LED vs. HID test grow

[stonedeconomist]

did some research a few weeks ago and found a few makers.

http://www.led-grow-master.com/gardeningproducts.html

this is one, but there is another that for under 2g you get 8 light bars... supposed to cover 16' sq (even has a nice grid, specially made for the strips)

Boerman, thanks for the original info, and good job at taking the time ...

There is even a grow contest listed on the main page... you should enter

those led grow bars are supposed to be total crap. there are a few posts in the various LED growing threads here at icmag in which the posters share their first hand experience about what pieces of junk those led growbars are. if your thinking about buying some of them do your self a favor and ask around icmag for input on those grow bars before you spend your spend your money.

 

[blAsia]

Thanks, I wasn't considering one yet, just curious about the future. I have too much $$$$ tied up to change anything right now.

I wonder if it is just the intensity of the wave that needs to be beefed up, or something else.
Peace.

 

[Boerman]

If you look at the specs on that light bar, it says 6-9 watts. The array that I am using is rated at 90w and underdriven to 82w. That should tell you something about the value of the light bar.

B

 

[Bermyboy]

T

Also, Why are these manufactuars only using red and blue led's? Plant's DO NEED all spectrums for efficient growing. These companies should use red and white led's because the white led's have mostly blue but also some yellow and green in it, just enough to make plants grow more efficiently.

Um, YOUR WRONG! He has grown a plant to near maturity so that proves your theory of need for a wider spectrum to be wrong. ps I do believe plants cannot see green light!

 

[Ecwfrk]

Also, Why are these manufactuars only using red and blue led's? Plant's DO NEED all spectrums for efficient growing.

No, they don't.
Chlorophyll can use all but "green" light but it most effectively uses light in the Blue/Violet and Red/Far-red parts of the spectrum.
"Green" plants typically best utilize light between 425-475nm and 640-670nm. 8 watts of "white" light would be far less efficient then 8 watts of light that is focused entirely near the plant's Absorbance Maximum of red or blue.

The only way anyone will have an LED grow system that works great and without the feeling of being raped up the ass on cost is to make it yourself. A little research is all it takes to get started.

This however is definitely true. For the moment anyway.
An LED array much like the UFO can be made for a fraction of the cost. Especially if you want more then one and can buy the LEDs in volume.

But it does take some learning. There's lots of instructions for small LED array projects on the net (Ignore the pen light tutorials though, they won't help much). Start with one of the small ones and once you've learned how it works, learn how to string more then one of those small projects together and then just ramp it up.

I know nothing about circuitry and such but I was able to put together a small 10w LED array. String 8 of those together and you got a UFO. And the one I made cost less then $50 total and half that was from shipping costs and my incompetence with a soldering iron.

 

[IGrowWithLEDs]

Actually YES!!! I DO grow with LED's and I've been at the top of this research for a long time.

OK, Plants dont SEE green light, nor do they SEE any light for that matter, but they do use green light. The fact is that they do absorb somewhere around %5 percent of emitted green light. Yes that does play a role.

OK, let me put it to you in these terms, think as this light being for the plants as food and nutrition is to us. WE CAN survive by eating only certain types of food, like only drinking milk and eating potatoes, or something like atkins diet where it cuts out a certain group of nutrients. Atkins is actually the best example to this anaology because you only lose weight with atkins because you dont have a balanced diet so your body is all thrown off and not functioning properly. If a perfectly healthy person goes on the atkins diet they will become unhealthy. It's a dofferent story for someone who is fat though because their aiming to lose weight.

But even with nutrition with our body, we dont need equal parts of all type of vitamins and minerals, no we need some more than others.

So no, green is not a major factor, plants can grow with out green light, but adding a little in does help for certain chemical proccesses to happen and others to happen more efficiently.

But just for the fact that using white led's does emit just as much blue as blue LED's, even if you disagree with what I say, it certainly would not hurt to use white instead since they are cheaper, there's higher mcd ratings, and they're much more plentiful.

I've been on these boards for a really long time and have contributed in some of the biggest LED threads on this board and many others, including actually makign PWM modules for using LED and overdriving which is far more than what anyone else have tried to do. But unfortunately a certain dispute with a certain vendor caused my previous name to not be accessible by me anymore. How many of you are acutally using led's for growing? How many of you have actually ordered LED's and built custom array and have programmed micro controllers? .....I have.

Now yes, there are many scientists that do research and everything, BUT THEY WORK FOR NASA, not these shrinky dink companies that are jumping on a band wagon to make money. Those UFO LED's use through hole bulb shaped LED's which are extremely inefficient. Just that alone is enough to not want to buy the product.

