FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Dionae wrote:Wow! Never ceases to amaze me how much smarter than me a lot of our members here are! Great work Sander. I can't wait to see it up and running. How much does arduino cost?

You mind if I pick your brain about how to put LEDs together?

Hahaha, i dont consider myself that smart

I bought the arduino with usb cable for around 10 euros incl shipping on ebay, can look up the link if u want to.
How i put together the leds is quite easy, i glue the led to the heatsink (using thermal glue), i solder a wire to the + and - of the led, and solder those to the stripped wires of the heatsink (also + and -), and then to the power supply, i can provide pics if that makes things clearer.

Seems straight forward but pics would be awesome!

Dionae wrote:Seems straight forward but pics would be awesome!

Just tested my solders, and on one the fan turned on while the led didn't, while the led did turn on when powered directly, hahahaha, guess what, soldered the led + to the - fan and - to power supply.

Ill upload some pics tomorrow

Hahaha. Mistakes happen. Shouldve seen me trying to wire up a digi egg incubator. I had torewire 5 times lol.

Cool project. Can't wait for the end result.

hb

Dionae wrote: pics would be awesome!

What i did beforehand can be seen at the assembled piece, i enlarged the clamp holes using a file and then tapped some m4 wire in it.

The setup before hand to test the leds, a transformed pc power supply and variable voltage module (both DIY), be carefull not to power the led for more then 10 seconds, this gets hot fast!


One of the readings:


Ok, the wired led, as you can see the red to the positive wire (grey) and the black to the negative (black line), the solder doesnt look to great cause the tin wouldnt stay on the wires...


Shrink wrap the solder points to keep out moisture and prevent shortings:


Heat it up:


Clean the lenses. These lenses come in 2 pieces: the lens itself and the "mount", these were super glued together (make sure the lens is level!). Due to the vapors released by the glue all fat (from your hands) is colored, this decreases lens efficiency. This can be cleaned by a cotton bud dipped in isopropyl alcohol. A fun fact, you can even use this fumes to make fingerprints visible


After first time cleaning:


Superglue the lens onto the build led heatsink:


And here they are, assembled and well:


Im now installing the leds into the terrarium, will be posting an update on that soon.

Thank you! That helped a lot!

Your welcome, i made this thread to make it a "anyone can follow these instructions build", at least i hope so,

I did some of the wiring and installing of the leds (still waiting for 3 more lenses, ordered 7 instead of 10...).
The heat dont even get warm to the touch, these fans cool ridiculously well!

Today was time for installing the Plexiglas, i bought some suction cups (the kind glass manufacturers use) so i dont have to drill holes or anything like that.
The glass was about 0,3mm to high, so i went at it with the angle grinder, and a few hours later, voila! It fits perfectly now, ill upload pics tomorrow or later this evening.

I also ordered a digital lux meter module for the arduino, this way i can measure light intensities instead of guessing.
All this info will help greatly when i will try to grow my plants on another location (like when i will move out of my dads place)

And here are the pics from the work i did the last 2 days:

Added M4 bolts to all the pre drilled holes:


Added the leds:



And wired the leds to the temporary power supply:


As you can see inside the tank, the led lenses work quite well:


Added the glass (this took a while since i had to make it fit using an angle grinder with 120grit sandpaper, finished with 400 grit sandpaper)


The last photo might seem a little weird due to the fact that the protective foil is partly removed on the sides.

I admire your time and determination in setting this up. Good job

Looks great!

Well, i am in need of that new space, seems its winter again, some of my helis have issues growing, some have crown rot and some stopped growing...

The weird thing is, the only ones affected are the juvenile plants, and temperatures are 23-17 (day/night), 80/95% rh (day/night) nothing has changed, yet this happened to me last winter as well...

AWESOME job, man. Keep it up, I really enjoy watching it come together!
Kudos to you for doing it yourself!

Okay. first major issue has arrived.

The lamps are not bright enough, but when lowering the lamps to get the desired brightness, it works but they do not cover a large enough area.

I tried varying heights with my lamps haging from plant wire, and i can fix this, but i need to double the light (amount of leds) and need to lower them about about 15 cm's, i will also need threaded rods for this instead of bolts since i cant get bolts this length.

Just tested the leds without the lens (i owe more then 20 of them in total ;') ), and it seems they do a better job, albeit i have to put them closer to the plants, i will make some comparrison pics.

when using the leds without lens, i could even make it a 2 shelve terrarium


LEDS with lens



LEDS without lens



So i noticed 2 things which actually make sense, the leds with lenses are stronger, but only on a focussed spot, and brightness goes down downhill fast when going to the sides, and the leds without lenses are less bright but do overlap eachother also lighting the plants from the sides instead from just the top.

i'll now try to fit 6 non lensed leds to check the effects of those

So i need your help deciding, i have 2 options:

Make it 2 shelves, the plants can have a maximum height of 12cm them (pots 18 cm high not included), and have 10 leds on each layer

option 2:
Leave it as is and make 2 rails of each 5 leds that can be lifted or lowered depending on the plant's size (up to 50 cm's high excluding pots).


Here are 2 pics of one of my plants a few cm's away from the lensless leds:



And one of my other helis i grow outside normally, but brought indoors due to winter, and is grown under the same type of led (but less intense due to the area it covers):



And now that i think of it, i also have a third option: a combo of option 1 and option 2:
Have one half of the terrarium 2 layers with fixed leds, and one half a variable led height system.