And now for something completely different.

Hinky

Hinky

So after considering my lighting options for growing indoors... I made my choice and as usual I can't do anything normal.
We pay about 17¢ per kilowatt hour for electricity and I'm a cheapskate, so HID is not really feasible for me at this time. I'm also a bit of a light fetishist (I actually squealed like leetle girl when I discovered that the Home Despot here locally actually had Philips 2.5W LED candelabras- I could finally get rid of those disgusting 40W incandescent candelabras!) and prefer to do things myself.
About a year ago I was looking on eBay at LED lights and stumbled upon 12 inch LED stoplights. After doing some research on 'em, it turns out that they're actually pretty sweet- DOT specifications require the following-

  • they are water resistant, they come sealed up in plastic housings
  • They're 110VAC, and must use 10 watts or less
  • They must be 620-640nM which, coincidentally, is right in the sweet spot for growing
  • Newer units use Luxeon LEDs, which are among the best
I managed to find some for a decent price and bought a dozen of 'em for $20 each, including shipping. To go with the red I needed some blue- plasmaLED has 5 watt blues for $24 each, including shipping. I haven't found them any cheaper anywhere else. Now, to mount them all...
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I cut a 4x8 sheet of plywood down to 4x6 and reinforced it with 2x2 furring strips. Then I laid out and cut the 12 12 inch holes for the stoplights- another cool feature about the stoplights is they are made for flange mounting, which makes for easy work. For the blues I scrounged up some 'party lighting' or whatever you call string lights. These particular units are pretty sweet in that they come with threaded bezels. After making 6 each 2 1/2" holes, they threaded right in place.
Next came the stoplights...
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I didn't get all crazy with cleaning up the wiring- I might want to rebuild it some day so I left the wiring all at length. Notice the small chunks of wood holding the stoplights in place- these were replaced with 4 foot lengths of slats.
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Total power used by the 12 stoplights is 117-120 watts.
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I just guessed at the spacing- it seems to have good coverage.
 
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I've got mad rigging skills. I wanted to be able to adjust the height. It's probably 70 pounds or so, so I won't be yo-yoing up and down that often, but I can adjust for the plants.
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The 6, 5 watt blues seem to provide good even coverage.
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As do the reds. I wired the blues into one plug and the reds into a seperate plug. I may split the reds up later on.
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Red and blue make creepy burple color. Working with the LEDs is a trip- it doesn't seem terribly bright until you step out of it and your eyes are all screwed up. I'm now using those old lady wraparound glasses when I'm in there.
 
The test subjects...
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I'm not moving much else down there until this proves out. If it does, then I'll get more serious with some mylar and such. One thing I've noticed is that even though the lights produce absolutely no heat, I can't really place the plants much closer than they are and still get an even red/blue coverage.
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Young Jalapeno.
It's a trip- the plants look black under the LEDs.


Total cost- $390
Energy use- 150 watts
Annual cost- $150 at 16 hours per day
 
Great job, Hinky. The color looks very similar to the panel I had. Like you, I didn't think the light was that bright - until I messed up and looked at the bulbs!

Not sure you need to worry about Mylar - LEDs pretty much have a direct light, that's one reason they don't look bright from the side.

Too bad you don't have a PAR meter to see what kind of readings you are getting.

Mike
 
:drunk: :high: wwwwwoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww :high:aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


dude look at all the colors...................






no seriously nice work!!
 
Nice setup. I also considered the LED option, but the amount of money I would have had to spend up front to get "Quad-5" 5,555 lumans per square foot would have cost me around $800 for a 10x5 closet. How many lumans are you getting per square foot with your setup?
 
LGHT said:
Nice setup. I also considered the LED option, but the amount of money I would have had to spend up front to get "Quad-5" 5,555 lumans per square foot would have cost me around $800 for a 10x5 closet. How many lumans are you getting per square foot with your setup?
Click to expand...

Beats me what the lumen count is- I thought the lumen count was sort of invalid when it comes to LEDs? I don't have a light measuring chingadero so I don't know- all I know is the little ones are growing like crazy, for the time being. I haven't tried flowering or fruiting yet- that'll come next week.

And if you buy a grip of Luxeons and Buck Pucks and roll your own, it'll cost you a lot less than a buck sixty a square foot, especially if you figure your ROI over a few years.
 
Just a little update...
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Since it's right before the snow flies I've been flat hooked up elsewhere so I didn't get the time to take good pics, these are just from the iphone. The jalapeno above is after being under the lights for about ten days. Not a long time but the grown is evident enough that I went ahead and added some more plants in there. My problem now is it's too cold in the basement! I'm not going to crank the heat in the entire basement, so when I get home from work next week I'm going to put some blueboard down on the concrete and put my heat mats under the plants. Also, the humidity is showing about 45%- I'm not sure if I want to raise that or not, as long as I water often, would the low humidity be ok? The tomato I had under there gave up the ghost on account of the dryness, but I'm not going to go out of my way to do much about that right now if it's not going to affect the peppers.

More to come, that's for sure!

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It's been 4 months since start, figured I'd update the status of this project.

