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A project log for Project EDEN

Project EDEN is an open initiative to grow crops quickly, under near-optimal conditions with automated aeroponics habitats.

sadhanasadhana 07/11/2015 at 00:481 Comment

The LEDs are ordered. Its looking like $140 for a 900w ~20,000 lumen array. That price includes:

I'm also ordering 300 45 degree angle reflector lenses and some relays to control the amount of powered LEDs. I'm looking around for some very powerful white LEDs - these won't be 3 watts like the rest, I want something brighter. The white LEDs are mostly intended for monitoring plants with the human visible spectrum, but I'd like for them to be able to be utilized for their spectrum signature as well. I'll be prototyping with some old PC power supplies I've found laying around at work until I can sink more into a fancy ~1500w PSU.

In other news, it looks like GE and Phillips are onto the right idea!

http://www.slashgear.com/philips-is-developing-led-light-growth-recipes-for-indoor-farms-08392246/

The researcher center is 234m2 — one of the biggest ever, says Philips — and it is located in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The company will be concentrating its efforts on developing light recipes for growing strawberries, herbs, and leafy vegetables , as well as increasing the production of carb-rich food like potatoes that are grown indoors.

If you've been following the project, you may recognize this as one of the main goals, except EDEN also emphasizes on the entire habitats 'recipe' for success. We've recently passed a thousand views and have a pretty good ratio of followers to show for it. On top of that EDEN won some sponsorship prizes for the top 50 atmel and TI parts projects . I'm super excited to see the open source hardware communities response to this once the prototype is ready!

I have my old engineering classmate coming over this weekend for some work on the enclosure and I can't wait to keep you guys updated!

Discussions

Brad Buhrkuhl wrote 09/09/2015 at 07:26 point

I am running a grow based on 6 Bridgelux Vero 29s (4x2700k, 2x5000k)  running at 90watts each.  http://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/vero-29-array-series/43475  They work VERY well and they have a decent PAR-matching to their spectrum.  It is good to have all the different wavelengths for the more complex plants.  The other wavelengths seem to help the plant build the complex molecules better.

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