Discussion of the pragmatic application of LED's

LED's

Love 'em or hate 'em.

This thread is for folks who either have actual experience growing with them, or at least have an open enough mind to learn what their strengths and limitations are and how to use them intelligently.

Theories are great, but the proof is in the pudding, let's discuss that here.



I other words, let's have a discussion about the practical application of LED's in cannabis cultivation. Let's exchange ideas and methods so we all can grow better.

The PROS i see is that its possible to mix spectrums on demand!
the not existing losses at reflectors we have to deal with using HIDs!
and in the future the very high phyisical energy efficiency...! (at lower prices)

The CONS are yet the bad physical energy efficiency for the most bins!
the very very very (add some more very :/) high price even for bad bins!!!
oh, and ofc, the crowd of led panel sellers who claim their product to be god made making the whole led technology look bad because people who buy it for way too much money gets disappointed by their shitty lies!!!!!!!!
im sorry to all legit sellers who try to boost the science, your too rare to mention! (i actually never met you )

thats about the led itself, methods and ideas may follow later.. we'll see how it evolve

The PROS i see is that its possible to mix spectrums on demand!
the not existing losses at reflectors we have to deal with using HIDs!
and in the future the very high phyisical energy efficiency...! (at lower prices)

The CONS are yet the bad physical energy efficiency for the most bins!
the very very very (add some more very :/) high price even for bad bins!!!
oh, and ofc, the crowd of led panel sellers who claim their product to be god made making the whole led technology look bad because people who buy it for way too much money gets disappointed by their shitty lies!!!!!!!!
im sorry to all legit sellers who try to boost the science, your too rare to mention! (i actually never met you )

thats about the led itself, methods and ideas may follow later.. we'll see how it evolve

Click to expand...

Hmmmm....

This certainly is not pragmatism, but let's address this up front.

Let's toss aside any marketing hype. I don't sell LED's nor do I want to.

I totally agree that at this point LED's do not make financial sense for the reason you already stated. Still, there has to be a few pioneers who go forward even though it doesn't make that kind of sense yet. I built my own for that very reason. No market hype. No diluted specs. Not even bleeding edge as mine is already been through quite a few grows.

Pragmatism deals with practical application, not rhetoric. That's the intended focus of this thread.

Have you actually grown with LED's yet?

What are your experiences. How did you adapt your techniques to dial in your grows. This is the meat of the matter I wish to examine.

SupraSPL, Hempyguy, knna, blimblom, DIYer:

I'm glad to see an intelligent, adult conversation about LEDs on this forum. Of the dozens of threads and hundreds of posts I've read this week very few are as professional and factual. That said, most of your conversation went right over my head.


Hempyguy: This thread looks very promising, too.

Getting to the point...I may be in the market for a 100-200W LED, and I need some advice from someone who won't feed me bullshit. My primary reason for choosing LED over a 250-400W HPS is heat. I have experience with closet grows, and I'm 100% certain I cannot sufficiently control the heat from a 250W HPS in my current apartment's closet. If the LED grow journals I've seen are honest, then I think a 126W or 205W LED from Hydro-Grow (LEDGirl) is manageable. Basically it looks like my options are either LED or no growing until I move to a new apartment or house.

While Hydro-Grow lights are "certainly not the worst" on the market, do you think they are good enough for an experienced grower to produce high quaLity buds comparable to HPS? Could you recommend any other brands? Of course, you may not have used the specific lights, but I'm asking for your opinion based on your knowledge of the underlying technology.

Possible scenario
I cough up the $500-700 for one of those lights and only complete 2 grows to produce at worst 4oz (0.5gpw under 126W) or at best 14oz (1.0gpw under 205W). On the low end that's about $1,600 worth of buds at my current supplier's rate. If that's all I get and I have to trash all my equipment, then I'd come out ahead and consider it a successful grow for my needs. If the result is closer to the high end, then I'd give away the light and spend the next couple of years burning through my stash before I attempt another grow (maybe with 5th generation LEDs by then!)...more than pleased to put it mildly.


I hope this falls into the practical application area of this thread and I'm not hijacking. Thanks in advance!

I'm investing in the LEDs because I won't need the steady exhaust for cooling the pair of 600W HPS I originally planned. This will make the grow more obscure. I also worry about the fire hazard of HID lights in a tent.

