- To build your LED Grow Lights, you will need:
- 36 red LEDs
- 12 blue LEDs
- 4 PCB boards that are perforated with 5 holes by 50 holes
- Solder and a soldering iron.
- Start by soldering 2 solid two bare wires that run along each long side each of your PCB boards, then solder one RED wire coming out from one of the bare wires and one BLACK wire coming from the other, these will be your positive and negative terminals.
- Then insert your RED LEDs, next to each other in 12 groups of 3, evenly distributed among the 4 PCB boards, so that the anode (which can be identified by its short leg or flat side) is pointing towards the negative terminal. Solder the pins to the PCB board, neatly connecting the anode pins to the negative terminal and the cathode (or positive) pins, of each grouping, together.
- Insert the BLUE LEDs so that their anodes are pointing towards the center RED LED’s cathode pins and so that the BLUE LEDs’ cathode is pointing towards the positive terminal. Neatly solder the BLUE LEDs’ anodes to the connected RED LED cathode pins, and then the BLUE LEDs’ cathodes to the positive terminal on the PCB board.
- With your LEDs soldered together properly to your PCB boards, you can power them using a 5v power supply, meaning that they can be driven using USB power, a 4.5 or 5v wall adapter, battery power or other options which will be explored later in the CubeFarm Tutorials.
- The red and blue LEDs that we used to build grow lights in this video have been salvaged from discarded electronics but you can also buy new LEDs or you can use magenta colored LED strips to encourage the plants in your cube farm to photosynthesize.