Thanks Vladimir
I'll do a full explanation post here with details - sorry about the length !
Indeed, it was the awareness of all the chemicals in food that got me started about 4 years ago. The idea, at first, was just to see if anything could grow in the soil here in Oklahoma and produce produce, as it were. It's a sludgy clay soil from about 2ft down and i've still not much idea about its nutrient contents. One thing though, we don't clear the leaves from the back garden and have 2 large mature trees covering most of the area, that may well be helping the soil each year. One is a Pecan, the other is an American Elm...and if you know about the history of Elms being nearly wiped out in the 1970's/80's then you'll see why I said to my wife that we should put it on Ebay
Last year saw the introduction of a 27MHz circuit, based on research from an Irish University. In my opinion it works great, resulting somehow in a 95% reduction in weeds, fuller leaf growth, next to zero pest problems and more fruit. I put the aerial from the end into the rainwater for 15 seconds and then water the plants. A radio control from a toy car etc will work, but I did develop a decent circuit for it.
Last years habanero's were ridiculous lol, ended up giving quite a few dozen away and there were 200 peppers still on the plants when winter set in. Baseball/cricket ball sized tomatoes have also grown, from original seeds that produced regular tomatoes the first year (have got pics of all this if anyone doubts). I haven't used it over the past 2 months on the indoors ones..but think I might see what happens in the next 2 weeks as a test. Might go well, might not, the real sun might be needed if it's about charged ions.
The whole idea has simply been to keep them alive over winter, so why not let them be tested furthered *evil laugh*.
One thing I now know from viewing videos last night, is that my peppers are growing a bit lanky. It happens when the plants are looking for good light.
Tips would be to plant the same height of plants, make the led bar adjustable to suit growth height and oddballs should go in their own growers. Peppers leaves droop below 50F/10C, the room should always be well above that temperature, which is why these are in the bedroom (only heated room in the house).
This method is ideal for small spaces, in my opinion.
The next project is to be 2x ice cube trays with LED bar above each, for seedlings. Either USB or Li-Ion battery powered, the system will use solar to run/recharge. 1 will have an oscillator circuit running the LED bar (perhaps at 27MHz), the other will be the control with no circuit.
On to this circuit - which doesn't need a diagram in my opinion.
It's very simple, being LEDs in parallel.
A typical USB phone charger will be 5V - 5.5V at up to 1A.
I purposely am under-driving the 1W whites, to extend their life, reduce power needs and to make the circuit as simple/reliable as possible.
Connect all LEDs in parallel in their own banks. So all reds together in a strip, all white and all blue.
Pick a nominal value of current limiting resistor of say 1K, to protect all LEDs.
Reds will steal the power because of their lower conduction threshold, so a variable resistor pot goes in series with them. Adjust it until the whites and blues come on brightly.
If the blues come on well but the whites are dim, do the same for the blues.
Replace both resistances with fixed resistors of the values found.
The whites will be bright, but not at full brightness...it's a built in easy way of current limiting for them. Do whites matter for plant growth ? I don't know, but the light is certainly more beneficial to the eye when checking on them and I personally highly doubt that 8x red and 4x blue are doing all the work. They are also regular normal nothing fancy ultrabright LEDs.
That's it
The reds resistor should be a 1W type or thereabouts, because it gets warm. That's why there is a piece of tin around the one shown in the video.
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Topic: LED indoor plant growing project (Read 35131 times)
