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Post by Dennis A(cook1973) on Apr 2, 2014 8:43:06 GMT -5
->I am not sure about the forum rules for recommending commercial products Everyone wants to know a good product. Feel free to tell us about it. Great! I just didn't want to sound like I am trying to promote certain products. In that case I would share my experiences here openly. So first here are a few things I learned about LED in general: - Try to use products with high power LEDs. 3W or 5W ones are the best. They are usually much more expensive but they make your plants colour up like crazy. I have tried lower power LEDs but they just don't quite cut it.
- Avoid using products that don't have sufficient cooling. Surprisingly LEDs actually get very hot, most fanless designs are crap and won't last very long. I bought 3 Su***ine System panels for $150 each after reading a thread at FTS, all 3 of them died after 6 months .. so I would avoid this brand for now.
- Don't use anything that's cheaper than $100. You get what you paid for. I have tried some cheap products and they just make my plants look sickly after a few weeks.
- Plants predominately use blue and red lights (I am sure other bands are useful too but more research is needed). So the ideal wavelength should be around 425nm~475nm and 625nm~675nm respectively. Blue light is good for foliage growth and red is good for flowering.
I would say most grow UFOs are fine as long as long as they have sufficient cooling and the correct wavelength. My current favourite grow light is this by a company called easyhydro. I find this panel provides the best bang for your bucks. I bought 2 of them 2 years ago and they are still kicking with no noticeable light degradation or any other issues (LEDs on cheap products usually either burn out or lose intensity quickly after a few months). This panel also has a switch that allows you to change between flowering and foliage bands which is awesome. The only thing I find annoying about this panel is that the cooling fan in vegetative mode is rather noisy, so think twice if you are sensitive to noise. I Hope this helps. Happy growing ps: canuk1w1, I think you are way more knowledgeable than me. The BlackStar looks like a great blueprint to model after. I don't know much about the 580nm band. Please keep us posted on your grow light project. I would love to know how the 580nm band affects plant growth. I have played with different blue/red ratio but the results were inconclusive. Light intensity seems to be the deciding factor for plant health. I have also tried to grow plants with only blue light, they seem to grow a bit weak... I have to disagree with bashing LED lights Last year bought 2 typical and a Big Jaws VFT and got them bare root so I potted them and bought a 36 mini-bulb all white light LED lamp and put my plants under it. My 2 Typicals went from 3 leaves to 7 on 1 and 8 leaves on the other my Big Jaws went from 4 leaves to 7! I never experienced plant death with theses lights I even germinated seed with this lamp! I am probably going to be tore a new one for this,but I use only bright white light and had no problems, maybe the red and blue LED's are doing more harm than good and of the 36 mini-bulbs not 1 blew and it has been almost a year @ 10 hours a day on. It was nothing special just a metal desk lamp I got for $20.00 @ wal-Mart
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Post by H2O on Apr 2, 2014 9:26:02 GMT -5
Dennis, the problem with what you are saying is that you only grew these plants for a very short amount of time and in the end they died, I wouldn't exactly call that success. I just don't want newcomers thinking that a 20 LED from Walmart will work.
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Post by Dennis A(cook1973) on Apr 2, 2014 10:22:21 GMT -5
@h2o
They did not die because of the lights used D Capensis died because something got in the soil( I had the soil tested because it seemed to die overnight but it did grow about 16 leaves first) my VFT's died because of a stupid mistake I put them out them in the unheated shed to go dormant and we had a cold snap and they froze and died I am not nor will I ever promote a product like lights here All I said was LED's worked fine for me and it just bugs me that people trash a new product before they try it not everyone tried it and to each their own, they all have a right to their opinion ,and not to trash a product because everyone has their own techniques and offends even if not everyone replies. LEDs are new and may not have been researched enough LED's works for me and who knows they might have killed my plants if cold temps did not get them first no one will know for sure,thats why I am trying again and for the record I had my plants in a window and greenhouse to get sunlight and only supplemented plants with LED on a rotation so they all got sunlight!! New technolgies scare people and its easier to bash it rather than try it and have a educated opinion true I might have got lucky but like I said there is no way to be sure. I do not bash using florescent lights or that particular technology nor do I promoted it,I think this is my first time even mentioning florescent lights people like them and use them..fine some do not like using them...that's fine too!
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Post by H2O on Apr 2, 2014 10:35:20 GMT -5
Dennis, I am bothered by your previous statements because you talk like you have experience and that you do not. When new growers read that information they might get the impression that you had success with this product, which you did not. Just because a plant grows a few leaves does not mean it is doing well, I could throw a flytrap into shoebox in my closet and it would still continue to grow leaves for a while, does this mean I had success? No. Please try to be more conservative with your statements.
