Has Anyone Tried These New Type LED Bulbs?

nomofatum said:

You understand that makes no scientific sense right? The plant has no idea how efficient a bulb/led is. What they know is how much of the light they can use is hitting them. That is all that matters to the plant.

Twisted presumsions. This is the kind of thing I was talking about with my monkey comment. Not to call you a monkey.

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I get it. He's right, but in the wrong way; inefficiency is expressed as heat. Inefficient bulbs crate too much of it, making it more difficult to grow plants under those lights.

And yes, he's stone wrong about such a lights' ability to grow. My first light was incandescent and my first seedling grew just fine under it.

ttystikk said:

I get it. He's right, but in the wrong way; inefficiency is expressed as heat. Inefficient bulbs crate too much of it, making it more difficult to grow plants under those lights.

And yes, he's stone wrong about such a lights' ability to grow. My first light was incandescent and my first seedling grew just fine under it.

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incandescent puts out like 2% what these LEDs put out in usable light. In all reality, watt for watt any of these epistars will be a pretty even match against T5 lighting at a fraction of initial cost and you can fit more in your space easily..

Watt for watt a good Cree will win by about 15-20% and cost about 8x the price per watt up front. If heat is a big issue for you or you plan of running these LEDs for 10+ years the Cree is your winner. If you can handle the heat and you expect you will upgrade in 3-4 years, I don't think the Cree's win.

ttystikk said:

My first light was incandescent and my first seedling grew just fine under it.

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Uhmm, could you define fine for me? I don't consider starting a seedling "growing with an incandescent". So you grew dank with a 100 watt incandescent bulb is what I'd like to know.
I'm under the impression that man made light isn't as homgenous as one would think and that the creation of that light is paramount with LEDs and some other sources. But again I'm no scientist and it's difficult for me to express the things that work for me, or things explained to me, as correctly as I should. But the real point is stop wasting time and money on inferior products. You will just either be disapointed with it or will just have to replace it quicker. People have used those arrays before and cooling them sufficiently to get something out of them is just a waste of time.

FranJan said:

I'm under the impression that man made light isn't as homgenous as one would think and that the creation of that light is paramour with LEDs and some other sources. But again I'm no scientist and it's difficult for me to express the things that work for me, or things explained to me, as correctly as I should. But the real point is stop wasting time and money on inferior products. You will just either be disapointed with it or will just have to replace it quicker. People have used those arrays before and cooling them sufficiently to get something out of them is just a waste of time.

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I look forward to proving you wrong over the next 3 months. I wish I had pics from my last run to show you. (Talking Epistar LEDs here, not incandescent, i'm not silly)

Good, you'll save us all a shitload of money in the LED section .

Do yourself a favor and don't ignore the past and look into grows by MajorCoco and Chronikool using multi chips, (I've tried to use them too btw). Chances are you're going to produce a lot of poorly finished ugly bud but again it has been a bit of time since anyone tried using those. Are you going to start a grow thread in the LED section when you do? At least post a link in the "LED Users Unite" sticky. Best of Luck!

FranJan said:

Good, you'll save us all a shitload of money in the LED section .

Do yourself a favor and don't ignore the past and look into grows by MajorCoco and Chronikool using multi chips, (I've tried to use them too btw). Chances are you're going to produce a lot of poorly finished ugly bud but again it has been a bit of time since anyone tried using those. Are you going to start a grow thread in the LED section when you do? At least post a link in the "LED Users Unite" sticky. Best of Luck!

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MajorCoco was using a generation older LEDs and from what I can see they were working decently, he had all kinds of non-lighting issues.

I will look at Chronikool next.

Looks like you were ragging on Chronikool the whole way, but results are at least as good as average with other lights. I still can't find exactly what LEDs he used, 24 pages is a lot to search.

