I guess anything is possible. But perhaps it helps to understand that we designed the orginal High Light board specifically to get away from multi-channel boards, as it was always our aim to make things simpler and cheaper for those who just wanted to hang their lights and grow.
Right now there is nothing stopping any grower from building a multi-channel grow light using boutique strips, boards and multiple drivers. There are already other companies out there like Cutter producing strips in almost any configuration you can think of. And hats-off to them for doing it, as it requires stocking lots of different parts and doing smaller runs to cater to individual tastes.
Hats-off to the growers who are building them, too – they are paving the way for others, often at great time and expense to themselves – so that we can all learn what works best.
But what many of us have to realise is that we live in a bit of a bubble on RIU. There are many DIY growers here building ever-more complex grow lights . . . but who really make up only a small percentage of growers around the world. Many growers – and we spend a fair amount of time in hydro shops talking to potential customers – just want to buy a light and hang it up so they can concentrate on other things. Many are actually scared of anything to do with electricity and don't even want to wire up their own boards.
You wouldn't believe the conversations we have just trying to convince old-school growers that LEDs are better than HPS. You see enough of that on RIU, but in the real world there are shed loads of people still buying HIDs!
I am not taking anything away from anyone here – we have all learned a great deal from other members on RIU, some of whom are (honestly) on the cutting edge of technology and more knowledgeable than we are when it comes to combining that technology with biology. But just as Henry Ford built a car for the masses, we like to think we can build a better LED board for everyone (including those have never used LEDs) and leave the custom stuff to those who are already building it.
If we had a big factory and a design team and the buying power to stock millions of LEDs, we could pump out any number of strips and boards and try to be everything to everyone. But we're just not in that position. You can count all the people involved in this project on a few fingers. And as I said earlier, we don't even have our own factory. We're just a few guys who got together with an idea and decided to make a board. We're fortunate that our idea worked – based mostly on the fact we had a couple of very good growers with a lot of experience to tell us what they thought would work. But we don't have a lot of resources and we've only really just started doing this.
I just hope everyone can understand that as much as we would like to give everyone what they want, we can't. Not right now. Maybe in a few years time. I don't know. As long as growers keep supporting us, and as long as they are happy with what we produce, then maybe one day we'll evolve from making Model Ts to Mustangs!
