new to forum... building a 1000w hps equivalent flowering LED

[Zylev]

With a XP-E red it looks like this



Since the royal blue is more efficient it will 'win' here from the red. This is not the whole story though... When looking at the number of photons produced per Watt it is the red that wins:



XP-E red must be about the best producer of photons (per Watt) of all LEDs on the market. It's also at a wavelength that is near 100% PAR efficient.

This is just mindblowing! Look at those little curves of the whites!

Everything is coming into perspective. So now the fun part... we know what chips are the most efficient, as well as the measure of photons they emit. now how do we capture a double-dose of efficiency by building a light with a balanced measure of photosynthetic photon flux?

 

[Zylev]

Very nice colors! I couldn't find the XTE royal blue bins you mentioned. The top bin in the PDF is the Q group (600mw @ 350mA 85c) From my calculations it is 50% efficient (700mA 50c). LEDgroupbuy has them for $3.25 on stars and I use them in my builds and love them. That said, the Luxeon ES deep blue M4R bin beats the XTE at 55% (700mA 50c) and Steves LEDs has them for $3. I use them too and they are great. I haven't checked the efficiency yet but Steves LEDs also has 475nm blue and 495nm blue Luxeon ES.

D36! I didn't know what I was talking about! I had to look on the back of one of my chips!

And I get my Crees from reefLEDlights. Bill only buys a few bins [the exact bins we talk about as being the best, except perhaps the WW Q4, which is still one of the best bins, just perhaps not the best for growing flowering herbs]! Binning is still a well-kept secret outside of this forum!!!

 

[Zylev]

^^^Bill's findings are accredited with his degree in marine biology. As he was joking to me the other day, this stuff is above his "paygrade" lol. Nothing can quite compare to synergetic critical thinking.

 

[Zylev]

whoa whoa whoa. I realized that I was getting ahead of myself on this photosynthesis thing. No use trying to re-invent the wheel. Musta been all the coffee. Instead, I found a chart with a photosynthetic action spectrum. It is a sum of all parts of the light absorbing plant tissues. I would assume that the sum of all parts of our lights would best mimic this histogram?

View attachment 2903964

View attachment 2904068

From observation, it appears the action spectrum at least partially accounts for the 3:1 ratio of Chroraphyll A to Chloraphyll B that is typically found in plants, but I want to test the current paradigms:

Do we need more red photon flux than blue photon flux?
What increase ratio of red photons to blue photons is ideal?
And why are we not trying to replicate this? because this chart makes sense... compare it to hps and mh:

View attachment 2904019

Doesn't chloraphyll A account for flowering? Or is this just lore tales? an internet perpetuated myth? I am thinking so.
Doesn't chloraphyll A respond best to 680nm light and chloraphyll B respond best to the 630-650nm packets of light?
If so, why do we chock our LED arrays full of 630nm light?

 

[Zylev]

And now for part II of this thought.


did that first attachment show? here it is again



One really big question I have is how versatile is Chloraphyll? What kind of strain does it place on Chloraphyll A when you increase the disparity between emission of 680nm radiation and the 450nm radiation? And the same for Chloraphyll B when you increase disparity between the amounts of 480nm packets and the 650nm packets?

Think of what we already know: that adding 450nm blue to an hps increases trichome yield.
Perhaps the blue photons activate the Chloraphyll A, or perhaps it helps the secondary photosynthetic chemicals, the cerotenoids, the phycoerythrin and the phycocyanin. I don't know. But if 450nm blue helps so drastically, how much would the supplementation of 680nm red help?

Here's a chart of the action spectrum of those other chemicals:

View attachment 2904060

And now aligned with the photosynthetic action spectrum


and aligned with the hid spectrographs



The point of all of this is what are we trying to replicate? Sunlight? HPS? Photosynthetic Action Spectrum? A different, uncharted spectrum???
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the HPS?
What are the strengths and weaknesses (if any) of the photosynthetic action spectrum?
In other words, how does the photosynthetic action spectrum fall short of matching the photosynthetic photon flux needs of a flowering herb?

 

[budbro18]

Ive been wondering the same for a while. Blast em with the few spectrums, hit the specific spectrums hard and add a little of the middle, less used spectrums. Its ran through my head alot. If i only had the money and time to test all of this shit out.