Your math is off by 2x.( my reading was off sorry) I got 2.4 oz. from 126 watts first grow with landrace seed. If you got 4 oz, I would be surprised.
Look into defoliation thread, I will be doing that after sexing plants, should yield close to 4 oz. this time.

yesum said:

Your math is off by 2x. I got 2.4 oz. from 126 watts first grow with landrace seed. If you got 4 oz, I would be surprised.
Look into defoliation thread, I will be doing that after sexing plants, should yield close to 4 oz. this time.

Click to expand...

Maybe my wording wasn't very clear. The math takes into account 2 grows. If I get seeds started in the next 5-6 weeks, then I will have time to sex, clone, and flower...then clone and flower again before the lease on my apartment is up and I move.

Thanks for the response. Do you have the 126W light from Hydro-Grow?

I just found one of your recent posts. You grew this under LED light??? Very nice looking plant. It's hard to tell without a size reference in the photo, but that looks very similar to my results under 250W HPS, which is exactly what I hope to achieve with LEDs.

Yay! an' about time.

Yay! an' about time.

Hempyguy said:

LED's

Love 'em or hate 'em.

This thread is for folks who either have actual experience growing with them, or at least have an open enough mind to learn what their strengths and limitations are and how to use them intelligently.

Theories are great, but the proof is in the pudding, let's discuss that here.



I other words, let's have a discussion about the practical application of LED's in cannabis cultivation. Let's exchange ideas and methods so we all can grow better.

Click to expand...

Practical application?
Now we're talkin'.
The proof is in the budding, indeed.
Had some very nice budding last year.


Experience in practical application?
'bout all I do have.
See my albums.

Can't help much with math n details.
See KNNA for that.
I'm a lazy, cut and try, kine guy.
I know a li'l electronics and have a "busy mind" so with all that in mind, how can I help?

Aloha,
Weezard

I use LED exclusively now I am an old school HID grower now fully converted. I use Procyon 100's for veg (have 3) and 330 watt Lumigrow ES's for flowering. Plants veg faster than outdoors or HID under LED and they grow stocky short & bushy. I have excellent results in flowering with dense potent delicious nugs that are better than what I used to grow under HPS lights. You can check my album for pics and I fully recommend the Lumigrow lights they are very effective and extremely well made.

Greeting Weezard!

I already have built my own DIY LED light and have been using them for a few years now, but your offer here is greatly appreciated! I was hoping to generate some discussion on the grow and how it differs for the other methods. Kind of a clearing house for such info for those who haven't done so.

SOTF420,
While I can appreciate your recommendations for brands, that's not what I'm looking for.

Let me start the discussion and anyone can jump in here.

1) I have found that I should run the temps a bit higher than I did with HID's due to less warming by radiant energy. What are your (pl) experiences in this regards?

2) Through experience I have found that my trichs will only cloud up and not turn amber using LED's so now I harvest when I get 100% milky. I also found if I lay the harvest in the sun for a few hours, the milky trichs start turning amber. I suspect the lack of UV, but I'm not sure. BTW even the non amber'd trich's pack the same wallop and the ones exposed to the sun. So I suspect no net gain by this. Comments?

3) How design affects and various packaging of emitters, frequency ratios etc the distance both using inverse square law and color/frequency manipulation.

This is where I was hoping this discussion would go, not one mfr vs another kind of stuff.

Joe4444, see the above, but again I will not squash or rebuke any kind of information exchange on this thread

Go get it folks!

H.G.

Great iniciative, Hempyguy! I think sharing our experiences growing with LEDs is the way to improve our knowledge and fine tune our LED grows.

I think that is would be important to avoid in this thread any comparative between products, or this thread will get trashed by comercial interests. No problem with the people stating what lamps (either DIY or commercial of any brand), indeed it is good to know it, but please, lets go avoid comparision or argument about what is better or not.

I love the tittle of the thread because call exactly to that. Lets share what works better for any of us, how we got an improvement on our own results. It is not important if they are absolutely better of not than other results, but how a LED grower has achieved an improvement on their given conditions, that are different for each.

For example, I think that experiences of spectrum added to given spectrums that resulted on an improvement of results (or the opposite, its good to know both which improves and which not). Aswell, I think it is important we concentrate a little more on differences on fertilizing strategies vs other lighting techs we are used so we found the best fertilizing ways with the experience. We still need to fine tune fertilization under LEDs.

I believe the lower transpiration/water uptake of plants growing under LEDs, due both the less heat (in general, less watts installed on a given space) and the lack of infrared emission will obligue to adapt fertilization.

