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"Roadkill" LED lighting

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    "Roadkill" LED lighting

    This is probably going to be a bit of a niche post, but it was too amusing not to share with all of you. Lets start at the beginning:


    The northern realms around where I live currently have, among other things, a lot of ice and a lot of seriously overbuilt trucks. It's just a climactic thing. Unfortunately, those individuals with overbuilt trucks are not always the most careful when driving on ice and often end up smashing said trucks right into things. So, there was a pretty big wreck of this nature a few weeks ago, and my spouse's boss was digging around in one of the wrecks after the truck had been towed off the collision scene (not sure exactly why - but my understanding is that he's a weird and insightful dude... but I and cannot judge as I too am weird, if not insightful)

    He found, flung off the truck during the crash, a 41" curved LED light-bar, with 80 LED chips which appear to be ~5W each. He thought this was neat, and due to the severe gardening habit myself and the spouse share, he thought of us and took this thing to work where he gifted it to my husband. This was Feb 12th, incidentally. It's super fun when my 'normal plant' gardening habit works in my favor and people bring me things like this.

    The husband forgot to bring it home for a few days, so this Valentines day I was gifted with this gigantic LED light bar, complete with full aluminum heat-sink fins... I was actually oddly excited about this. Way more fun that roses, anyhow.

    So we managed to do some research and I am pretty sure I found the exact model of light-bar on an aftermarket website. This thing was PRICEY new! ~$770 for a 400W LED...



    But if you find it free by the side of the road, suddenly one $40 power supply later, you're in business!

    Because these lights are designed to run of vehicle electrical, they're designed for constant-voltage driving, and have current limiting resistors built in. This means that even a reasonable computer power supply can often run them off the 12V rail. In our case, we got a stand-alone power supply rated around 12V/40A and it's working really well so far.



    The downside is at 41", it's too big to fit in either of my tents. I may give this one up for growing normal plants. The spouse has a thing for succulents, so I'm thinking we need to make him a "Zen garden / Cactus field" planter box at some point, and given how bright this is, it would probably make some desert plants quite happy.

    It's reading at ~58,000 lumens around the 12" mark. Main disadvantage is that the lenses on this one seem to make it very directional - the beam remains fairly tight, so it covers a fairly small area intensely.


    There is also one last thing we need to do before putting this thing into service: We need to do a bit of a stress test. It's working fine now, but I'd rather set it up on a GFCI-protected circuit and run it for a few days to ensure there is no damage from the crash and to keep track of the temperature - need to make sure those fins can passively cool the lights even when they're not moving down a highway! (It should be okay if there isn't damage - people do use these for lighting worksites, etc, with the truck stationary - but better safe than sorry!).




    I can't imagine that a lot of people have their spouse's boss gift them ~$750 LED bars, but if you're wandering around a scrap yard and looking for a new lighting project, maybe one of these will be hanging off the side of a highly customized and then crashed truck? Who knows!
    Novice Grower
    Coir - 5 Gal
    AN Micro-Grow-Bloom / Mega Crop / Cal-Mg
    1.5 x 3' Veg tent with 116w wall LED
    1.5 x 3' Flower tent with 116w wall LED, Vivosun exhaust fan and carbon filtre

    Grow 1: White Kush (MCS) Jul 2018 - Dec 2018 (2 plants / 62g) (No GWE thread)
    Grow 2: Royal Medic (RQS) Dec 2018 - Apr 2019 (1 plant / 75g)https://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum...nkiller-xl-rqs
    Grow 3: Blue Mystic (Nirvana) Apr 2019 - Oct 2019 (3 plants / 111g + 45g trim) https://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum...mystic-nirvana
    Grow 4: Purple Kush (MCS) Feb 2020 - June 2020 (2 plants / 42g, 250 seeds) https://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum...g-grow-journal
    Grow 5: GSC/Durban Poison (MCS) Late Aug 2020 - ??? https://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum...poison-fem-mcs

    Projects:
    Strange Roadkilled LED light: https://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum...l-led-lighting
    COB build in progress: (no post yet)

    #2
    Got a message about this post, so maybe I should update:

    The light-bar has passed the stress test - it's been in operation 1.5 weeks with no crazy house fires. Only downside is that the power supply we bought is noisy as heck. Despite that, it's currently making some young tomato plants, peppers, and onions very happy.

    The fins tend to get as warm as 40c. We're using that to heat the upper are where we start the seedlings under T8 florescent lights, before moving them down to the "ungodly bright" lower level.

    Once the regular garden plants have gone outside, THEN we may look at starting that cactus/zen garden as mentioned above.
    Novice Grower
    Coir - 5 Gal
    AN Micro-Grow-Bloom / Mega Crop / Cal-Mg
    1.5 x 3' Veg tent with 116w wall LED
    1.5 x 3' Flower tent with 116w wall LED, Vivosun exhaust fan and carbon filtre

    Grow 1: White Kush (MCS) Jul 2018 - Dec 2018 (2 plants / 62g) (No GWE thread)
    Grow 2: Royal Medic (RQS) Dec 2018 - Apr 2019 (1 plant / 75g)https://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum...nkiller-xl-rqs
    Grow 3: Blue Mystic (Nirvana) Apr 2019 - Oct 2019 (3 plants / 111g + 45g trim) https://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum...mystic-nirvana
    Grow 4: Purple Kush (MCS) Feb 2020 - June 2020 (2 plants / 42g, 250 seeds) https://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum...g-grow-journal
    Grow 5: GSC/Durban Poison (MCS) Late Aug 2020 - ??? https://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum...poison-fem-mcs

    Projects:
    Strange Roadkilled LED light: https://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum...l-led-lighting
    COB build in progress: (no post yet)

    Comment


    • oldjarhead100
      oldjarhead100 commented
      Editing a comment
      when I hung my exhaust fans it rumbled though the entire house so I took a bit of flat rubber bungee cord and screwed that to the beam and poof no more sound I dont know if this will work on a power supply but if the noise goes down when you pick it up it will, I also hang my air pumps to deaden the sound

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