 

[SupraSPL]

According to KNNAs formula, we want 20-30% blue output for vegging and 15-20% blue for flowering. Stardustsailor suggests that much less is needed ~10% if I recall? I have been using 18% for flowering and loving the results.
TGA Qleaner


Once the blue percentage is established, look at red next. I aim for 50/50 split between 630nm and 660nm. Then I add warm white to fill in the gaps a bit (but not too warm because of efficiency penalty). KNNA suggests that some varieties appreciate the white during flowering. I have never tried flowering without it but the growers on his Spanish forum did.

I have tried a few other spectrums, (red and cool white without blue) and (630nm red without 660nm). All spectrums worked well. I think by maximizing radiometric efficiency and delivering the light to the canopy more efficiently than HPS, we have gained the low hanging fruit. In other words I think spectral distribution is the least important aspect of LED lamp design. That is why I avoid any LED that is low efficiency even if it might improve the SPD a bit (UVA, infrared, cyan, high CRI etc)

 

[Zylev]

So its settled. I'll be going with the 3000K Vero and supplementing with strings of Violet, Royal Blue, and Deep Red. I don't think there is any practical need to supplement Blue ...unless someone disagrees... I'll also try to work within the confines of KNNA's 15-20% rule.

Here's the problem... Mr Flux... Supra... I'm having trouble figuring out how to take measurable quantities of these lights and incorporate them into my build. I can't really comprehend how we use the given numbers.... besides luminous flux... to get to some semi-mathematical answers, not just some educated reconing.

Can we go over this information one more time gentlemen? Perhaps it will take just one more explanation to connect the neural synapses in my brain!

Also if someone else could please edumacate me on how to update my profile pic... that would be greeeeeat lol.

 

[Positivity]

Using my 240w of whites with about 80w of deep red supplementing, I'm making changes. It seems to make sense to me if adding a lot of extra red it needs to be balanced with blue. The same way we want our whites to be balanced well. In my situation at least.

It might be better to just add a smaller boost to the veros. Otherwise end up having to rebalance the spectrum. Gotta work out your math magic and find a precise amount.

so many options..lol...lucky most work well enough.

 

[scarecrow99]

So its settled. I'll be going with the 3000K Vero and supplementing with strings of Violet, Royal Blue, and Deep Red. I don't think there is any practical need to supplement Blue ...unless someone disagrees... I'll also try to work within the confines of KNNA's 15-20% rule.

Here's the problem... Mr Flux... Supra... I'm having trouble figuring out how to take measurable quantities of these lights and incorporate them into my build. I can't really comprehend how we use the given numbers.... besides luminous flux... to get to some semi-mathematical answers, not just some educated reconing.

Can we go over this information one more time gentlemen? Perhaps it will take just one more explanation to connect the neural synapses in my brain!

Also if someone else could please edumacate me on how to update my profile pic... that would be greeeeeat lol.

ummmh, I would try the 3000k + 6000k set up, you'll add the blu you need and more lumen I guess.
Sorry for my bad english

 

[Zylev]

Using my 240w of whites with about 80w of deep red supplementing, I'm making changes. It seems to make sense to me if adding a lot of extra red it needs to be balanced with blue. The same way we want our whites to be balanced well. In my situation at least.

It might be better to just add a smaller boost to the veros. Otherwise end up having to rebalance the spectrum. Gotta work out your math magic and find a precise amount.

so many options..lol...lucky most work well enough.

How has this worked out for you?

 

[Mellodrama]

Also if someone else could please edumacate me on how to update my profile pic... that would be greeeeeat lol.

Do you mean your avatar? The picture that shows up when you post? Once you're logged in, go to the top right corner of the webpage. Click on "My Rollitup". From there you can upload avatars from your PC.

The profile pic update is also available from there, too. According to that link, "Profile pictures are small pictures of yourself, which are displayed within your user profile." I don't know how many forum members are posting actual pictures of themselves...

In either case, things go more smoothly if you scale the image down first on your own computer. As per the instructions: "Note: The maximum size of your custom image is 160 by 160 pixels or 120.0 KB (whichever is smaller)." This means you can't just grab some 1MB image off the web and jam it in there as your avatar.

I use GIMP to scale/compress images. Free, powerful, open source.

Zylev, you lost me at Post #28. This thread was basically all about stars/single emitters, then you said it's settled 3000K Vero's and some supplemental. I bought a coupla Cree CXA3070's a few weeks ago but interested in trying out a few Bridgelux Vero's. Can you provide a link to the ones you want to get? I'm still confused about the Vero's - there are so many different sizes, I'm not sure which are newest/most efficient, etc.