LED Light Pods

tahoe58

tahoe58

Well-Known Member
hey everyone, I just finished reading a bunch about the use of LEDs for grow lights, and there is obviously a lot of debate, and experimentation. I did a search of the threads but came up with nothing? Does anyone here have any info?:joint:
 
I saw the first unit produced, by Reverse Entropy, about 4 years ago. They have since gone under. Everything that I have seen since looks like it has promise, but I believe the final results have been disappointing. Apparently they veg plants well, but don't measure up for flowering.

Yet...

Always hopeful, and always improving technology ... because we want it to work. It will solve our heat problems, and we'll use less than half the power. :blsmoke:
 
Leds is something that im looking forward to use myself, i´ve read lots of stuff about the subject, i´m following a couple of experiments wich are tturning out nicely, also and like potroast said the veg cycle is ok but in flower the results have been dissapointing so far...anyway the energy savings even if u use them only in veg are huge (leds only use about 2w of energy)...there are already a couple of places that sell LED light systems but they are still expensive
 
With LEDs, you can select the wavelength. Therefore, you could select the mix of colors to customize/optimize the growth of the plant, based upon it needs.
I have been looking for information on the effect of plant growth from "pulsing" light...with LEDs, you can drive the diode with a series of high current pulses to get more light energy from them. (ever notice the new lights on top of police cars, how bright they?)
 
leds are simple to wire into circuit boards. with a little soldering expririence you could wire a 100 or so in a couple hours
 
well does anyone know the lumen output on these things? beacuse i assume they are less than cfls, and well i have been growing with 5 clfs and everytihg is going quite well. they are also less energy usage, and less heat
 
It is important to realize that plants "see" only narrow ranges of colors. Just any old red and blue LEDs will not do the job. Chlorophyll, the active stuff, likes light at 453 nanoMeters, 430 nM, 410 nM, 662 nM and 642 nM. Other colors are less important, or nearly useless to the plant.
SEE: Chlorophyll - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Any successful LED lighting system will use LEDs which are very close to the above "colors." There is no doubt that an LED lighting system can generate good lighting for growth and flowering, but it must be properly designed. Saving money is not a reasonable goal in the short term, but lowering power useage and heating are.
 
so guys im kinda new to this but do you just take the LED lights from a set of christmas lights and solder each bulb to a curcuit board?
 
Sublime757 said:
leds are simple to wire into circuit boards. with a little soldering expririence you could wire a 100 or so in a couple hours
Click to expand...

right, but i believe you'll need a few thousand wired together for anything really productive. which wont save much on electricity except that they hardly generate any heat(less cooling). and their life expectancy is VERY long like over 100,000 hours--the advantage to that is that the quality of light doesnt diminish much at all whether its at 1 hour of use or already has 90,000 hours under its belt. i know one of those mart stores selling 100 strip leds for like $10 a strand. i've consider buying them to try it out as suppliment light on the low sides. if i get around to getting any ill put it in my ghetto-tech journal
 
the current new nifty thing about LEDs is that they've managed to combine a Red Blue and a Green LED into one unit that can be controlled very simply. So while some of y'alls comments about spectrum are relevant, what you have to realize that you could have 100% control over what spectrum an LED group emitted.

And as for efficiency, they are extremely efficient. So much so, that they are replacing most halogen bulbs in flashlights for anyone who actually uses one very much.

That said, I have not started using them in my grow, because I wanted to use the advice of other growers since I'm new. So I'm using the tools they're familiar with. Maybe in 2 years I'll consider converting.

But imagine being able to get HPS results yet being able to hang the bulbs a half inch away from your plant. That's what LEDs promise to us. And oh yeah, they don't need a ballast. And they don't all burn out at once. Just one or two at a time.

You ever notice those new stop lights that never burn out anymore? They just have a few "pixels" not lighting any more? Those are LEDs.
 
420penguin said:
the current new nifty thing about LEDs is that they've managed to combine a Red Blue and a Green LED into one unit that can be controlled very simply. So while some of y'alls comments about spectrum are relevant, what you have to realize that you could have 100% control over what spectrum an LED group emitted.
Click to expand...

The thing is.. normal rgb leds dont emitt the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums of light, outside of the normal range of vision of the human eye. So in effect you have 100% control over the visual spectrum, not the ultra-violet low spectrum and infra red high spectrum light... however there are leds that produce infra red like the ones used in a television remote to transmit signals.

If extremely bright uv and ir leds are used you can have enourmous yields, more recently these special lights have been developed check out ledgrowlights.com.

If supplimented with a lower wattage HPS light than you would usually use for budding.. say 100w, and multiple blue led lights in theory you could have an extremely productive setup.
 
ive never seen one experiment done dureing flowering that has proven led to work,the manufacturers claim they do,then why dont they show us a detailed journal.if some one could post one successful led journal dureing flowering for under 10 grand i would like to see it posted.
 
battosai said:
right, but i believe you'll need a few thousand wired together for anything really productive. which wont save much on electricity except that they hardly generate any heat(less cooling). and their life expectancy is VERY long like over 100,000 hours--the advantage to that is that the quality of light doesnt diminish much at all whether its at 1 hour of use or already has 90,000 hours under its belt. i know one of those mart stores selling 100 strip leds for like $10 a strand. i've consider buying them to try it out as suppliment light on the low sides. if i get around to getting any ill put it in my ghetto-tech journal
Click to expand...

900 leds only use like 20-30 watts....so yeah you will definitely save money.
 
420penguin said:
the current new nifty thing about LEDs is that they've managed to combine a Red Blue and a Green LED into one unit that can be controlled very simply. So while some of y'alls comments about spectrum are relevant, what you have to realize that you could have 100% control over what spectrum an LED group emitted.

And as for efficiency, they are extremely efficient. So much so, that they are replacing most halogen bulbs in flashlights for anyone who actually uses one very much.

That said, I have not started using them in my grow, because I wanted to use the advice of other growers since I'm new. So I'm using the tools they're familiar with. Maybe in 2 years I'll consider converting.

But imagine being able to get HPS results yet being able to hang the bulbs a half inch away from your plant. That's what LEDs promise to us. And oh yeah, they don't need a ballast. And they don't all burn out at once. Just one or two at a time.

You ever notice those new stop lights that never burn out anymore? They just have a few "pixels" not lighting any more? Those are LEDs.
Click to expand...

Plants dont use green light, thats why you use a green light bulb to work on your garden in the dark so you dont interrupt the plants sleep. :peace:
 
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