There are products out there that use cree's LED's. THose are the only ones that I would waste my time using, but they're way too expensive to buy.

There are plenty of people who have grown plants to near maturity, Like david Zap who has done the best LED grows so far, but even his are less than satisfactory compared to an HPS grow, but he still has to use UV-B CF's to make there be anything worthy of trichrome production.

Trust me, if any of you actually do know who I am then you know that I know of what I'm talking about. There's only about a half dozen people on these boards that REALLY know what they talking about when it comes to LED's and have done EXTENSIVE research and been part of the major threads involving growing with LED's to the days of overgrow.

 

[IGrowWithLEDs]

thank you knna man

 

[newbgrow]

I read somewhere that green, and especially green-yellow light in the 600sh wavelength promotes stretching on certain variety of plants. These lights counteract the blue lights and are counterproductive.

 

[smokinfloro]

Picture boerman!!!

 

[Stoner4Life]

OK.......
with zero practical experience with LEDs I think I can say this.
After reading Boermans text & looking at the pics I can see that the LEDs do not have the power to penetrate the upper canopy of vegetation. Lumens suffer every inch away from bulb it seems. Of course Boerman was using a single unit (LED/UFO from HIDhut) for lighting-these units cost $700 today.

I've looked everywhere & found these somewhat affordable units for sale on eBay....... the auction is for four (4) of these 225 LED bulb panels, a total of 900 LEDs. Each panel is 12.25 inches sq. by 1.25 inches thick.

eBay Item....... auction ending in 4 hours from this post <----LINK

IMO lining the walls and ceiling of the grow chamber would effect an overall even distribution of lumens/light to the lower branches.

Also imo is this: in a small chamber grow by LED it would be wise to add one each of the following CFLs....... 100watt @ 6500K (daylight) & 100watt @ 2700K (soft white) a total of 46 watts draw. These two bulbs would throw off enough light/watts/lumens of the missing color spepctrum LEDs leave that could and would be used by your plants. These two bulbs wouldn't effect temperature by much but would certainly draw many more watts than the LEDs, but 46 watts ain't much.

Again this by observation and book smarts only I draw these conclusions, comments on my opinions would be greatly appreciated as I've been thinking of going LED now that prices are dropping.

 

[JDOG6000]

I don't see why cfl's would help.
They penetrate even less then the LED's.
I think more LEDs would be better then cfl's. But we'll see soon enough.
The seedlings I have under them are growing fast and look perfect.
We'll see how it goes.

 

[Boerman]

OK, I don't have the time I need to give the full answer that I want to give, so I am going to give you a quick preliminary report. I promise to give a more comprehensive report soon.

HID side: 21 days @ 18/6 (378 hr.), 56 days 12/12 (672 hr.) total=1,050hr @ 400w= 420Kwh yielding 91g or .217g/Kwh

LED side: 21 days @ 18/6 (378 hr.), 70 days 12/12 (840 hr.) total=1218hr @ 82w=99.9Kwh yielding 36g or .36g/Kwh.

I am sure a lot of people will re-check my figures and let me know if I made any mistakes.

More as soon as I get some free time.

B

 

[relief]

Nice thread Boerman.

My brother tried an LED setup once, and vegetation was great, but where it failed was in flower. But he wasn't using this LED system.


Any new pics Bro?

 

[Stoner4Life]

I don't see why cfl's would help.
They penetrate even less then the LED's.
I think more LEDs would be better then cfl's. But we'll see soon enough.
The seedlings I have under them are growing fast and look perfect.
We'll see how it goes.

Just to fill in the spectrum was what I was getting at. Through the technology of LED they can tailor the light spectrum for growth & flowering specifics & the LEDs supply the plants w/ plenty of the spectrums needed. Adding a 6500K & a 2700K bulb would certainly help fill in what is missing in the LED spectrum. No one will EVER convince me that the plants don't need anymore spectrum than supplied by LED, something must be missing there and the CFLs were just an idea to fill in cheaply & w/o heat issues some of the missing spectrum.

 

[Americangrower]

OK, I don't have the time I need to give the full answer that I want to give, so I am going to give you a quick preliminary report. I promise to give a more comprehensive report soon.

HID side: 21 days @ 18/6 (378 hr.), 56 days 12/12 (672 hr.) total=1,050hr @ 400w= 420Kwh yielding 91g or .217g/Kwh

LED side: 21 days @ 18/6 (378 hr.), 70 days 12/12 (840 hr.) total=1218hr @ 82w=99.9Kwh yielding 36g or .36g/Kwh.

