I geek on lights so i thought i would Share my thoughts. It is my hope that we can discuss LED lights and how to find a good LED grow light. if you have read my posts else where you already know my opinion on brand so I kept that to myself here. I have owned a lot of lights over the years. Here are some of the ways I judge an LED light. the best measure of a light is usually measured in umols or ppfd. both of which almost nobody has the ability to measure so I start with the way you turn on your light. The first cars had to be cranked up by hand. The first LED grow lights on the market did not have power switches just a power chord. dead giveaway for old outdated tech the light has got to have lenses LEDs cast light directionally off of a light. with out a lens much of the light is cast off and wasted. it is common sense that reflected light is much weaker than direct light; so using a lens that grabs the light that would be bouncing off your wall and redirecting it to hit your plants instead is a great thing. An argument against this is that when you put something in front of a light source it diminishes the intensity of the light. That is true but the added light from refraction can greatly increase the amount of usable PAR to your plant. PAR or Photosynthetic Active Radiation is in layman's terms the light plants eat. Like people there are some things we all must have regardless, things that we can get by with and then there is individual preference. Chlorophyll A is the primary receptor for photosynthesis. for plants this is the must have regardless. Plants produce 3 times more Chlorophyll A than Chlorophyll B the secondary photosynthetic receptor. Chlorophyll B helps drive Chlorophyll A and helps broaden the PAR used by the plant and is the "can get by on" as long as some of the primary is there. White light is a good fill in kinda like micro nutrients necessary but micro. the use of IR allows for the Emerson effect. the Emerson effect means that your light will have to produce 670nm light. wattage at the wall is the only wattage that matters. if there is a problem it is much easier to ship to another city, town or state than another country. here are some light pictures View attachment 142633 View attachment 142629 View attachment 142631 View attachment 142632 View attachment 142630 View attachment 142628 View attachment 142627 If you can think of some other things to look for please let me know. Always looking to improve my game. If you spot any new technology let us know. If you know about anything new let us know.
Great post Brad and I agree with just about everything you said! Seems like you definitely have been around the block with different LED's! Here are my list of most important things to consider when choosing an LED.... Company support and warranty Use of quality drivers vs unknown drivers Use of high efficency chips like Lumiled, Cree and OSRAM (better chips use electricity more efficiently than cheap chips, also have less lumen depreciation and color shift) Use of secondary lenses to help with beam "throw" or colmenating lenses to create parralel light beams thus counteracting the square inverse law Superior thermal management, the cooler your lights run, the more efficiently they use energy and the longer the life of your diodes and components. Dimming features are a slightly new addition to the LED industry, and since plants at different phases have different light requirements, dimming is nice to save on energy usage when not needed. (for instance clones do not need nearly as much light as flowering plants) No point in running a light at full power with clones...just wasting energy. Custom Spectrum adjustment: The ability to change spectrum based on your plants lighting needs... LED panels with spectrum adjustments or programmable features allow for you to dial in to your plants needs.... have stretchy plants, add more blue and reduce red, or plants too tight, add more red and subtract blue... so a LED with custom spectrum adjustments can be beneficial when controlling photomorphogenesis. Coverage area and footprint... some LEDs are very intense, but offer a small coverage area due to the light being focused, some LED's offer a nice even coverage, but are not as intense... depending on your growing style and needs for your plants, this can be an important factor...if you grow a scrog or sea of green, less intense focused light is necessary and a more even footprint would be better vs if you are growing 6' plants,, then a led with dual lenses and a more focused and intense output would be a better option. Spectrum is important and typically you want a LED with full spectrum but heavy in the red light. Plants use RED light the most efficiently and use blue light the least efficiently, green falls in the middle (even though popular belief is that plants do not use green light which is incorrect). a full blue spectrum activates many of the plants "defense" mechanisms and for cannabis, we want a slight plant stress which increases thc content, terpine production and other things that us medical growers need, but the blue end of the spectrum only needs to be full, and about 10%-25% of the total spectral output... Each grower has there own ideas on the proper spectrum and there are still many inconclusive studies in which is the perfect ratio, but generally your LED should include a lot of red, some blue and some of all colors including green. How a LED company drives the chips is also important... lets say you have a 3w LED, if you drive that LED at the full 3W, then the lifetime of this LED will be very short and will not last long. Most companies would run this 3w chip around 2.4W or so for optimal efficiency as well as lifetime. These are pretty much all the things I consider when buying an LED... Hope this helps everyone out
I shall stand by DIY till I die of becoming rich. Many different wavelength led types are a worse solution to using cool white/ warm white diodes in much fewer led numbers. Not talking about UV leds, they are not covered by the whites. as far as I know. P.S. IR leds are completely useless, all they give to the plant is heat. Max what you need is 700nm deep red diodes, which are not IR, mind you.
are you talking about IR leds or using white ones as supplements, which you mentioned yourself if im not mistaken? In case you mistook me, i was not advocating to grow only with white leds.. thats silly. But if you insist on having like 10 different wavelength leds then you will soon run into the problem of arranging them in such a way that the whole canopy gets every wavelength in sort of equal amounts. edit, or do you not like the diy path in general ? because you are lazy? or time costs more than spending stupid amounts on the same quality ? There are literally no drawbacks of making your own light, unless you have 0 electric skills, of which i highly doubt. Shit, my first real soldering job was my array and it went great.. plus you can pick the parts you want instead of trusting "we use 100% [brand name] leds". Anyway, to each his own, I guess.
