LED Habitats grow lights - new here on RIU

LEDHabitat420

LEDHabitat420

Well-Known Member
Hi all,
A short intro of our lights and our company.
LED Habitats was founded in 2015, headquartered in Wisconsin and manufacturing in New Mexico. We introduced LED Habitats to the public in February of 2016. The original founders were horticulturists, biologists and an LED light specialist. One founding member of the LED Habitats team actually worked with Nasa in the 90's through the Universtity of Wisconsin to research whether plants can be grown from seed to seed on the space station using lights. This was not possible at the time and the experiment failed. We developed our original spectrum (still in use today} with the help of the agriculture laboratory at the University of Wisconsin. Our lights range from countertop herb gardens, to class room gardens and to the large footprint cannabis lights. The Ditto Max for flower and the Root Max for veg lights measure 35" x 18" in size, and are hanging fixtures. All our lights use CREE LED's, currently the Root Max light uses CREE's horticulture specific full spectrum white and red chips. Unique to our lights back in 2015 was the use of green LED chips as part of our spectrum. All our products are made in the USA. With the exception of the LED chips by Cree and the drivers by Meanwell.

A few pics:
20200918_173610.jpg20200709_174548.jpg593543176.jpgThe lights on the right picture were our original flower lights, named the 420Flower, the center and left pictures are of our new Ditto Max lights.
 
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LEDHabitat420

LEDHabitat420

Well-Known Member
Johnny Lawrence said:
You refer to your lights as the most powerful and efficient LEDs available. How are you able to make this claim?

Could you also explain why I should shell out over $500 for a 200 watt light?
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Thank you Johnny,
I think the claim you refer to is "At 200W and a physical size of 16" x 35", it’s the most powerful, most efficient LED light for flowering short-day plants."

What we are saying is with a physical size of 35" x 16" and only using 200w. But providing a ppfd of 993umol makes it the most powerful and efficient 200w flower light. { these specs were for our original 420 Flower light, the new Ditto Max ups the ppfd by about 20%.}

The CREE's LED's we use provide 190 lumens per watt. Although with grow lights it's not about brighness, but about umol's,

Our lights are made in the USA, come with a 5 or 10 year warranty on the light circuit, don't have fans, consume less than $3 of electricity per week and minimize the amount of external cooling needed for grow rooms. The performance is on par with lights costing much more. This is why the Ditto Max costs $519.
 
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Johnny Lawrence

Johnny Lawrence

Well-Known Member
LEDHabitat420 said:
Our lights are made in the USA, come with a 5 or 10 year warranty on the light circuit, don't have fans, consume less than $3 of electricity per week and minimize the amount of external cooling needed for grow rooms. This is why the Ditto Max costs $519.
Click to expand...
Ummmmm . . .
 
Barristan Whitebeard

Barristan Whitebeard

Well-Known Member
LEDHabitat420 said:
Hi all,
A short intro of our lights and our company.
LED Habitats was founded in 2015, headquartered in Wisconsin and manufacturing in New Mexico. We introduced LED Habitats to the public in February of 2016. The original founders were horticulturists, biologists and an LED light specialist. One founding member of the LED Habitats team actually worked with Nasa in the 90's through the Universtity of Wisconsin to research whether plants can be grown from seed to seed on the space station using lights. This was not possible at the time and the experiment failed. We developed our original spectrum (still in use today} with the help of the agriculture laboratory at the University of Wisconsin. Our lights range from countertop herb gardens, to class room gardens and to the large footprint cannabis lights. The Ditto Max for flower and the Root Max for veg lights measure 35" x 18" in size, and are hanging fixtures. All our lights use CREE LED's, currently the Root Max light uses CREE's horticulture specific full spectrum white and red chips. Unique to our lights back in 2015 was the use of green LED chips as part of our spectrum. All our products are made in the USA. With the exception of the LED chips by Cree and the drivers by Meanwell.

A few pics:
View attachment 4728976View attachment 4728980View attachment 4728981The lights on the right picture were our original flower lights, named the 420Flower, the center and left pictures are of our new Ditto Max lights.
Click to expand...
Why does the Root Max light have a ten year warranty, but the Ditto Max light only has a five year warranty?

And of those two lights, why does your website say only the Root Max light is UL listed?
 
LEDHabitat420

LEDHabitat420

Well-Known Member
Barristan Whitebeard said:
Why does the Root Max light have a ten year warranty, but the Ditto Max light only has a five year warranty?

And of those two lights, why does your website say only the Root Max light is UL listed?
Click to expand...
The reason for the 5 year and the 10 year warranties: The Root Max is a 100w light, the Ditto Max is a 200w light. This means the Ditto Max LED's are driven at 2 times the current, which in turn makes them get much hotter on the board. In other words, the Cree chips on the Root Max are driven at 30-35% of their rated capacity, were the Ditto Max LED's (which are different chips) are driven at 50-75% of their rated capacity.

The Ditto Max is a new design and is not yet UL listed, even though it uses all UL listed components. The major difference is, the Ditto Max uses a larger IP 67 Meanwell driver and different LED chips, all else is the same.
 
