Led lights?

hey can someone explain the advantages and disadvantages of using a red+blue led light set up for growing. i found a 225 light system on ebay for 24 bux. worth it or no?
thanks

best led ive seen so far is the UFO. But im no pro

anyone know the advantages or disadvantages of using a led light?

advantage -> your grow room looks like a space ship
disadvantage -> you have a grow room with tiny little flowers.
result -> you end up harvesting your 4 gram plant 1 week before harvest because you realized it's just a waste of time.

so led lights don't produce anything near what a 150 hps would? would it help at all to use them together oris that just a waste of time? thanks for the comments

crazytrain14 said:

hey can someone explain the advantages and disadvantages of using a red+blue led light set up for growing. i found a 225 light system on ebay for 24 bux. worth it or no?
thanks

Click to expand...

The only advantage is that if you can control the amount of red/blue, you can drastically control stretching and overall plant development.

With those panels though, there is no advantage. They are mostly red, which if you veg with them, you'll get lanky plants, especially if you use them for side light.

The advantages of LEDs are...

They run cold (if you're LEDs are hot, they are poorly designed and are being over driven. Over driven LEDs fade very quickly, so within a month of 24/7 they'll be junk)

They last hella long... 100,000 hours if you treat them right.

They use 1/2 the power HIDs do for the same amount of useable light.

The disadvantages of LEDs are...

Its hard to tell if you're going to getting the newer brighter LEDs or the older ones. The new ones are 5 times as bright as the old ones. That makes a huge difference. If they don't tell you they're using the new xtr brite LEDs, assume they aren't.

And commerical LED systems are red heavy. They are actually better for flowering than vegging... Of course, people who don't know any better will tell you the opposite. These are the same people who will tell you to use them as side lighting, which does help your plants grow, but it makes them stretch too.

Bottom line, is if you get the new LEDs and go heavy blue to veg and heavy red to flower, you can have buds that would make HID growers piss themselves for half the wattage... If you can find a LED system that also has UVA, that's very desireable during flowering, most don't though.

-Loki

yes, led's do make me piss myself.....from laughing. lumen per wat ratio is nothing compared to HID

way4too2high0 said:

yes, led's do make me piss myself.....from laughing. lumen per wat ratio is nothing compared to HID

Click to expand...

Really? Back some of that up with some proof...

-Loki

loki thanks man, that info helped alot.
i think i'll just stick with the econolight hps.

so far i am not impressed with what i see from LEDs yet but they are improving at about 12% per year so sooner or later they ought to be worth it

anotherchance said:

so far i am not impressed with what i see from LEDs yet but they are improving at about 12% per year so sooner or later they ought to be worth it

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They need some more features as well... built-in timers, variable wavelengths, etc... The standard red/blue panel is bullshit. LED manufactures are lazy because most pot growers don't know any better. HID growers only know one thing, HPS has more red than MH... There's a lot more to it than that... but for HID growers, their lights are either on or off... there's no in between. At best, they'll veg with MH and flower with HPS...

Before I knew about CannabisTV.com, I did some time lapse videos of plants under LED lights. I started with 4 seedlings. They all did this wiggly clockwise dance as they grew. One of my lights dropped and that's when I noticed a few things. It was a red bar that dropped and almost immediately, they started bending towards the lights on the other side. I figured at first it was just because it was getting more light from the right side, which had more light bars. The bar that dropped shorted out, so I thought I'd keep the red/blue ratio the same, so I took out a blue bar on the right side. The seedlings still wanted to bend towards the red light. I'd give them a 180 degree spin and a few hours later they had already begun to bend back... I added 3 more blue bars to the left side, but still they bent right... I put a red bar back on the left and they straighten right up...

Since then I've been testing a few theories out concerning the effect of the red/far red ratio on stretching and side growth... Some pretty interesting stuff. Stuff HID growers have no clue about. I didn't either though, before that accident opened my eyes. And I don't think I would have noticed it if I hadn't been doing time lapse.

-Loki

good stuff man, how did the rest of the time lapse grow go?

crazytrain14 said:

good stuff man, how did the rest of the time lapse grow go?

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I never did a time lapse of a complete grow. I'll see if I have any of the video left. I deleted most of them because the files were like 800 megs/day... But I mainly used seedlings and clones because you can really see how the light affects them. You usually think of plants as not moving, but of course they are, its pretty fun to watch.

-Loki

hey loki, roomate and i are both growing he bought this light setup on ebay.
12 Volt DC Hydroponic 225 LED Grow light Panel Red Blue - eBay (item 230302170709 end time Oct-26-08 20:44:14 PDT)

thoughts?

save you $$$, those things are not going to do what you want them to do

crazytrain14 said:

hey loki, roomate and i are both growing he bought this light setup on ebay.
12 Volt DC Hydroponic 225 LED Grow light Panel Red Blue - eBay (item 230302170709 end time Oct-26-08 20:44:14 PDT)

thoughts?

Click to expand...

It says it draw about 1 amp @ 12v... So, its 12 watts. They don't say anything else... I think you got took. They'd be good for rooting clones, but they are too small to grow much, even if they are using the newer LEDs. I use twice that in my 18 gal tote (see video link at the botom of my posts) and with out all the mylar it wouldn't be enough light...

-Loki.

I use my LED setup for veg only. Its 75% blue 25% red spectrum. In total its 112 watts not including the 12v power pack. I wired up 7 of the 12volt kits from homegrownlights.com into a constantine layout covering about a meter square. Works fine as a veg light.

The LED is putting out 4000 lumens per square foot, and my layout is about 800mm x 600mm of LEDs (7 boards at 256 LEDs per board). 4000 lumens per square foot is more than enough for vegging with but certainly nowhere near enough to flower with.

The prob with LEDs and is so with the CFLs is penetration. Once your plant gets over 12 inches high, light is no longer penetrating to the bottom branches. For me that works fine since I switch once they're at 12 inches. I am using 400 HPS for flowering.

At the moment Im building a second light with some brighter LEDs, twice as bright as the current ones I have. In total it will be about 196 watts. It is basically 14 of the 14watt kits from homegrownlights.com and will cover the area of a 400 watt metal halide plus a little more.

My results so far show me that the ratio is about 1:3, 1 being 1 watt of LED. This is based on the results, not sitting down with a light meter and working out lumens per square foot. So if you want to emulate a 400 mH you had better to use around about 135 watts of mostly blue (478uF) LEDs.

In reality though LEDs point straight downward with about 10% spill over. So to truthfully work out how much watts you would need to emulate a 400 mH you would have to work out what area a 400 covers. Then work out how many LED boards you would need to cover that area.

This may be disappointing for those that have read some of the bs floating around the net with crazy claims of saving power but I look at it as, my powerbill currently has 300 watts per hour, 18 hours a day less on it. Every watt saved in lighting can be spent elsewhere.

The commercial LEDs make some pretty outragious claims about LED watts to HID watt ratios. Some claim to compare their 60-90 watts to a 600 watt HPS which of course is a load of crap.

Ill try get some photos shortly.

Here is a pic of the light

wow, lookin good man. how far away from the plants do you keep the led's while in veg?

There is very little heat coming from them so you can pretty much move them as close as you can to the tops. I tend to raise it to a height where the colours mix together, which is about 2 inches above the tops.