DIY FULL SPECTRUM LED Grow Panel

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hydrojoe88

Active Member
Hello there. I've been going nuts about LEDs for a few years now. Never actually made the switch, but still followed the progression closely. I finally feel now that there's enough of a understanding about how light spectea effect plant growth to make the switch. I've been back and forth in my mind ever since on how exactly to go about it. Thought about buying a revolutionary light from a company called Valoya. You should look into what their doing, some dope stuff. Was gonna choose them. But with a price point of around 6 dollars and watt, and with there being no recorded cannabis grows with it that I could find, I just don't think I could do it. Next I thought about using cidly and just study study study till I found the right ratio of LEDs. And it would only be about 1 dollar a watt. But once again finding the perfect spectrum ration would be hard and risky. So here I am no and I feel I got a good understanding. The best thing you want is a full continuos spectrum. And by continuous I mean with no gaps.
now that's damn near impossible using narrow, single band LEDs. But with warm white LEDs, there's a good amount of red and blue and everything in between. Take a look....

http://www.ledsupply.com/docs/creexml2.pdf

third page, the red line is the warm white

so with that one color, you get almost half the spectrums taken care of

now I jut found these and think they fit better than duck sauce and egg rolls

http://www.ledgroupbuy.com/lumia-5-1-100w-full-spectrum-5-channel-led/

May the bottoms is their graph for spectrum.

idk seems like a match made in heaven...
I thought I could match them up watt to watt. Which would take 10 of the warm whites to equal the same amount of watts as the5 channel LED
any suggestions or objections?
 
PetFlora

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
I have been experimenting with leds for 3+ years. I was so close to pulling the trigger on MC, but no matter how good the spectral balance, they are point sources. The light intensity 1ft below or or to any side is much less

I also have an HOT5 tent. Equal distribution of light across 4ft can pay big dividends, so why not LED tubes?

I bought 4 LED tubes + 2 @ 2 bulb shop lights from Lowes/HD and retrofitted them to accept my led bulbs.

I had just flipped to 12/12 when I installed them and have been extremely happy with the explosion of bud sites and pistils ever since

Link in my signature- lots of pics
 
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hydrojoe88

Active Member
Dope man. Gonna check it out for sure. Been seeing your posts around different topics pertaining to LEDs a lot. So i respect what you have to say. Speaking of which, how do you feel about me using those two spectrums in conjunction with one another?
 
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pepperdust

Well-Known Member
the XM-L2 is nice. best single LED there is out there right now. if you go with them, be sure to use a dielectric star ( sinkpad ) as you will lose light from heat on a cheaper star, unless your ok with that, but I wouldn't suggest going into a XM-L2 build unless you want to do it proper to have the "best" led unit, as it's really all about being at the top of the food chain in lighting.. you could end up building one like shit, so it performs worse then a normal XM-L and at XP-E levels. it's about proper cooling, and nice amount of chip count, running them at 10 watts is really not good, and you should then look at a multi chip setup like the luxeon K or M.. or the cree MK-R. honestly I think the XM-L2 WW has a killer spectrum, I don't really fancy the phillips as well, I think cree has gotten popular, but my instincts lie with cree the first moment I started designing a panel.

as for the groupbuy led. no good. first it's tailored to aquarium, so it's heavy blue, not heavy red. if you want a multi-chip, I would suggest looking into vanqled.


but I'm not sure what you think your missing on the XM-L2? really the only thing you could add is 660nm / 740nm / 410nm if you wanted.


be prepared, a proper XM-L2 build is not cheap by any means..
 
PetFlora

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
hydrojoe88 said:
Dope man. Gonna check it out for sure. Been seeing your posts around different topics pertaining to LEDs a lot. So i respect what you have to say. Speaking of which, how do you feel about me using those two spectrums in conjunction with one another?
Click to expand...
Of course. No different than having different chips on a MC

I am using one NW + 3 WW, which might also work fine for veg, but I have vegged under a single 22w so veg is super easy
 