I am sure a lot of people will re-check my figures and let me know if I made any mistakes.

More as soon as I get some free time.

B

OK so this means UFO led's are useless...you could have just posted the pictures to show us how stretched out and pitiful it turned out..

You know Led= loose tiny airy buds...Hps = big dense buds...

You must be with HIDhut to not give a neg report on that non working unit...

 

[LED_experiments]

stoner4life: why cfl if you can get cool/neutral/warm while LEDs? those have quite similar spectrum to cfl, they have more lumen/w (if you take proper models), have directed light (no reflector needed),...
americangrower: 0.36g/kWh vs. 0.217g/kWh is like factor 1.659, what means that you can get 1.659 times more stuff with leds than with hps @ the same electricity bill.

i'm also interested in some pictures of that grow and i really hope Boerman will show them to us.

 

[relief]

I think hes not showing pictures for a reason. EVERYBODY I've talked to (I've seen my brothers first hand) or threads I've seen, said the same. "Good in veg like a CFL, but pitiful during the flowering cycle."

It's easy to say I got so in so weight, but the proof is in the pudding so t speak. Plants side by side right before harvest would be the pudding.

Theres something missing in the LED spectrum for the flowering cycle (cannabis anyways).

 

[Boerman]

This is exactly why I don't like to post ANYTHING. Everybody wants information. All of it - right now. If you don't have time to give it all right now, the assholes start crawling out of the woodwork questioning your integrity and your motives. If you don't give them anything, you must be hiding a failed effort. If you can only give them a little information at the time, you MUST be hiding the bad parts and in cahoots with a dealer of manufacturer. I have been nothing but honest with every aspect of this grow. I stated in post #7 that I wanted the LED side to win. But I reported things honestly. When the LED side was outperforming, I said it. When the HID side passed the LED side, I said it. I explained EXACTLY what my relationship with HIDhut is. I explained that I just can't get very good close-ups with the only camera I have. I am not going out and buy a camera just to satisfy the curiousity of some little cockroach.

I said I was going to give more info when I get the time. But here I am spending time responding to twerps who are obviously not interested in learning anything. WHEN I GET THE TIME, I will compose a comprehensive review of this experiment, including detailed description of the results. But I don't plan to post it here. I will make it available to those who show genuine interest in actually learning something. I don't owe anybody on this site anything.

So, if you want to know anything about growing with LEDs, or this experiment or anything at all about growing, just ask relief or Americangrower or Mr Celsius. They contain the sum total of all useful knowledge.

B

 

[Americangrower]

This is exactly why I don't like to post ANYTHING. Everybody wants information. All of it - right now. If you don't have time to give it all right now, the assholes start crawling out of the woodwork questioning your integrity and your motives. If you don't give them anything, you must be hiding a failed effort. If you can only give them a little information at the time, you MUST be hiding the bad parts and in cahoots with a dealer of manufacturer. I have been nothing but honest with every aspect of this grow. I stated in post #7 that I wanted the LED side to win. But I reported things honestly. When the LED side was outperforming, I said it. When the HID side passed the LED side, I said it. I explained EXACTLY what my relationship with HIDhut is. I explained that I just can't get very good close-ups with the only camera I have. I am not going out and buy a camera just to satisfy the curiousity of some little cockroach.

I said I was going to give more info when I get the time. But here I am spending time responding to twerps who are obviously not interested in learning anything. WHEN I GET THE TIME, I will compose a comprehensive review of this experiment, including detailed description of the results. But I don't plan to post it here. I will make it available to those who show genuine interest in actually learning something. I don't owe anybody on this site anything.

So, if you want to know anything about growing with LEDs, or this experiment or anything at all about growing, just ask relief or Americangrower or Mr Celsius. They contain the sum total of all useful knowledge.

B

Hey buddy boy...

I am looking after my fellow IC family...you sir are spreading false info and no pictures because you know it...

Some of us REAL growers want to use LEDs if....KEY word IF they work... which this unit doesn't....

 

[Boerman]

HAHAHAHA!
I'm not your buddy, nor would I likely ever be. You, sir, are nothing less than a liar. You say I am spreading false info? Prove it, liar. Show me one thing that I have lied about. You can't. You shoot off your mouth but you have nothing to back it up with.

If you had any sense, you'd know that I could post bogus pics if I wanted to deceive people.

"Some of us REAL growers want to use LEDs if....KEY word IF they work... "

No, REAL growers ARE growing with LEDs and learning as they grow.

Prove me wrong, liar.

B