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Post by Dennis A(cook1973) on Apr 2, 2014 10:41:42 GMT -5
All I said was it seems like everyone uses florescent lightsome people use these with success It seems to me that when a new technology ermerges people get threatened by it Everyone has their preference that's fine
Austin out.
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Post by hal on Apr 2, 2014 11:03:52 GMT -5
I thought ilikewhatido offered some great information on the benefits of certain LED lights. I'd try them, but I just can't get past the colour rendering they give.
Recommending products and suppliers is never an issue. SPAM and selling products and services and kitchens from the UK are, of course, discouraged.
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Post by canuk1w1 on Apr 2, 2014 11:29:08 GMT -5
->I am not sure about the forum rules for recommending commercial products Everyone wants to know a good product. Feel free to tell us about it. Great! I just didn't want to sound like I am trying to promote certain products. In that case I would share my experiences here openly. So first here are a few things I learned about LED in general: - Try to use products with high power LEDs. 3W or 5W ones are the best. They are usually much more expensive but they make your plants colour up like crazy. I have tried lower power LEDs but they just don't quite cut it.
- Avoid using products that don't have sufficient cooling. Surprisingly LEDs actually get very hot, most fanless designs are crap and won't last very long. I bought 3 Su***ine System panels for $150 each after reading a thread at FTS, all 3 of them died after 6 months .. so I would avoid this brand for now.
- Don't use anything that's cheaper than $100. You get what you paid for. I have tried some cheap products and they just make my plants look sickly after a few weeks.
- Plants predominately use blue and red lights (I am sure other bands are useful too but more research is needed). So the ideal wavelength should be around 425nm~475nm and 625nm~675nm respectively. Blue light is good for foliage growth and red is good for flowering.
I would say most grow UFOs are fine as long as long as they have sufficient cooling and the correct wavelength. My current favourite grow light is this by a company called easyhydro. I find this panel provides the best bang for your bucks. I bought 2 of them 2 years ago and they are still kicking with no noticeable light degradation or any other issues (LEDs on cheap products usually either burn out or lose intensity quickly after a few months). This panel also has a switch that allows you to change between flowering and foliage bands which is awesome. The only thing I find annoying about this panel is that the cooling fan in vegetative mode is rather noisy, so think twice if you are sensitive to noise. I Hope this helps. Happy growing ps: canuk1w1, I think you are way more knowledgeable than me. The BlackStar looks like a great blueprint to model after. I don't know much about the 580nm band. Please keep us posted on your grow light project. I would love to know how the 580nm band affects plant growth. I have played with different blue/red ratio but the results were inconclusive. Light intensity seems to be the deciding factor for plant health. I have also tried to grow plants with only blue light, they seem to grow a bit weak... This is great, thanks for the details and the compliment mate! I'm not that knowledgeable, 12 hours or so of research is still fresh in my mind. And that'll be put on hold while gardening season shifts to outdoors. With luck I will have a prototype built by early autumn. 1st gen will probably not have the 580nm band but i want it to have "fill" lights. Using that Blackstar motif, I'm thinking of a base unit around 130W, one each for flowering and veg. Full unit would combine these two and have an embedded controller to control the light cycles (based on location, season etc. and potentially customizable). Some of us do want to flower these as well. Current state, LEDs are great supplemental lighting but the best price/performance can be had using HPS and the plants look better under these than primarily red/blue LED grow lamps. A full spectrum LED grow lamp of sufficient light intensity would probably be more expensive than a comparable HPS lamp but only slightly more efficient resulting in minimal cost savings. It is cheaper to purchase the 3W and 5W LEDs in bulk via AliBaba and you can fine tune the wavelengths easier than the supply houses. The LEDs at the extremes of the spectrum (430nm, 660nm+) are expensive to buy individually ($5 or more). The sweet spot for price/performance is at 3W but I'll cost using 5W as well - if it makes sense I would prefer to use the 5W. As you point out, cooling is a big issue. If they run too hot it cuts down on their life. I think a big het sink and a couple of quiet computer fans will do the trick (of course, I will dig out my old physics text to calculate how much heat transfer I'll need and therefore the volume of the required aluminum block...) The best sources for real world experience are the cannabis growing sites - these folks measure production down to the gram! In one great thread a real time comparison is done between HPS and LED lights. The key seems to be selecting the right frequencies and how much "rolloff" occurs away from the peaks. I also want to include some high power white LEDs (e.g. Cree XML) to "fill in" the spectrum for several reasons: - Anecdotal evidence suggests just blue and red can make plants "leggy".
- We know there are other things happening at other wavelengths and without them, the plants will probably not grow "right".