Experiment is Win. :lol:

I lost a few plants due to the holidays (out of town, no reliable waterer) and have stunted a few by not transplanting into bigger pots but as far as the experiment- jackball ghetto traffic light LEDs and Edison blue LEDs as a low cost grow- is full of win. The traffic stoplights have been working perfectly, as have the 5W Blue Edison base LEDs. The link is the cheapest source for Edison based blues and reds I've found and he's at least based in America- the guy ships USPS Priority as well. The plants not only are receiving enough light to overwinter, they are growing vigorously and flowering, showing no signs of stress caused by lack of light. Up until last week when I left for work, I have been pinching flowers. I'm going to let a few of them flower and see what happens.
As usual during this project I've only taken crap iphone pics so sorry about that.
I went ahead and added mylar all around three sides-
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Consequently I get an even bigger headache if I either forget to wear sunglasses or don't turn the lights off. Also, after this picture was taken I floored the chamber of horrors with 2" thick mylar backed EPS, with the mylar on the EPS facing up. Room temperature is set at a constant 70°F, and I have 2 seedling mats under the pots that are set to 85° on the same timer as the lights, 16 hours on so it goes 85°F day, 70°F night. The lights add little to no appreciable heat. I have the light panel set on a block & tackle system hung from the roof so I can lower it onto the plants when I'm not in there fiddling with them, lift it up when I'm in there fiddling. I also have an oscillating fan on the same timer as the lights and heat mats.

Hard to tell from the glare of the pic, but there's a seedling in the middle-
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And one of the original 7 Pots in the back. I went ahead and cut out mylar pot covers to reflect under the canopy as well as to help retain moisture in the pots- my basement is at about 35% humidity in the winter (yeah, not much worries about mold and mildew!). Almost zero internodal distance on the plants that have only received light from LEDs- I blasted 'em up close with the blue LEDs when they were seedlings, I'd almost like to see it a little bit more leggy? Since the original experiment is going so well, I went aheead and started an additional experiment, which the above two plants are sitting in-
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Autopots. That's the smartvalve there in the middle. I've been fascinated by these and always wanted to give them a go, so I figured might as well multitask. I picked up the complete Autopot 2 holer setups from farm & garden supply place out of Oklahoma, the price was very reasonable and included a length of tube, the 2 pots, valve, the dog bowl- all I had to add was a reservoir. The only thing I don't like about them is the dog bowl places the two pots a little close together for my liking. I only put them in a week ago, I'm real anxious to see these things work! I also bought 2 of the Smartvalves alone, I'm working up something in my head along the lines of a large/long table along the lines of Ebb & Flow out in the greenhouse with the smartvalves feeding it from a large overhead nutrient reservoir/thermal mass...


The panel is pretty heavy but if I take my time I can move it around myself (I built it out in the shop then humped it down to the basement)- and it's going to go out into the greenhouse as soon as I get that repaired and up to operating temperature, and so will the plants I've placed in the Autopots. Energy use has stayed at a constant 120 Watts, so I'm still looking at an energy bill of about $122 a year, with no real degredation of light intensity for what, about 10,000 hours or so?

Conclusions​
I'm not intending to get into an LED vs. Conventional debate- they both have their uses. This was a cheapass home shop project.

Annual power costs-
HINKINC Ghetto2000© $122
conventional 250W $260

Annual upkeep-
HINKINC Ghetto2000© $0
conventional 250W $50 (replacement bulbs)

Annual cost savings over a conventional 250W works out to be $188, meaning ROI covers the capital expenditure the first year and then $188 a year less in O&M. I'm omitting heat from the equation- I don't use AC and the lab is set up in the basement directly in the middle of the house- if I were using a conventional 250W, the basement heat would probably never come on, so heating costs would be a wash, IMO.


  • I'd say it's at least comparable to a conventional 250W light, maybe close to 400W
  • Initial startup costs are about $100 more than a conventional 250W, probably about the same or a little less than 400W
  • Annual operating costs will be about $188 less than a conventional 250W
  • most importantly for me- each stoplight and each Edison socket on the HINKINC Ghetto2000© has it's own power supply and driver, so if one burns out I won't come home to find a black cave full of death.
  • No excess heat to deal with

The HINKINC Ghetto2000© would never replace a 1000W conventional light, no matter how many traffic stoplights you tried to cram up in there- even with the Luxeon emitters, I just don't thing the intensity is there. However, it is definitely adequate for overwintering and possibly adequate for actually fruiting varieties that don't require tons of light. For its intended purpose, the HINKINC Ghetto2000© is WIN!
 
Very nice indeed, you have just done the hard work for everyone that wants to put traffic lights to good use!
 
Chris-
I saw that, nice compact setup there. I'd toyed with the idea of breadboarding a bunch of 5mm reds, blues, oranges, and maybe a few ultraviolets for a test chamber- it's on The List but fiddle farting around with a bajillion wee pins on a breadboard is not that high on The List :) I currently have a 4'x2 1/2' incubator box using 8 Ott-Lite standard 30W T12 tubes, which I would LOVE to replace with LEDs. I use more electricity in my damned incubator than I do in my grow room now!
I've got 18 each red, 6 each blue Luxeon Star III 3W LEDs with enough 32VDC BuckPuck drivers for them as well as an ungodly stout 28VDC benchtop power supply that was used for bench testing aircraft instruments. My plans are to TIG up an array out of aluminum extruded tubing to use as a liquid cooled heat sink for the LEDs, and circulate hydro nutrient through the extrusion as the cooling agent/nutrient warmer.
 
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