Panelata
Well-Known Member
Hi folks, just getting into the grow your own fan club, after much research, I seem to lean towards the fact that Leds offer the best conditions for optimal plant growth without too much wasted spectrum.
I am currently 10 days into a grow,as I said its my first ever ,hoping to gain some knowledge ,but also hoping I can actually see my babies all the way through.
I have decided to build a very rustic LED grow light , using some cheap LED strips (the kind people would use on Xmas trees and the like) They are SMD 5050 strips, which come in rolls of 300 lights (5 metres), I bought 2 Red and 1 Blue and broke the roll down into smaller manageable strips which I could lay out on a surface which would make the panel.
10 days into the grow and plants are looking good, I have 7 plants in total , and noticed some bleaching on 3 of the taller ones, so I have moved the panel to 2 feet above canopy.
In total these leds (about 1000 of them ,I threw a couple of whites purely for me to be able to monitor the plants better) draw 8.5 amps at 12v meaning about 104Watts, I am not concerned with lumens being lower than HPS and MH lights , because what really matters to plants is PAR ,and lumens are just brightness perceived by the human eye. A classic example is right here on this panel, the few white leds you see are in actual fact blue leds with a lens thats covered in a compound that turns that blue into white, yet the specs state that each blue LED emits only 4 lumens, but the white LED emits 20 lumens, so lumens are irrelevant really.
One of plants that I believe to be showing early signs of LED bleaching
Anyways , I have another 6 rolls of these LEDs which will make a total in excess of 250 watts which I hope to assemble a little later as plants grow in order to accommodate their needs.
I know this is kind of a long shot, but from what I have researched on plant photosynthesis , I have no reason to doubt that this will work just fine and the myth that you need to spend ridiculous amounts of money on lighting is overated.
So here goes the beginning of my learning curve and hopefully others can also learn a thing or 2 as well , I plan to experiment later doing controlled tests with plants under different ratios of blue to red ,but for now I am going with 2R:1B.
Heat produced is mainly from resistors and very minimal, a single pc fan blowing onto the lights takes care of any heat.
I will be upgrading the cupboard I am using for this little project later, but for now the specs are :
Converted cupboard measuring in feet W:L:H 2:3:6
Lined with cheap emergency blanket reflective material , I will replace this with light proof white pvc in the next few days
Intake and extract fans will be 3 120mm pc fans
Will build some kind of DIY contraption to deal with odors when the time comes , but no filters for now.
Oh and lights are on a 20/4 schedule, I have 3 autos in there so need to give them as much as possible.
Seedlings are :
3 Barneys farm Pinneaple Express auto fem
2 THC BOMB
2 Slesstack x Skunk#1
All 7 germinated simultaneously 2 days after being soaked in warm water for 24 hrs and then planted directly into soil
Anyways here's hoping this does actually work lol.
I am currently 10 days into a grow,as I said its my first ever ,hoping to gain some knowledge ,but also hoping I can actually see my babies all the way through.
I have decided to build a very rustic LED grow light , using some cheap LED strips (the kind people would use on Xmas trees and the like) They are SMD 5050 strips, which come in rolls of 300 lights (5 metres), I bought 2 Red and 1 Blue and broke the roll down into smaller manageable strips which I could lay out on a surface which would make the panel.
10 days into the grow and plants are looking good, I have 7 plants in total , and noticed some bleaching on 3 of the taller ones, so I have moved the panel to 2 feet above canopy.
In total these leds (about 1000 of them ,I threw a couple of whites purely for me to be able to monitor the plants better) draw 8.5 amps at 12v meaning about 104Watts, I am not concerned with lumens being lower than HPS and MH lights , because what really matters to plants is PAR ,and lumens are just brightness perceived by the human eye. A classic example is right here on this panel, the few white leds you see are in actual fact blue leds with a lens thats covered in a compound that turns that blue into white, yet the specs state that each blue LED emits only 4 lumens, but the white LED emits 20 lumens, so lumens are irrelevant really.
One of plants that I believe to be showing early signs of LED bleaching
Anyways , I have another 6 rolls of these LEDs which will make a total in excess of 250 watts which I hope to assemble a little later as plants grow in order to accommodate their needs.
I know this is kind of a long shot, but from what I have researched on plant photosynthesis , I have no reason to doubt that this will work just fine and the myth that you need to spend ridiculous amounts of money on lighting is overated.
So here goes the beginning of my learning curve and hopefully others can also learn a thing or 2 as well , I plan to experiment later doing controlled tests with plants under different ratios of blue to red ,but for now I am going with 2R:1B.
Heat produced is mainly from resistors and very minimal, a single pc fan blowing onto the lights takes care of any heat.
I will be upgrading the cupboard I am using for this little project later, but for now the specs are :
Converted cupboard measuring in feet W:L:H 2:3:6
Lined with cheap emergency blanket reflective material , I will replace this with light proof white pvc in the next few days
Intake and extract fans will be 3 120mm pc fans
Will build some kind of DIY contraption to deal with odors when the time comes , but no filters for now.
Oh and lights are on a 20/4 schedule, I have 3 autos in there so need to give them as much as possible.
Seedlings are :
3 Barneys farm Pinneaple Express auto fem
2 THC BOMB
2 Slesstack x Skunk#1
All 7 germinated simultaneously 2 days after being soaked in warm water for 24 hrs and then planted directly into soil
Anyways here's hoping this does actually work lol.
, I might need a bigger fan later when I add more LEDs and when Summer comes around if it actually does.
Although mine was on a much smaller scale and only using white LED's. Looks good so far bruv.