Unfortunatelly, for personal reasons I cant grow right now. For sure I will do as soon as my situation allows it (Im experiencing withdrawal sindrome ). But in turn, Im in contact with many people growing with LEDs, and many dont post at the boards, so in some sense, I may help commenting some of their observations. But I wouldnt like to abuse of it, as more as we keep talking of our own experiences, the better.

PS: Joe, it would be great if we can talk about the benefits or drawbacks of commercial lamps freely and honestly, with a constructive discussion about it. But that often results on name calling and so. I would like this thread concentrates on how each LED grower has achieved any enhancement on his/her results, or research intended to do it, and keep it free of trolls and commercial interests. I dont have any problem to give my personal opinion about any product, but please, lets go to keep at least this thread clean of it.

Hempyguy said:

Greeting Weezard!

I already have built my own DIY LED light and have been using them for a few years now, but your offer here is greatly appreciated! I was hoping to generate some discussion on the grow and how it differs for the other methods. Kind of a clearing house for such info for those who haven't done so.

Let me start the discussion and anyone can jump in here.

1) I have found that I should run the temps a bit higher than I did with HID's due to less warming by radiant energy. What are your (pl) experiences in this regards?

Click to expand...

I got better results at relatively high temps (max over 25º=77F), and aiming for 27-29ºC (80-84F) as ideal, yet when I was using standard lighting. The problem is for me most time is difficult to reach those temperatures with LEDs. 3-4ºC over ambient temp is usually the most I can get.

I couldnt test if higher temps works better. When I got higher temps, it was in summer, with temps over 30ºC (about 90F and over) and results wasnt improved, but conditions were far from ideal so I think its not a fair conclusion.

From other people (i will try to state when I say something from other's experience so you can take it with a grain of salt), I noticed that there is no severe problems for using temp on the 20-25ºC range (69-77F), however results improve (slightly) on the 25-30ºC range.

On the other hand, Ive seen many problems when temps was below 20ºC. Slow growth rate, defficiencies (especially of calcium), stunted plants. My plants never were exposed to those low temps.

Hempyguy said:

2) Through experience I have found that my trichs will only cloud up and not turn amber using LED's so now I harvest when I get 100% milky. I also found if I lay the harvest in the sun for a few hours, the milky trichs start turning amber. I suspect the lack of UV, but I'm not sure. BTW even the non amber'd trich's pack the same wallop and the ones exposed to the sun. So I suspect no net gain by this. Comments?

Click to expand...

Fully agreed, but I would add that its strain dependent. Some strains go amber at same rate than with other standard lighting (either HPS or fluorescents), but many go slower and some simply refuse to go past the milky stage.

I dont know if its UV (that in this case, small amounts are enough, as HPS emits very little of it) or more probably, far red (700-780nm), which is the main difference between LED spectrums and standard ones (apart of infrared, IR).

Anyway, I think that in general, its a great advantage of LED growing, as it allows to get the highest THC from a given genetic. Trics going amber happen because THC get degraded into CBN (which reflects back amber). CBN is way less psicoactive than THC and result on a more narcotic effect, so except for people looking especifically for that effect, ambering is not a desired trait.

The problem we are used to judge maturation by the ambering of trichs, and it simply dont work the same when using LEDs (or at least, when using them without adding far red). But it allows to more THC is going sinthesyzed while it has slower degradation, thus we can got the highest THC content thios way.

Simply, we need to learn to judge maturation by other indicators, IMO. Or maybe, with LEDs, once reached a given maturity, harvest point have a wide wider optimum than previous lightings. We have continued some plants several weeks past their typical harvest time with HID, still when they were ready (with milky trichs) at same time, and effect didnt change as drastically as it happen with HIDs. Yield increased, but not at a rate that worth enlarging the duration of the grow, at least for so much. With some strains, keeping them 1-2 aditional weeks helped to finish fattening buds and weight improvement was worthy.

Hempyguy said:

3) How design affects and various packaging of emitters, frequency ratios etc the distance both using inverse square law and color/frequency manipulation.

Click to expand...

I prefer to give this question more space and its own post (when I have time)

knna,
Thank you for your timely and intelligent response. You and I are in complete agreement with the direction this thread should take. Please feel free to comment on any practical experiences that you may have gathered on the subjects.

Much respect and karma to you and your associates.

Again, thanks!
H.G.