Nomo can you tell me the difference between a COB and a multi chip array.? Do you know why COBs are called intergrated arrays and multi chips aren't? I really am trying to help you here and if you don't believe me, go talk to someone like Supra or Chronikool in the LED section. I'm telling you bro, you're wasting your time and money on those. Yes you can grow weed with those but you can grow better weed for less if you don't think with your wallet first. Or maybe this is about something else perhaps?

Anyway Best of Luck to You.

FranJan said:

Nomo can you tell me the difference between a COB and a multi chip array.? Do you know why COBs are called intergrated arrays and multi chips aren't? I really am trying to help you here and if you don't believe me, go talk to someone like Supra or Chronikool in the LED section. I'm telling you bro, you're wasting your time and money on those. Yes you can grow weed with those but you can grow better weed for less if you don't think with your wallet first. Or maybe this is about something else perhaps?

Anyway Best of Luck to You.

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I honestly didn't want any opinions when I started my LED system. I don't find them useful. I wanted the scientific facts, as that is the info I base my decisions upon. For my situation, these LEDs are perfect. The 3w chips perform exactly as I hoped, I haven't seen the 30w results yet, but the data on their output suggests they will perform very similarly. That is enough for me to be willing to try.

My grow room is my heater. I use a wood burner for supplemental heat, but my house uses electrical heat, so top efficiency in an LED buys me exactly nothing. Even if I didn't use my grow room as heat I would still be happy to pick the 3w chips again, as I don't believe there will be a difference in results between 1200w of Epistars and 1000w of Crees. It would take about 12 years for me to recoup the difference in investment via electric bill savings if heat wasn't helpful for me.

Do you think I'm in China and linking people to my listings or something? What do you mean "Or maybe this is about something else perhaps?"

Would take you 2 seconds to rule that out if you looked at my links, they are all different companies, the ones I found with the best price when I ordered.

Here they are again to make those 2 seconds as easy as possible for you:

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/300pcs-lot-High-Power-Epistar-Chip-3W-LED-Bulb-Diodes-Lamp-Beads-240lm-300lm-for-3W/512874_1564505690.html

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Wholesale-10pcs-of-lot-30W-LED-Chip-for-Floodlight-Flood-light-Warm-Cool-white-6000k-6500k/2011319079.html

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/400W-S400W-36V-11A-LED-Switching-Power-Supply-36V-11A-85-265AC-input-CE-ROSH-power/1544392301.html

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2pcs-100W-Constant-Current-LED-Driver-AC100-250V-to-DC30-36V-3000mA-for-100W-High-Power/1919848799.html

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221252831386

nomofatum said:

The plant has no idea how efficient a bulb/led is. What they know is how much of the light they can use is hitting them. That is all that matters to the plant.

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You are correct, the plant only cares about photons, not efficiency. The reason we promote high efficiency LEDs is because they are actually cheaper/photon and they will last longer. They will also have the side effect of creating a lot less heat and saving electricity. A generic warm white is lucky if it is 20% efficient, especially when run smoking hot as they often are in commercial panels. It takes a lot of heatsinking and fan power to cool low efficiency LEDs properly, and they just dont bother so they often burn out, something that should be unheard of when it comes to LED. The Veros can get you to 34% very economically. There is just no way the generics can compete with that. In the example of 34% vs 20%, the Vero is creating 70% more light /W and 17.5% less heat than the generic LED.

Anyway, generic LEDs can and do grow bud, but not nearly as well as HPS, which is much cheaper. Since you say you do not care about heat, why not go with HPS? Especially considering the size your are considering (2400W)

FranJan said:

Uhmm, could you define fine for me? I don't consider starting a seedling "growing with an incandescent". So you grew dank with a 100 watt incandescent bulb is what I'd like to know.
I'm under the impression that man made light isn't as homgenous as one would think and that the creation of that light is paramount with LEDs and some other sources. But again I'm no scientist and it's difficult for me to express the things that work for me, or things explained to me, as correctly as I should. But the real point is stop wasting time and money on inferior products. You will just either be disapointed with it or will just have to replace it quicker. People have used those arrays before and cooling them sufficiently to get something out of them is just a waste of time.