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LEDHabitat420

LEDHabitat420

Well-Known Member
Thecook said:
it is very simple; most of the guys here can make a 200W DIY light for under 300$

edit: Also I am being generous about the cost!
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You are correct, many diy'rs are perfectly capable to make their own grow lights for less in material costs. And can afford to also use top of the line materials to do so. We are not here to say that we can make a better light for the diy person. We are here, because not everyone is a diy person. Many growers want to simply open a box and plug in a light and start growing. Without the fuzz. Just convenience. We are growers ourselves.
 
Barristan Whitebeard

Barristan Whitebeard

Well-Known Member
LEDHabitat420 said:
The reason for the 5 year and the 10 year warranties: The Root Max is a 100w light, the Ditto Max is a 200w light. This means the Ditto Max LED's are driven at 2 times the current, which in turn makes them get much hotter on the board. In other words, the Cree chips on the Root Max are driven at 30-35% of their rated capacity, were the Ditto Max LED's (which are different chips) are driven at 50-75% of their rated capacity.

The Ditto Max is a new design and is not yet UL listed, even though it uses all UL listed components. The major difference is, the Ditto Max uses a larger IP 67 Meanwell driver and different LED chips, all else is the same.
Click to expand...
Are there any differences between the heatsinks on the two lights; i.e., do they both have the same surface area? Rather than driving the diodes harder and hotter on the higher wattage light, is it not a viable option to increase the number of diodes? That seems to be a standard practice with many manufacturers.

Also I don't see any efficacy numbers posted for your lights. The posted photosynthetic photon flux figures for the Ditto Max don't make sense. PPF is a measure of a fixtures total light output per second, not a spot measurement. What is the efficacy of each light at system level (in μmol/Joule)?

From your website:

Screenshot_20201030-092802.png

Which Mean Well drivers are you using for each light? You mentioned different types of LEDs were used for the two lights. It looks like a lower CCT is used for the whites on the Ditto Max. Which mono-colored diodes are used besides green and deep red? Other than Cree XP-G3, what type of diodes are utilized (who makes the green monos)?
 
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LEDHabitat420

LEDHabitat420

Well-Known Member
Barristan Whitebeard said:
Are there any differences between the heatsinks on the two lights; i.e., do they both have the same surface area? Rather than driving the diodes harder and hotter on the higher wattage light, is it not a viable option to increase the number of diodes? That seems to be a standard practice with many manufacturers.

Also I don't see any efficacy numbers posted for your lights. The posted photosynthetic photon flux figures for the Ditto Max don't make sense. PPF is a measure of a fixtures total light output per second, not a spot measurement. What is the efficacy of each light at system level (in μmol/Joule)?

From your website:

View attachment 4729745

Which Mean Well drivers are you using for each light? You mentioned different types of LEDs were used for the two lights. It looks like a lower CCT is used for the whites on the Ditto Max. Which mono-colored diodes are used besides green and deep red? Other than Cree XP-G3, what type of diodes are utilized (who makes the green monos)?
Click to expand...
Hi Barristan,
The heatsinks or circuit boards are identical across all our lights. Reason being is, less parts to have in inventory and less development costs. We are considering getting new boards designed with more or denser LED population for the Ditto Max light.

Unfortunately we don't have efficacy numbers at this time. We have Spectroradiometer / integrating sphere data for our original light, the LED Habitat. This spectrum is shared with our Undercabinet LED, the Habitat Pro and the Root Max light. The difference being the Root Max uses 4 circuit boards and therefore is 4 times the size of the Habitat. Efficacy was not a thing or talked about when we developed our original lights. :)

Thank you for pointing out the error on our website regarding the PPF and PPFD readings. Unfortunately, our web designers are not grow light people and simply overlooked the D after the PPF!:(

The Root Max uses Meanwell APC drivers with a combination of Cree XPE and XTE chips. This design goes back to our original spectrum and works incredibly well for veg/ leaf plants and other garden plants like tomatoes, radishes, peppers. A very nice seedling/clone and veg light for cannabis.

The Ditto Max uses a Meanwell XLG driver with Cree's full spectrum XPG-3 chips and the new XPG-3 red chips. The white chips on this light are a bit warmer color to give a performance boost for flowering. XPG-3 chips are more efficient, brighter, can take more current and are horticulture specific compared to the Root Max light's LED chips.
The Ditto Max pictured above is our last generation Ditto Max, It also used Blue XPG-3 chips and the Green is Cree's XTE chips. The latest edition of the Ditto Max replaces the blues and greens with more of the white XPG-3's. We made this change because the lights run cooler, use less energy and emit 25% more umol's in comparison.


To Thecook: There are reasons, we list our list price at $900, but lowered the prices for the lights. I am not willing to get into details, and can't! But, one thing is for certain, we are not a scam!

We came to this board as an advertiser because we were asked to do so by the board owner's. And we love being a part of this community. And the medical and recreational cannabis community.

Best,
 
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