Lighting Home made BML Spydr using Aquabar's...

[thetreeman]

This isnt an exact replica and uses less watts, but it cost me around $300 compared to the Spydr at $1300. I should have added a couple more strips ideally, but didnt have them laying around so it is what it is.

Here is an example pic of the Spydr...

I used 3 3' Cidly aquabar lights using 450 blue, 660 red, 660 red, 660 red, 620 red repeating in these lights. Also used 2 4' Cidly aquabars using 5k whites in the whole light. Total wattage is 230 at the plug. Grow area is 4' x 4' which figures out to 14w/sqft. If I had it to do over, I would have used 4' strip for the whole thing, but kept spectrum about the same. This is for tomatoes and peppers so they might do ok without as much light intensity. The frame I built allows me to slide the lights around and it is also easy to turn off lights to adjust intensity up or down.

Without further ado, the pics!
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[Milton]

hmmm this is interesting, i like it but how to raise the PAR?

 

[thetreeman]

Just going from 3' to all 4' leds would raise the light from around 14w/ft to 20, Also it would be easy enough to add another light or two, which could get you into that 25 to 30w range, which is plenty for growing weeds, if you pay attention to the spectrum. Im going to see how things go where it is now, just for fun. I found another 3ft strip I can add if the plants seem to need it, but Id like to keep it available for starting seedlings this spring for my garden.

 

[Balarama]

Hi treeman,
I like your approach very much! This system looks of great value, hopefully it works nice.
Here I'd like to share a thought.
If we take in account the approximate efficency and wattage of the leds you used, I would recommend to put at least a couple more in there for better performance.
I was thinking some time ago to go this way and get the light bars for trucks and some spotlights, but it always led me to need at least 400-500W of leds for a square meter.
So in my opinion for your area you'll need 4 more light bars, maybe 2 red/blue and 2 warm white.

Ok, just now I noticed you'll grow tomatos and peppers, so maybe only 2 more bars will be enough

 

[thetreeman]

I did find another 3ft strip that Im going to add to the mix. It has 6500k white, 2700k white and 660 red repeating. Im currently using the same spectrum at my office to grow some desk plants and it seems to work great. Not sure if Im going to be ordering any more lights any time soon tho. Anyone that is interested, I can give you the contact info for the woman I worked with via email at Cidly, she was very helpful. I think you can get 6 120cm lights shipped in one package, or 8 90cm lights... I was going to use the 4' all whites to replace some florescent in my garage, but havent gotten around to it yet...