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Easy, tiger- I said seedlings, and I meant it. You aren't wrong about the lights.

SupraSPL said:

You are correct, the plant only cares about photons, not efficiency. The reason we promote high efficiency LEDs is because they are actually cheaper/photon and they will last longer. They will also have the side effect of creating a lot less heat and saving electricity. A generic warm white is lucky if it is 20% efficient, especially when run smoking hot as they often are in commercial panels. It takes a lot of heatsinking and fan power to cool low efficiency LEDs properly, and they just dont bother so they often burn out, something that should be unheard of when it comes to LED. The Veros can get you to 34% very economically. There is just no way the generics can compete with that. In the example of 34% vs 20%, the Vero is creating 70% more light /W and 17.5% less heat than the generic LED.

Anyway, generic LEDs can and do grow bud, but not nearly as well as HPS, which is much cheaper. Since you say you do not care about heat, why not go with HPS? Especially considering the size your are considering (2400W)

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Cost, bulk, side-lighting. I spent less, and have a more capable setup than I would have if I went with HPS/MH. I spent about $350 to build 2400w of lighting, equivalent to 2400w of T5HO lighting (almost exactly.) I can move my LEDs around and used them as I wish as well. Want a mom area, steal 2 100w boards from the system, relocate. (I'm actually using 2 right now for two auto's and a mom.) Want convert to separate veg/flower rooms, easy, take warms whites move them to the flower room. It's versatile and effective. A photons to photons comparison of 2400w of epistar LEDs in 32 sqft would show on par with levels used in top professional hydroponic grow operations. There are too many variations of lights available to compare. So I won't bother, I just wanted professional lighting levels, so I designed my system to give me exactly those levels.

SupraSPL said:

The reason we promote high efficiency LEDs is because they are actually cheaper/photon and they will last longer.

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They are most definitely not cheaper per photon up front, you can only make that claim long term with energy usage cost factored in. The real question becomes how long term until you break even, and do you plan on running them that long. I expect LEDs to advance enough that I will upgrade in 3-4 years, I would lose money choosing Cree COBs if only for that time-frame.

When you use the lower efficiency LEDs it takes 70% more drivers and 87% more heatsink to do the same job, so that extra cost has to be factored in to the build as well. Another major issue with the single 2W leds is labor. It is a lot quicker to splat a Vero onto a heatsink than it is to solder a bunch of little LEDs onto a board (take a flat sanding block to the back of that aluminum board sometime and see how un-flat it is, very bad for heat transfer and requires a boat load of thermal paste) .

Then there is the cost of air conditioning and ventilating/PAR W of light and that is no joke. If you fail to keep canopy temps under control the quality of the nugs will suffer. And finally the issue of actual electrical cost itself. HPS is 36% efficient and generic COBs are about 18% efficient (it may be far worse I will have to do some testing).

All that said, those generic COBs that you linked are so cheap you may be correct about them being cheaper/photon up front. A 50W chip for $1.86? I will have to get one of those and see if it is truly giving us 9 PAR W for $1.86. If so I admit defeat, those may be the cheapest photons I have ever seen

(Checking to see what would happen if I ran a $4 Vero10 at 2.1A)

SupraSPL said:

When you use the lower efficiency LEDs it takes 70% more drivers and 87% more heatsink to do the same job, so that extra cost has to be factored in to the build as well. Another major issue with the single 2W leds is labor. It is a lot quicker to splat a Vero onto a heatsink than it is to solder a bunch of little LEDs onto a board (take a flat sanding block to the back of that aluminum board sometime and see how un-flat it is, very bad for heat transfer and requires a boat load of thermal paste) .

Then there is the cost of air conditioning and ventilating/PAR W of light and that is no joke. If you fail to keep canopy temps under control the quality of the nugs will suffer. And finally the issue of actual electrical cost itself. HPS is 36% efficient and generic COBs are about 18% efficient (it may be far worse I will have to do some testing).