I am not an incapable electrician but building electrical equipment is not my hobby. my hobby is growing really great paka lolo to turn off my nerve damage. I think you and i agree looks like all around. I am lazy no question i look for any way to make things easier. it did take me a few grand to find a company i feel i can trust. You have to verify every light you get. I inspect every LED on the board and match it to the manufacture. my old man use to say trust but verify. here is the spectrum of the light i use and the lights i will be adding. they only used 5 dif LEDs. I totally agree 11 dif Leds is nuts. my buddy works for a sign company that uses led lights I was able to verify the spectrum. now that dude should be building lights! I get pretty good results from this light even though i am a very lazy gardener I have had car trouble lately so i have been neglecting my garden. I can only get there once every three or more days. I have even had to delay my cloning. I am pretty nervous tough when you neglect a garden you often miss the little signs that lead to big problems. but here is one of yesterdays photos. what kind of leds are you using what spectrum are you looking for? what type of heat sinks do you use? let me know about your lights and please share I am sure you have some mad knowledge to share and that is really the idea here. Speaking of that Hey Icemud thanks for your post! if anybody hasn't go check him out he has equipment and shares his data.
Wow dude, you really went the extra mile to check your lights quality. My self, I am cheapskate. Ive only done one light, for my first ever grow so naturally i did not want to spend big bucks on a measly pc grow. I went with no brand chinese leds for the most part, also some osrams i had dug up for cheap. Wavelengths of 450, 630, 660 and some cool whites (6500k). Heat sink was simply an aluminum tube cut up in 5 parts. Actually worked better than I had expected, doing wonders at maintaining temps below 36 degrees on the surface. You can see the photos in the start of my sad unfinished journal. It was definitely not "high end" but i did learn a ton in the process and it proved to me that even this kind of set up can produce herb, although i did not taste the results, had to be destroyed.. sad panda. If i made a second light, I would use the same aluminum tube mounted on magnets, but use better quality leds and add a detachable wire connection on the side leds, a modular design of some sorts, if you need, place a couple of tubes on the side of the box, no prob, too little juice? add another tube. You get the idea. Also i would use some 700 nm leds along the 660. I find it that cool white covers the rather wide blue chlorophyll response peak quite satisfactory. But also, more of a guess than verified proof, I mean i did not even finish my first grow.. :/ cheers
Hey Bra nice I looked at your grow. Here is something that i use as an additive to my res and as a foliar Photosynthesis Plus and a heavy blue seems to help the plant resist pest and disease better. how far off your canopy did you keep your light? when is your next grow going up? I want your data
Ok, so the Photosynthesis Plus is sort of like adding a microbe culture as I understand it ? My lights were of varied distances, Before they started flowering I just let the pot stay on the bottom of the box, so something like 15cm (~6 inches), I had moved the pot up but it then did not fully close, so I had to settle with less of a height raise, that turned out to be at about 10cm or 4 inches. A grow that I will do my self will happen as soon as I change my residential place, but sadly that does not seem to be happening any time soon. The box though will be doing some more active work for a friend of mine in the mean time. But he is not posting anything anywhere.
I use photosynthesis plus as a foliar it helps fight all kinds of disease. I use this through out the grow it helps me a lot. I got a bottle as a sample and now i buy it by the gallon lol! If i would have met you earlier i would have advised you to try it early on in your grow. your lights are 15cm above your canopy? let me know if that is right because i have issues if mine are too close. I run my lights @ 55-56cm (22"). lenses really increase the throw on the light. when i saw your pictures i thought your LEDs had bleached your leaves. then i read you had a vinegar issue. let me know your thoughts and how your buddy is doing. i would also recommend writing everything down any success i have is really just confirmation of the lessons i learned from all the failure i have had. nobody has a memory better than a pen.
I have to agree with the part about the whites... warm white cree's cover almost all necessary PAR peaks, and if I personally made a panel, it would be about 60% cree warm whites, add a few blue from 390-440nm, and 480-510nm, and then load it with 640-700nm reds..
Is the photosynthesis plus also called Plus-C ? I just got a sample of this stuff called Plus C...very strong sulfur smell. My plants seemed to like it except when I sprayed them with it, it spotted the leaves pretty good.
yeah that is the california label they use. they hooked me with a sample. I was thinking about re-bottling it and calling it "Brada Haoles Ass" LOL
Thats a pretty good video they put together. Definitely covers a lot of good information. The only part I didn't agree with completely where he said green doesn't drive the plant as efficiently as blue which according to my research is actually incorrect. Red is most efficient followed by orange yellow, followed by green, followed by blue. With blue most of the studies that I have read show that around 5-10% blue is all that is needed.
look what i found yesterday. wow this brought back some memories. View attachment 143776 it was like finding a picture of my ex-wife the one that taught me it is cheaper to hire a PI when i met her than an attorney after i wished i never had.