A few observations using high powered LED's for flowering regarding yields:

Results are far better yield wise with strains that have a good amount of early stretch during flowering initiation. I would grow a Indica/Sativa hybrid as opposed to anything mostly or pure Indica under LED due to the fact that plants are far shorter and more compact under high powered LED compared to those grown under traditional HPS light.

I cannot speak for other brands (and there are many good ones out there) but this is what I have found flowering with the Lumigrow light. The reason it is important to note this is because LED spectrums can vary greatly and what is true for one grower may very well be opposite for someone using a different light so I am trying to be a specific as possible in that regard.

Also, I have found yields are much higher in a hydroponics set-up as opposed to soil when using LED lights. Usually this is true for HPS growing as well (in most cases) but have I seen a marked difference in budding when growing under LED. Soil plants did okay nothing great but not bad either. But in a hydroponic drip system in a coir & hydroton mix the plants really took off and grew massive towers of dense high calyx to leaf ratio flowers. The plants in soil as expected were far more leafy and yielder far less actual dried bud.

During flowering I supplement with a 6400k color temperature T5 light strip in the corners of the tent to give addtional spectrum to the plants that is lacking from the LED. This includes UV & Far Red. I would like to also note I plan to try a new far red LED screw-in bulb that just came out from Lumigrow. I cannot speak as to it's effectiveness yet because I have not used it but from the way it looks and research I have done regarding this, it may be a very welcome addition to bringing up yields and flowering responses under LED.

All in all, I am glad I switched over from HID and do not plan to ever go back! For flowering I like 80 - 85 F as well it seems to be the perfect temp range with CO2 supplementation which I also highly suggest for flowering under LED lights it helps to maximize photosynthesis and will bring up your yield signifigantly. Grow on!

I'm all for pragmatism.

The tests that have been carried out have shown that in flowering, better results can be achieved with hid bulbs than leds, and thats before you compare the cost per gram of bud.

The most practical useage of leds is in the veg cycle, but fluros do the same job, for the same if not lower power bills. And the cost of fluros are significantly less than leds.

So theory asside and concentrating on pure pragmatism, there are better options than leds for growing with.

GMT, I will have to respectfully disagree there. From personal experience in a pure PER WATT calculation per grow in the same timeframe the LED has out-performed the HID. I average about 1.3 to 1.5 grams dried and fully manicured per watt with LED and I don't know how that stacks up against everyone else but with HID it was about half that truthfully with far more heat and light reliability problems.

LED's in the long run are far less expensive than T5's or HID because they last much longer. In fact (trying not to name brands) the light I use has a 5 year warranty and bulbs are never replaced & you do not have to worry about breaking a bulb or it going dim on you for at least 50,000 hours. When you factor in replacing HPS bulbs annually and the cost of everything including much more cooling & exhaust equipment for HID it becomes readily apparent that LED is a far less expensive option. You also do not have to worry nearly as much about a potential fire hazard when growing with LED, they are far less easy to detect by LEO heat signature wise and the end results are simply more potent.

well I cant argue with your personal experience as its yours. I know the tests I watched here on icmag came up with diff figures. I will argue with the common perception that hps bulbs need to be replaced each year though. That is true of MH bulbs, but hps are good for several years, losing 20% of the lumen output by the end of the 5th year.

I'd overlook the price tag completely for a quiet cool grow environment, but the lights have their own fans attached in the fitting, making them more noisey to run than my hps without a fan. (cooled with passive air flow)

Heat signature is something else entirely, if youre growing with multiple 1k lights, or growing in a loft space or a garden shed then I can see the point, but realistically, a single 400w light in the middle of your home is gonna be impossible to spot from outside on heat signature.

All good points sir although educated opinions and practical real world usage regarding HPS bulbs generally cause them to be replaced far more often not to mention the high failure rate of HID bulbs.

Ultimately if you have a 400 watt HPS in the middle of your home and I have a 330 watt LED light I am going to yield more smokable bud with way less heat produced in a far safer manner.

What a pound of bud looks like under a Lumigrow Es in a tent @ 8 weeks flowering.





Pure PAR watts make for some mighty fine flowers, CO2 & Sweet Tooth hybrids help too.

Whats the penetration like with them. I will admit they do look nice and bigger colas than I'd expect to see from leds. I'm not gonna start posting colas from under my hid, as this is an led thread, and one strain cant really be compared to another, but the penetration on large plants is something I worry about, as I dont do badly with my 400watter lol.