H

hydrojoe88

Active Member
pepperdust said:
the XM-L2 is nice. best single LED there is out there right now. if you go with them, be sure to use a dielectric star ( sinkpad ) as you will lose light from heat on a cheaper star, unless your ok with that, but I wouldn't suggest going into a XM-L2 build unless you want to do it proper to have the "best" led unit, as it's really all about being at the top of the food chain in lighting.. you could end up building one like shit, so it performs worse then a normal XM-L and at XP-E levels. it's about proper cooling, and nice amount of chip count, running them at 10 watts is really not good, and you should then look at a multi chip setup like the luxeon K or M.. or the cree MK-R. honestly I think the XM-L2 WW has a killer spectrum, I don't really fancy the phillips as well, I think cree has gotten popular, but my instincts lie with cree the first moment I started designing a panel.

as for the groupbuy led. no good. first it's tailored to aquarium, so it's heavy blue, not heavy red. if you want a multi-chip, I would suggest looking into vanqled.


but I'm not sure what you think your missing on the XM-L2? really the only thing you could add is 660nm / 740nm / 410nm if you wanted.


be prepared, a proper XM-L2 build is not cheap by any means..
Click to expand...
thanks for the info. The reason I thought of using the one from led groupbuy, even with the high blue, was with the assumption that the red in the WW and me using a dimmer to lower the blues a bit would help give me a even full spectrum from 400-700.
I wonder about ordering a custom one from vanqled because I don't trust myself with mixing the ratios correctly and getting that full continuous spectrums I'm after
 
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hydrojoe88

Active Member
...just realized MC meant multi chip.....so MCs are shit for penetration? Would that matter much if I kept them well cooled and close to the canopy?
 
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jcmjrt

Well-Known Member
You need little blue to grow with. You can mix warm whites with a few cool or even neutral white XML2s and get all the blue that you need....about 4 or 5 to 1 seems good as a ratio... I would add a few red and deep red as well....but that's certainly up for discussion...
 
H

hydrojoe88

Active Member
jcmjrt said:
You need little blue to grow with. You can mix warm whites with a few cool or even neutral white XML2s and get all the blue that you need....about 4 or 5 to 1 seems good as a ratio... I would add a few red and deep red as well....but that's certainly up for discussion...
Click to expand...
Thats a good idea. If you look at the chart for the percentage of nms in a cool white. It has a spike in blue that's as high as the spike in the WWs red nms. So I think a ratio of 2:1 WW:CW would be best. But even that would leave a huge gap ffrom between 460-500nm. That's why I wanted to use the MC from ledgroupbuy. Especially of I can turn down the blue to dial in the right ratio. I think the two would give me an awesome full spectrum.
IDk
i guess I'll have to just try it.
im just hoping someone could give me a little more approval or disapproval with proof to back it up......@eraserhead
 
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hydrojoe88

Active Member
Plus if anything in red, I think I would have to add se far-red..like 720nm. Because the warm white covers between 600-680nm pretty good. But drops off almost completely after that
 
PetFlora

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
At the end of the day, trust your gut.

Plenty of 'experts' think/thought PAR peaks achieved with Red + Blue were all we needed. Yes it grew, but how much was left behind. My own 90w R/B ufo did not do well on it's own. It was not until I learned the importance of 500-600 and was often called out for it that my buds fattened up. Some 2 years later we see how much that range matters.

I am currently growing with 1 NW + 3 WW @ 23w led tubes + 2 3000K household globes below canopy. I am ecstatic with the bud development to date, but still people doubt.
 
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pepperdust

Well-Known Member
hydrojoe88 said:
thanks for the info. The reason I thought of using the one from led groupbuy, even with the high blue, was with the assumption that the red in the WW and me using a dimmer to lower the blues a bit would help give me a even full spectrum from 400-700.
I wonder about ordering a custom one from vanqled because I don't trust myself with mixing the ratios correctly and getting that full continuous spectrums I'm after
Click to expand...
the only reason you would buy the ledgroupbuy is if you have an aquarium.. they designed it to simplify the setups, that's all.. it's not for growing, and would be easier to get other led to grow then that multi chip that is the wrong spectrum.. it's like buying a ferrari to get groceries.

there is no "right way" , no one knows what the best spectrum is... it's the whole game when going LED



I'm just wondering why you want EH advice when I laid it all out for you.. it's funny, as everyone I've helped on here, just dis-regards my advice, and wants it from someone else... tells me your not wanting advice at all......
 
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