All that said, those generic COBs that you linked are so cheap you may be correct about them being cheaper/photon up front. A 50W chip for $1.86? I will have to get one of those and see if it is truly giving us 9 PAR W for $1.86. If so I admit defeat, those may be the cheapest photons I have ever seen

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Whatever COBs come in at 18% probably would not be recommended by anyone, what are those like 3 generations back or something? I'd like to see what one you are talking about.

I am talking about the one you linked to. They claim 4000 lumens at 1.5A * 34V = 51W. So they are suggesting they you can drive this thing at 1.5A and get 4000 lumens (78lm/W) but that is at Tj 25C. Even if you did an good job cooling it you can expect 15-20% temp droop with a low efficiency LED and that is with a high quality LED (Vero18 97 CRI for example). Who knows how much temp droop this $2 COB will end up with. Then we should consider in the BS factor, likely overstating their output in the first place. So I call it 60lm/W and that is if we are lucky. 60/325=18.4% efficiency. That is less than fluoro and not far off from halogen.

SupraSPL said:

I am talking about the one you linked to. They claim 4000 lumens at 1.5A * 34V = 51W. So they are suggesting they you can drive this thing at 1.5A and get 4000 lumens (78lm/W) but that is at Tj 25C. Even if you did an good job cooling it you can expect 15-20% temp droop with a low efficiency LED and that is with a high quality LED (Vero18 97 CRI for example). Who knows how much temp droop this $2 COB will end up with. Then we should consider in the BS factor, likely overstating their output in the first place. So I call it 60lm/W and that is if we are lucky. 60/325=18.4% efficiency. That is less than fluoro and not far off from halogen.

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The listing is for a 30w, but the guy who listed it put the 50w specs in it. You can ignore those specs. The 30w run at 20w will put out between 90lm/w and 105lm/w depending on the color selected.

If you're getting below 30% efficiency ,you may as well just keep using HPS. A fresh 600W HPS lamp can be upto 35% efficient when new, and about 30% when needing replacement. (i don't know the exact numbers)

Put another way, if you use those epistar multichip arrays, you will be getting about the same efficiency as HPS, and that's assuming you run way lower than test current. That means getting more multichips to produce the same amount of light.

With vero series COBs (3000k-3500k 80cri) at test current and 50C case temperature, you get about 35% efficiency. Driving them at half test current is around 42% efficiency. (check supra's spreadsheets, I am only going based on memory)

churchhaze said:

If you're getting below 30% efficiency ,you may as well just keep using HPS. A fresh 600W HPS lamp can be upto 35% efficient when new, and about 30% when needing replacement.

Put another way, if you use those epistar multichip arrays, you will be getting about the same efficiency as HPS, and that's assuming you run way lower than test current. That means getting more multichips to produce the same amount of light.

With vero series COBs (3000k-3500k 80cri) at test current and 50C case temperature, you get about 35% efficiency. Driving them at half test current is around 42% efficiency.

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My math puts it at 30.77% efficient from the emitters I purchased.

@SupraSPL is actually right. He has made spreadsheets to show the $ per PAR W of just about everything for us all to make quick comparisons. It turns out that in many cases when trying to save money up front, you actually don't, even up front. You actually end up getting less par W per $ trying to save money a lot of times.

The more expensive models are actually cheaper a lot of the time.

I have to be honest the convo has evolved a little bit beyond my knowledge level of lighting, but still have been reading your comments. @nomofatum I hope to do try out those epistar chips in a set up as in my book any single chip that can be used as a flood light must be worth a try out!

The other thing I did not consider as a cost spin off was heat. Obviously for some residual heat is beneficial for reducing heating costs, and for others not. That is quite difficult to factor into total costings however, but still its something I had previously not considered properly. I guess in a ideal world you'd want x2 set ups. One low heat system for summer and one that gives off more heat in winter, both with similar end yields!!!