perfect led grow light?

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Trunk5

Trunk5

Well-Known Member
wide coverage, high output led's, and a light spectrum closest to the sun should work. all at a reasonable price... after all led's are cheep.
 
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hazetastic808

Well-Known Member
"wide coverage, high output led's, and a light spectrum closest to the sun should work."

and

"after all led's are cheep."

Does not equate hehe.

The reason pre-fabricated LED grow lights are so expensive is because the High Output LED's that they are made of are by no means "cheep" 3w diodes cost about $5-10 a piece, thats $2-3 per watt.


"What do you guys think would make the perfect LED grow light?"

A couple more years of technological innovation.

Seriously man, I mean I don't want to be mean but you have 1 post and more or less advertising which is fine, its just that LED lights fit into 1 of 2 categories at the moment. Cheap overpriced pieces of crap that don't work. Super expensive working units. And I just don't see that changing at all until the prices for Highoutput LEDs drop substantially in the coming years. I'm doing a grow right now with 20 3w Luxeons and they are doing good so far, I have no doubt LEDs can and will be great for growing, but for my little 60w experiment alone I would have had to pay $140 if I hadn't gotten a deal, and thats straight from the manufacturer.

So basically just hold off a year or 2, if your actually looking to make a quality product that will sell. Don't overhype your product either LEDs aren't "Super Lights" A 90w UFO does not and will not replace a 400w HPS, not to say they are equivalent but the LEDs dont quadruple the output of an HPS double MAYBE, i'd say a little less than that even.

So to make something equivalent to the norm, 400w HPS light you would need lets say 300w, thats 100 diodes at $5 each maybe since your going to be buying bulk rolls. Still $500 probably closer to $550-$600 when you factor in the price of whatever housing and all the other materials. That is purely the cost of materials, after you consider your profit margin on top of that your getting very expensive, too expensive for most growers considering it would replace a light that costs little more than $100.
 
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tohams

Active Member
It doesn't have to be close to the sun in spectrum...only what the plant's chlorophyll cares about.
 
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bf74

Active Member
It all comes down to penetration, 1 watt crees seem to be doing an adequate job, but not quite there yet. For those of us, 40 year old adolescents with some capital, with the means would like to see a unit with higher output individual diodes.
 
Trunk5

Trunk5

Well-Known Member
i work in the car audio industry, led's are infact cheep, i can get 5000 high output leds with resistors for 20 bucks.. what makes it more expensive is the time involved to wire these up... if i find the picture ill post it up.. we put 10,000 high output leds in a 2004 ford escape roof liner looked like daylight in the car.. and these were your .5 led's not your .3 that they sell at radio shack... EBAY kiddies its a life saver. or evan better oznium.com thats my lighting hook up for cars.. as far as actuly useing leds to grow, ive seen better results with cfl's. i just stick to my mh/hps and im happy :)
 
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hazetastic808

Well-Known Member
Trunk5 said:
i work in the car audio industry, led's are infact cheep, i can get 5000 high output leds with resistors for 20 bucks.. what makes it more expensive is the time involved to wire these up... if i find the picture ill post it up.. we put 10,000 high output leds in a 2004 ford escape roof liner looked like daylight in the car.. and these were your .5 led's not your .3 that they sell at radio shack... EBAY kiddies its a life saver. or evan better oznium.com thats my lighting hook up for cars.. as far as actuly useing leds to grow, ive seen better results with cfl's. i just stick to my mh/hps and im happy :)
Click to expand...

What your not understanding is that those "High output LEDs" your using in the car industry and buying 10,000 for $20 (still seems exaggerated but whatever haha) aren't worth shit for growing. The only value they have in the growing industry whatsoever is to the companies that put together arrays of em and put them on Ebay for outrageous prices... They do not work PERIOD. Even if you put together an array of 10,000 of them light is only cumulative to a certain extent and these things just put out zero lumems...

The High output LEDs were talking about are brands like CREE and Luxeon, look them up, these are diodes that are only 1-3mm in size (half that of the traditional LEDs your thinking of) and put out up to 5w of light from that single diode. By comparison the High Output LEDs they use for car lighting which your referring too put out a maximum of 0.05w per diode thats right less than 1/10 of a watt. So if you do the math there you would need 100 of your LEDs to achieve the same wattage of that single diode which is half the size of yours... You really have to see it in person to realise how bright it is in comparison to a normal LED.

Even these still lack in there lumen output and are like I said about $5-10 a piece for the 3w versions the newer 5w versions will cost you up to $20 a piece. Thats why like I said we will have to wait for newer better cheaper generations of LEDs before they become viable for the everyday person.
 
Trunk5

Trunk5

Well-Known Member
ahh alright, ive seen thoes befor but not common for the work i do. i mostly see thoes inside newer amps. hiphonics amps use them mostly. but i dont work for them.. im Livin'Loud... let me talk to a few people i might beable to get them cheeper or know someone who can.
 
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hazetastic808

Well-Known Member
I know you can buy bulk rolls of 500 from the manufacturers themselves for about a 40% reduction from the per unit cost, I'd be surprised if you could get much lower than that. The important thing is though that they DO work which couldn't be said for earlier trials of LEDs so its just a matter of them becoming more cost effective.
 
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CuttyBink

Active Member
lets see some prototypes! i'm volunteering myself to test a prototype and record my results, free of charge, just let me keep the light.
 
A

ayhoung

Active Member
@ hazetastic
sorry i didn't mean to advertise i just wanted to provide a background. just thought it was something interesting because I just started working for this company myself.

Thanks for the feedback :)
So far, I have wide coverage, high power leds, sun output, penetration of leds, and definitely: cheap price.

Right now, yes we are working with high power LED and no, they are not cheap. its not so much the leds are expensive (which they are), but also we our heatsinks/drivers add the majority of the price. That's what we're working hard on reducing the price of ;).

Our company tends to provide few high power leds rather than many many low watt leds, because it improves stability.

Maybe this would be a better question: What's wrong with current led grow lights like procyon and lightblaze 400? do you guys tend to build your own or buy preassembled ones like these?

Thanks!
 
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