Background:
We've been looking at the different ways of meeting our needs as a family. We don't bring in much income and we are always looking for ways to make the small amount we do have stretch to its maximum efficiency. We grow much of our medicinal and edible greens in our large garden but winters are long, dreary, and cold here. Not so long, dreary, and cold as it may have been in the last places our family landed (Edmonton and Mars often have temperatures in common) but dreary enough that we start our garden the same weekend as people in Calgary.
Problem:
We need a lower cost solution for growing our own produce indoors in the winter than the conventional lighting and heating options allow.
Solutions:
- Commercial Grow LEDs
One solution would be to invest in commerical LED grow light technology like Funk Lighting but this not a cheap investment and comes with a lengthy ROI. The benefits are multiple, good lumens/\$, ability to expand lighting, safe and approved wiring. - DIY Grow LEDs
LEDs are cheaply purchased from Chinese direct sales sites like DealExtreme and Aliexpress. Obviously getting a bag of LEDs does not a LED panel make but with some calculations and research I managed to affordabley put together the parts. They weren't for the use case I envisioned, but they are cheap and simple.
The basic idea:
Materials:
3 x 9 watt Led Panels - Interesting E27 form factor. 6 red LEDs and 3 Blue, each with a spectrum very close to the ideal for photosynthesis. A middle ground 450nm for the blues is almost perfect for this application while the wider spectrum red (635-640nm) is a little off for maximum PAR efficiency. I didn't make that choice as they were pre-mounted but I know that it will work because plants are awesome. Require constant current driver to keep that sweet 350mA flowin'
3 x LED driver - AC to 25VDC@350mA. I wasn't even thinking about AC drivers and was going to power these panels with a single DC power source. These little doodads solved the problem, always read the fine print though, as they have a typo that indicates the input should be 12 VDC when it is supposed to read 120AC.
20AWG Wire from SK Electronics in Nelson, BC. I was soooo happy to find a local supplier of electronic parts that *ISN'T* RadioShack.
Pre-owned lighting hood from a high-powered grow light and a small length of sheet metal for housing the panels themselves.
Soldering Gun
Wire snips
Procedure:
- Wiring of LEDs - The LEDs must be connected on the bare panel. Much wire cutting and soldering to be had.
- Wiring of Drivers
- Assembley of AC Power distribution.
Next post will be a description of each of these steps while I perform them.