brightness is controlled by amperage (as in 10-30mA or so) and not voltage as with many other things.
You adjust the amperage statically by using resistors for each individual led.
Don't mess with those cheapo led starter kit things on amazon, they burn out quickly...try and get samsung or cree led's.
 
Hi everyone,

in this thread I hope to find somebody who can help with building my own LED board. My idea is to build an LED board consisting of different colored LEDs, however, my knowledge on electronics is limited. As far as I am informed, LEDs of different wavelengths use different forward voltages, which should match within one string of LEDs in series. So if you want to use red and blue LEDs you cannot connect them in series because they require very different voltages. These should rather be connected in parallel with different sizes of resistors. This is what I learned from the internet, however, the most examples out there only show how you can connect like 3 LEDs or many LEDs of the same kind in series. How would the design look if you want to build a quantum board consisting of a large number of red, blue, white, far-red, UV LEDs, all mixed? Should all LEDs of similar forward voltage be connected in series strings? That would give a string of red LEDs, a string of blue LEDs, a string of white LEDs etc. Should the voltage of these strings be matched between each other so that all the different colored strings have the same total voltage? Should they then be connected in parallel to each other? How should I choose the LED driver, and do I still need resistors when using a LED driver?

I hope someone has the know-how to explain to me how this works.

thank you and all the best

Dj Greenhouse
Aloha & We used to DIY a few years ago then the folks in China made it obsolete with prices to Finland including shipping under $150.
 
Hello NL Seattle Greg!

Have you ever personally used these lights? If I can buy something better and cheaper than something I would build, well......... I would certainly smoke a couple phatties and contemplate it! :)

Longball
 
Hello NL Seattle Greg!

Thanks for the super quick response. If you ever get a chance to post up some finished buds under those lights, please do. I have til early September to make a decision about a light(s).There sure is a shitload to learn about lights! ha ha

Longball
 
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