Excellent thread, SVT, very well done. We are depserate to see the plants flowering under your associates nifty apparatii. Speaking of which, how much is your associate talking of selling these things for? Hopefully, it will not be priced out of ordinary folks' range. Elrod
Thanks, reasoner22, Tokinzergling and Elrod. Elrod, I think my friend will sell the lights in the mid hundreds of $$$ but, by the time he gets the business going, they LED's hopefully will have come down in price. Oh and the moms are back on 18/6 and the clones taken of the top are still alive. Thanks again to all and I will update soon.
Hey everybody we just switched over to Led's on Oct 18 and so far things are great. We have about 1300 individual red led's in veg and about 140 blue. A 10% -90% mix is what is reccomended. We have used a little less blue for flower. The reduction in heat is incredible. At first i was skeptical as we plugged evrything in and it wasn't nearly as bright as with the MH and HPS lights. Then i read that 60 % of the light can't be seen by the human eye. The plants look wonderful, very bushy and short space between nodes. The reduction in noise from not having all those ballasts and fans running all over the place is cool too. We have set it up for now with the red's on the end and the blues in the middle and i rotate them daily. I will keep y'all posted as we see how they flower. So far so good but they have only been on for 10 days so it's a little premature to make a judgement. If these work it will revolutionize growing. We have reduced from 1000 watts to less than 100..Screw you national grid ..
Yeah i agree these lights if they work 80% as well as HIds will be worth the trade off. If heat and noise is virtually eliminated it solves all kinds of issues that can be obstructive to the wanting? It would mean no more worrying about thermal signatures, CO2 loss through needless ventilation, and the power savings speak for themselves. Im tempted to buy a set from LEDgrow.com just to give it a try its only $250. "Only" is a relative term when speaking of the garden only because that cas is growing on trees." but i was also thinking of building a set. what type of LED ate you using and what is the spectrum? I want to do a little cost estimate to figure if i should build or buy.
Each LED is rated at 2500 millicandelas (mcd) . typical at 20 ma. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but they are bright even from a distance. I have them about 10 inches away and they seem to love it. i plan to add some more smaller clusters on the walls when i can afford to, they use so little power but what i have now seems to be sufficient so far. each room is about 8 sq ft. Good luck!
wow guys, sorry that font is so big, not sure how that happened we built our own because otherwise it would have cost $2000.. We did it for around $500..
rye_led, Your setup sounds cool. I would love to see some pictures of the lights and some pics of the plants. You can post them in this thread if you like; I will not get pissed for hijacking I definitely think my friend needs to at least double the mount of LED's he has in this hood. Today is week one for the clones taken off the top of the plant and they both look good. I will probably end up destroying them in a few days but, I just wanted to see if i could get the top portion of the plant rooted.
very interesting it seems you're handy so I'll toss a few ideas yer way I've noticed in my led projection fiddling that they seem to like staying on without being stopped n started cold so you may stand to get more life out of them if you keep them going 24/7 if the cost isn't too bad now since you'd have 12 hours of extra light at some point you could figure out how to route all that light into some homebrew lcd projector made from an lcd monitor to play games watch movies ect large as fuck google up 'diy projector' if you're unfamilar with the concept...I think you'll find gold seeing as indoor growth of plants and video projection have a lotta light problems in common (life/heat/expense/power/ect) and led solves both hobbiest problems nicely
By the way, I burned my girls using the same strength nutes i have always used, i read they will need less nutes, boy they werent lying. Plus they are using about a quarter of the water than they normally needed. Tread lightly with nutes. I am using bio-grow which i have never had burn issues with. I am sorry bro but i currently do not have a camera, it fell in the dishwater and is no more.. If i can get my hands ona camera i'll post some pics. I just cloned tops too and they rooted with no problem. How many individual led's (red and blue) does your frind have.. And forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is hijacking?
Dude, you're talking about an LCD projector, he's talking about LED. Liquid Crystal Displays and Light Emitting Diodes are very different.
you brits sure are bitchy lol do some research before you spout off bro many diy folks are using or attempting to use high lumen output led grids to project via lcd panels and a portable model that uses led is already being sold
Yes I noticed this too. My buddy told me to go easy on the nutes and he was right. I have been feeding at half strength of what I used with the HPS and I watered in the 8 inch pots like once every 10 days. The lights really do make growing low maintenance. However, since they need to be within three inches of the light I have to check a few times a day to make sure they don't touch the lights. The big hood has 13 blue 18 red LED's and one green. The small light pictured gives 30 watts total with both red and blue turned on and the bigger light gives 80 watts total. I think we could easily double the amount of LED's we have in the hood. All it would take is more $$$.
rye_led, where did you get your LEDs from? a good place for LEDs is digikey.com. They have thousands of different LEDs from companies all over and some of which have a very high Luminosity output. I too am thinking about building my own LED grow system, but have a few questions for those who have built/ know a few things about it. First, how many LEDs, of each colour, did you use? For my grow, I have 2 options. I can have Red LEDs which output 10,000 mcds at 20ma and Blues 3200 mcds @ 20 ma but the viewing angle is only 6 degrees on both, or I can have Reds that output 5000 @ 20 ma and Blues 1350 @ 20 ma, with a viewing angle of 30. Given this information, I would assume that the difference in Luminosity would affect how many LEDs I would use. Secondly, do you think the viewing angle would really matter if I have my LEDs grouped together? seeing as how the clusters would only be focusing on one plant each, I would have each plant within the viewing angle. Also, if anyone needs help with wiring LEDs or stuff like that, feel free to PM me and I'll help you the best I can. Thanks guys, Aaron
Welcome to the party lasoaaro and Mr. Nevilles Haze (h4rk4t). h4rk4t is that a picture of you in your avatar? Handsome guy you are. lasoaaro, I personally don't know the answer to your questions but, when I find out I will let you know. I think on page 5 of this thread I mention how many blue and red LED's I have in the hood.
wow 3 inches away huh? mine are about 8-10 inches away and i have read that up to 18 away is ok. I have all kinds of new growth and it is very green and healthy. i just have to rotate them evryday because i have two 12 inch red lenses with 650 led's per lense and a 70 led blue in the center(flower) so the ones on the end get no blue. I have ordered more red led's , five 420 leds lenses which i will disperse throughout the two rooms. I am going to hang some horizontal . Your ratio of blue seems a little high according to what i have read. A 90% red 10% blue is recommended. You can use up to 20% blue though depending on what you are growing as some plants like more blue. To much blue is not good though, esp in flower. Also it seems like alot of wattage for those few led's they must be killer bright. my total wattage is about 100 with 2750 individual led's ( between both rooms). Those 650's i mentioned only use 17 watts.
[quote name='lasoaaro']rye_led, where did you get your LEDs from? hey aaron, i scooped mine off ebay, the blue were $70 for 180 led per lense and the 650's ( red) were 19.95 each. i could cry..
SVC. Can you imagine what they would look like you if had top'd earlier and did some LST? Im pretty sure I will be replacing my HPS's with these, after following this thread for the last few weeks, im convinced. Is you associate selling any of these setups yet? Let me know, Im probably down to invest with your friend. Eckolaker
That's not that expensive, if what i'm gathering is right. Blue & Green LEDs are always the more expensive ones, but 180 Blues for $70 and 650 Reds for $20 is actually an amazing price. Ordering from Digi-Key, 100 Blues is like $50- 66 and 100 Reds $28-30. Anyway, good luck.