LED question for anyone with experience in them

Ok I have been looking into LED grow lights they are very pricy to say the least and from what I hear the spectrums are not right. So I was at Menards today and saw they have LED light pucks with 25 LEDs per puck and 5 pucks in a pack for 49.95 and they all plug into one outlet and have an adjustable angle so you can focus the light. They are however all white LEDs so here is the first question. Can you grow under all white light? It says right on the package no UV rays which I would think means no red light and probably no blue either.

Next I saw LED xmas lights on a string. Anyone thought of lining a cabinet with those and adding a range of red white and blue lights to it? I am building a new cabinet now and had planned on CFL's like the current one, but LEDs are an interesting new alternative. I am just not willing to pay 200 - 600 dollars for LEDs meant for growing if I can do it myself for under 100. Any help here would be appreciated thx

private message growgreen or 206. best led setups on here and very helpful. tell them 1982 rec them. good luck they will answer whatever you need to know. Growgreen uses a 600watt setup

sorry bro didnt see your price range. homemade think 2000 dollars. 1 led costs 20 dollars. You cant use everyday leds. sorry. Check out cree or luxeon brand leds for homemade. They are the real deal. But no way for less than couple thousand

Ya all LEDs are not the same, those "pucks" and christmas lights most likely have 3mm diodes using about 0.05w per bulb, the LEDs your looking to get that will produce anything at all are in the 3w range per diode and spectrum specific not just "red" and "blue" 660nm red 450nm blue. Your pricing is a tad High though you can get 3w diodes in bulk for about $5 a piece thats still $1.40 per watt though but those are high efficient watts used in the right way could probably double (hardly 3-4x like manufacturers say though) the efficiency of the wattage compared to HPS. I'm thinking they may be uniquely suited for stealth and cabinet grows as they take up very little space, produce little to no heat so cooling isn't a factor and can be placed extremely close to your plants without worry, so you cut down maybe 3-5" of headroom at least from previous CFL or small HPS cabinet grows.

I looked highly into a homemade system. The absolute only leds that can come close to hid or match it are cree and luxeon. Right now there are no leds that hands down beat hid watt for watt. to flower under led you still need many watts. Cree and luxeon clones dont come close. But my price was individual. if you buy many you get a slight bulk discount. You would still need a hundred or so 5 watt stars to flower. = lots of money. wait 2 years and they will blow hps away. for now go with hps. cheap tried and true.

well thanks for the info guys, I will probably just wait on LEDs for now and stick with CFL's. They are easy to cool and they have been working great in a small cabinet with only 6 plants.

good idea for now.