Indoor Orchidarium Build
 

Hi everyone!

Sharing my Journey building my indoor Orchidarium here.
At this stage I would not call myself a beginner, nor an expert.

I began this in 2018, soon after I realized that my Windowsill Orchidarium was not going to materialize. A lot of learning was carried over, though.

My aims were simple :
To grow AND FLOWER orchids under completely artificial lighting.
I did not want to grow them in shelves, nor did I want to enclose them completely in an aquarium type of enclosure.

So I began the build by building the framework.

Attachment 141158

After the framework was done, I started on the lights.

At this point, I wasn’t sure it was going to work, so decided to go with Chinese stuff as they are cheap.

Here the aim was to achieve the Required intensity at the plant while the light remains at the top.
The solution was, of course, Lenses. Bought some stuff from Aliexpress.

Attachment 141159
Attachment 141160
Then tested the lights.
Attachment 141161

Then, to hold everything together, I machined a couple of MDF profiles.

Attachment 141162

And then put 16 of them up and the plants underneath, and crossed my fingers! They've been there for 10 months now, not doing so badly.
Attachment 141163

Troubleshooting:
My electronics took some time to stabilize, with a single bead of one light blowing every other day. I literally tore my hair out, trying to figure out where the problem was. Turned out there were multiple factors.

Drivers: A series of nine of the beads I had chosen needed 54-63V to run. I found the voltage the drivers were giving out would randomly go up even to 75v. So I junked the Chinese drivers, and bought some Indian ones where the voltage was ‘capped’ at 70v. That reduced the frequency of lights blowing, but it was still happening.
The heatsinks: I had cobbled together a bunch of heatsinks, from various sources. For me, this video was a life saver: DIY LED Basics - choosing your heatsink (part 3/6) - YouTube. When I compared my heatsinks, I found they were of varying thicknesses, and had different number of fins. When I tested the light with the thicker heatsinks, they would get hot, but no lights would blow. So changed all the thinner ones to fatter ones. Again, the frequency of beads went down, but would not go away all together.
Testing versus actual: I bought a cheap temperature sensor, and started checking the temperature of the heatsinks when the lights were on. I found out from the Aliexpress product page that I should aim at keeping it under 60 Degrees celsius. I found that there was quite a difference between testing it on my table, and testing it in place among all the other light, as the ambient temperature among the lights was greater.
Fans: Some of the fans would malfunction, causing a bead to blow.

I realized that I needed some kind of safety switch that would put the lights off when they became too hot.

Attachment 141164

Found these online: Bimetal thermostat switches. These are very cheap(Rs.30 each), and I connected one to the electronics of each light, and Voila! I now have 10 days without a single bead blowing!
If anyone is dabbling with DIY leds as a beginner, I would seriously recommend adding this to your light as a safety device. Saves a lot of time and effort. I’m sure people have done this before, but since I have no background in electronics, I ‘discovered’ this component only a month ago!


Once the lights stabilized, I could get on with the business of actually growing my orchids, which is after all, the whole point!

Next was humidity.
I had used a couple of transparent shower curtains in the front, to hold the humidity in. Big mistake. When I started taking readings, I found that the LEDs burn very dry. So the humidity outside the Orchidarium was greater than the humidity inside (I live in Mumbai, after all). So got rid of the shower curtains.

Now the humidity is much better, and I spray according to the humidity meter. Some of the tolumnias right on top are budding.

I have a long way to go go yet before I get my Cattleyas, Dendrobiums and Vandas to flower, but now looks like there is hope.
I have learnt a lot from this forum though I don’t post very often. I felt sharing my experience would be useful to someone else who was beginning something like this, to avoid/learn from my mistakes..
I will be grateful if the experts here can give feedback and suggest improvements, some of which I will be able to implement immediately, and others in Version.2.

Looking forward to hearing from you guys, and many thanks again.

Regards,
Seshadri

Why are you overdriving the LEDs like that? The listing you showed had a max of 3.4-34 volts, depending upon the particular chip...

Project is looking good. Quite ambitious.

Hi Ray,
Apologies for not being clear. The listing was all the beads I was considering at that point in time... all the way from 1W to 100W. I finally settled on the 5W beads, highlighted in yellow. They use 6-7v per bead. So a series of nine needs 54-63V. When I changed my drivers to the Indian ones, I went with 600mA drivers, so that they run slightly under their max rating.
Regards,
Seshadri.

---------- Post added at 07:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:17 PM ----------

Thank you:)

Regarding Ray's question, I'd sure like to see the design of the pcb the LEDs are mounted on. Are you sure that they are in series and not parallel? Series would be unusual. If one fails they all go out.

Yes, thats correct. If one bead blows, that one light goes off. I am comfortable with that, as I dont have a great knowledge of electronics to design failsafes. That one bead putting out the lamp for me was my first line of defence.

looks good but personally I would have enclosed it. Long term orchids like high humidity - houses do not.

Houses should be under 60% humidity to prevent mould growing on walls. Orchids raise humidity lots.

An enclosure is expensive and costly but worth it. Well for me it is.

Spending my time building a light that can be bought for a few dollars is not :lol:

I know nothing about growing in such a high-tec setup and can’t comment on growing indoors. My question is just - why?

Your profile says you’re in India. Wouldn’t most of India have an ideal climate for growing outdoors - free?

Hi.
Firstly the humidity.

@ArronOB, Yes, I live in Mumbai, where it is extremely humid all year round, except for three months in winter when it drops to 40-50%. An open area would be wonderful. I had one, but do not have access to that space anymore. My apartment doesn't allow plants in the windowsill. (The Windowsill Orchidarium Project)

@Orchidking, I had initially closed the front with a shower curtain, and I found that was keeping the humidity out, rather than in! So I removed it. Now the humidity is between 60-80%, there is good air movement, media dries out in between waterings, and I give regular applications of fertilizer. There was a long period when I did not realize the humidity was being kept out, so the plants did suffer, and last month, I removed each one, cleaned them up of pests that had latched on when they were weak, gave a fungicide pesticide dip, and put them back up. Now they are recovering. I could see they were happier within 2 days of removing the curtain.


Next for the lights.
Here’s a sketch to illustrate my intent.
Attachment 141176

I want to keep all the lights on the top, so the entire front is open. The idea is to use lensing to ‘push’ the light for longer distances to achieve this. I have broadly divided the growing area into three. ‘A’ is closest to the lights, so these lights will use lenses with broad cones, ‘B’ with medium cones and ‘C’ with narrow cones. (Maybe 60, 45, and 15. I am still experimenting with lenses so dont have numbers to share).
Cattleyas and tolumneas will be in ‘A’, Phals in ‘B’, and dendrobiums in ‘C’.
The thing was, I had no idea how many light I was going to end up needing. 10 lights, or 50. I would know only once flowering happens.
The process was going to be, put some lights up, see how the plants like it, and if they need, add more.

Here’s the breakup of the cost of the materials for the lights
Attachment 141177

This is the ‘in hand’ cost, after shipping and customs. I did not find any ready-made lights of this power in this price range (or even slightly more), with white full spectrum, and with the variable lensing that I needed. Since this is a hobby, it was ok for me if the cost kept going up by multiples of $17. Having said that, new products are constantly hitting the market, and the moment I see something ready-made like this, I will immediately start using them. If you have any recommendations, I will be very grateful.

Regards

I just realized that I haven't given any dimensions. The growing area is 9feet wide, 5feet high and 2 feet deep.
The light are above this.