Hempstar 3 Stage LED Grow

Hot dog...almost feel off my stoner couch when I saw you posted...keep the news coming, looks awesome. Twice a day feedings? damn thats almost a job in itself. Looking forward to see if the 50% coco medium has a big difference in the outcome...
 
I can tell you that the Coco is so porous and the addition of 10% perlite adds even more areation and now that they are established and I have the room temp nice and warm 85F they are growing damn near as fast as I've ever had in hydro.
 
Finally get to unveil my new lights :hump:

So I was hunting for a while for lights around the 300W range that are ALL 3W LED's that I could actually afford. Theses are a brand new product and even their website is just getting finished up www.357led.com and I got the first production run :-)

The ones I ordered are called the 357 Magnum LED Grow Light and the company is GrowPerfect Technologies. They are the parent company for the panels I have been using for veg and the results of those were undeniable and this is their new flag ship so I have high hopes.

IMPORTANT: So ALL the pictures I took in the room there is no other light source except the panels. Look how freaking bright it is in there. This is gonna be good :-)

The room is 10 ft by 13 ft so its a big room and the lights are currently hanging about 5ft off the floor because when the plants go in they are on a table about 3ft off the ground.

Will have plant pics posted this evening.
 

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So the girls are under the big lights and triggered. The two pics that show the plants quite green are with the flash on. The other four pics are all no light but the 357 Magnum Led's. I still have to get a bit more mylar for the wall and relocate my light hangers to get the lights further into the corner and push the plants closer to the mylar to get the most out of the reflective but you can certainly see the penetration already. In the pics from the top you can clearly see the coco medium lit up.
 

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The new generations have sure come along way. I remember the first gen I got about four years ago which were half-watt LED's and I don't even know if they had lenses. Couldn't even veg past about 8" and that was with them right on top of the plants. My wife uses them now for her herb garden in winter :-)
 
sweet light, just looking at the pics blinds you :)

By looking at the last pic u posted, is it a heatsink I'm spotting inside the unit?

Good luck with the grow, looks awesome!
 
the led's are looking great, how did you manage to find them?

Do you work for the led company Magnum?
 
I'm pretty sure that all LED panels manufactured run heat sinks and fans as keeping the individual LED's from overheating is very important as their efficiency drops off if they heat up. I think they are very much like computers in that regard and all processors run heat sinks and dedicated fans.

@stiffer I am semi-retired and used to work for a company that made control panels for industrial applications so I've always been a bit of a techy and had some contacts in commercial electronics. I knew that I couldn't afford a pannel made with CREE Led's and decided to look for an all Bridgelux panel cause they've been around for a while and always served me well before, although it wasn't horticultural. Cutting through the bullshit advertising of the companies producing LED panels to figure out who actually makes what I want was proving difficult. Some companies are advertising 3watt chipsets but the small print is 3watt per 3led chipsets which is ad-speak for 1watt leds. Another company claimed to use Cree LED's but only their 2700K white LED's are actually CREE so more crap. I went backwards and contacted some old industry people at Bridgelux to see who was buying their horticultural LED's and they put me onto a company called GrowPerfect. That's the parent company of 357 Magnum. I don't work for them but they gave me a discount to try their product. I can say whatever I like about them and the only condition (which isn't even really a condition because it's not like we have a contract) is I have to provide them with some pictures that they will then have media rights too. I'm all about saving a few bucks so here we are :-)
 
Wow! No heat sinks is way not cool! The efficiency of LED's drops off dramatically if they get too hot so the output would really get downgraded with no heat sinks.

@Hudson kinda curious to see what power and spectrum LED's you are getting for that kind of money. I took a good look at Blackstar but heard lots of stuff about actual draw being more like 160W which means they are 2 Watt LED chipsets which makes a bit more sense for that kind of money. If you know an electrician with one of those clamp-ammeters then plug one in and check the amp draw. With 120V power if it is true 3W LED's it should draw just over 2 amps allowing for power supply and fans. I'm gonna guess that its gonna be more like 1.4 which means they are 2W chipsets. When I worked building industrial control panels we used to buy 10,000 LED's at a time and even the cheap white CREE Led's were still about $3 a piece and specialty spectrums went up to like $15 each even at that volume so just can't see how it's feasable to sell a panel with 80 3W Cree LED's for what I figure just the LED's cost alone. I've seen some manufacturers say their panels used 3W CREE led's and turned out that the white LED's they used to complete the spectrum were the only ones that were 3W Cree which worked out to like 5% of the total LED's. Wouldn't truth in advertising be refreshing :-)

Not trying to hate on Blackstar. I'm just confused at how they can sell a panel for less than it costs to buy the components even allowing for bulk discount. Guess if I get curious enough I may have to order one and check it out myself :-)
 
Okay so back to work. Man the ladies just seem to love these lights and I'm freaking impressed with the penetration. Would love to get my hands on a specialty light meter to test the watts per sq meter in the relevant spectrums. Can always dream :-)

A bunch of pics taken with no flash and an extra pic to show the propane powered CO2 generator, controller and scrubber (which isn't even on yet and probably wont need for a while).
 

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The one I just bought is a 2W set I believe, The 500W is 3W.

I just need the 240W for 3 weeks to keep my snow white alive, then I am tossing it with my metla halide for a flowering session. (im think LED + Halide may be the way to go)

dunit said:
Wow! No heat sinks is way not cool! The efficiency of LED's drops off dramatically if they get too hot so the output would really get downgraded with no heat sinks.

@Hudson kinda curious to see what power and spectrum LED's you are getting for that kind of money. I took a good look at Blackstar but heard lots of stuff about actual draw being more like 160W which means they are 2 Watt LED chipsets which makes a bit more sense for that kind of money. If you know an electrician with one of those clamp-ammeters then plug one in and check the amp draw. With 120V power if it is true 3W LED's it should draw just over 2 amps allowing for power supply and fans. I'm gonna guess that its gonna be more like 1.4 which means they are 2W chipsets. When I worked building industrial control panels we used to buy 10,000 LED's at a time and even the cheap white CREE Led's were still about $3 a piece and specialty spectrums went up to like $15 each even at that volume so just can't see how it's feasable to sell a panel with 80 3W Cree LED's for what I figure just the LED's cost alone. I've seen some manufacturers say their panels used 3W CREE led's and turned out that the white LED's they used to complete the spectrum were the only ones that were 3W Cree which worked out to like 5% of the total LED's. Wouldn't truth in advertising be refreshing :-)

Not trying to hate on Blackstar. I'm just confused at how they can sell a panel for less than it costs to buy the components even allowing for bulk discount. Guess if I get curious enough I may have to order one and check it out myself :-)
Click to expand...
 
Im not sure how they do it, I know a master electrician, i'm curious myself.

Hudsonvalley82 said:
The one I just bought is a 2W set I believe, The 500W is 3W.

I just need the 240W for 3 weeks to keep my snow white alive, then I am tossing it with my metla halide for a flowering session. (im think LED + Halide may be the way to go)
Click to expand...
 
Very interested in how this goes- I'm frowing under two of their 90w ufos that project 120..First grow in a stealth Cool CAb. If flowering isnt going well with the ufos, looking at upgrade options...keep posting
 
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