- We grow CPs for display and the current generation LED lights are terrible for this.
As you point out, it is the light intensity that is the major factor in plant health and hence the benefit of high output LEDs - most of the energy they consume is converted to light energy and relatively little is lost to heat when compared with other sources. By tightening what frequencies are generated, we can increase efficiencies even further by generating alot of the "best" light (i.e. light the plants use for photosynthesis and other metabolic processes). It may be that light from say, 500nm to 555nm is not used at all by the plants and just reflected (close to real life, this is why plants appear green...) so we wouldn't bother including those in our custom spectrum. Most of this is lost with the screw-in bulbs as their intensity is not high enough unless they are purpose-built. They might work "good enough" but there are better and proven solutions that will work well - 24" T5HO can bu purchased for under $30, the new 18" unit is packaged with a reflector for just a bit less. Compact CFL grow bulbs that emit the desired light wavelengths to enhance plant growth are more expensive than the T5HO and will probably require a special socket above 50W intensity. Again, if it is all that is available then worth a try but given my background, FWIW I would prefer to save up and purchase a T5HO if that is an option. FWIW, I am looking at how to calculate a DLI using a digital light sensor (e.g. BH1750). The end goal to automate the light cycles depending on how much natural light the location receives. I'm still in discovery mode but it seems like it is possible - whether it is practical is another issue! I think this would be better than measuring light intensity alone (e.g. LUX). There's a good discussion in the 'Materials' board on how to interpret light intensity measurements. Another interesting tidbit - the DLI in northern latitudes in December/January can be 10% what it is in June/July! It'll be harder to say conclusively how much better/worse LEDs will work for growing CPs. Most of us just cannot establish the controlled conditions necessary and I doubt we could agree on the metrics for quantitative comparison. But it'll be fun !
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Post by lloyd on Apr 2, 2014 13:55:51 GMT -5
LED/plasma/induction lighting are very interesting but I think should be looked upon as experimental for now. Metal halide certainly work but are somewhat hard core. Fluorescents are probably the go-to bulbs for CP's, T5HO's being the best for now, IMHO. No doubt in 10-20 years there will be super efficient fixtures that last for decades+ and will have programmable spectra for different plants/seasons/growth stages.
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Post by Dennis A(cook1973) on Apr 2, 2014 16:34:24 GMT -5
Exactly my point LED's work for me, others might try it and hate them these are new, so like almost everything it is constantly being improved so what I find good now might be looked on as crap when the improved model hits the store shelves.
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Post by hal on Apr 2, 2014 18:29:26 GMT -5
We're designing some stores that are going to be using new LED hi-bay lights. They are to replace 4 x 4 bulb T5HO fixtures for general store lighting. And prior to T5HO, the lights of choice were those big HID pendants you might still see in grocery stores.
I might see if I can get a "sample" and try it out. They're fairly compact and have a nice white light. I'll get the specs and post them and then maybe the experts can tell me if the temperatures and lumens are suitable for plants.
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Post by Dennis A(cook1973) on Apr 2, 2014 18:51:19 GMT -5
Ask Maiden,he also answers questions on allexperts and might have some insight on this topic
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Post by lloyd on Apr 2, 2014 19:10:06 GMT -5
I'm really impressed with the T5HO's. My succulents are responding with normal compact growth and flowering which is a fairly good indication of a good grow light.
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Post by ilikewhatido on Apr 2, 2014 20:17:04 GMT -5
Holy crap... looks like I missed the thunderstorm! Sorry guys I didn't want to stir up troubles here. My original intention was to share my experiences with like-minded CP growers here in friendly discussions. If a $20 light bulb works for you, great! I am simply stating what has and has not worked for me. Anyhow... this is supposed to be a photo thread so here are a couple of before-after pictures of my Red Dragon from last year. Enjoy! To canuk1w1: Thanks for the information again. I would like to follow-up with you on your research project when it happens. Having a CP optimized LED grow light will be awesome! Just waking up from dormancy 3 months after
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Post by Dennis A(cook1973) on Apr 2, 2014 20:19:44 GMT -5
Holy crap... looks like I missed the thunderstorm! Sorry guys I didn't want to stir up troubles here. My original intention was to share my experiences with like-minded CP growers here in friendly discussions. If a $20 light bulb works for you, great! I am simply stating what has and has not worked for me. Anyhow... this is supposed to be a photo thread so here are a couple of before-after pictures of my Red Dragon from last year. Enjoy! Just waking up from dormancy 3 months after No worries tempers here flair up on people we are not always fighting
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Post by hal on Apr 2, 2014 21:58:26 GMT -5
Love that Red Dragon. Looks different from the typical Akai Ryu I've seen. It's more compact and neat with bigger traps.
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