General led discussion

Hey guys,

Don’t see to many discussions about led lighting here. Mostly just what’s better cmh or led, but I’d like to discuss leds, not compare to other lights.

In particular, has anyone personally used far reds and either uva or uvb? If so how was you experience? I’m about to add both to one of my areas for testing, but would love to hear some personal experience.

Also, for any of the diy guys out there, do you think using some eb strips in a vertical orientation would be promising? I’m thinking of taking a couple of strips mounted on aluminum and piecing them together to make a couple of drop down lights to hang in between my plants, I’m wondering if that would increase light penetration enough to make it worth it.

Anyway, thanks as always for your input!

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I’ve been building lights since Cree CXAs were top of the line, I’ve found some interesting stuff through testing photomorphology across a few dozen chip series.

Far red (660nm) suck balls and do nothing for flower initiation that isn’t already there from basic power white leds that contain 660 in their output. In fact, all these new enhanced red spectra are getting stomped by my old 4000k 3590s. The whole deal with higher color temperature leds is there is dramatically less loss in the phospor re-emission. The difference between 3000k and 4000k is like 10% radiant efficiency, it’s blowing my mind seeing these new strip lights using predominantly warm samsung and osram mid-powers. I partially attribute this to higher temperatures being unavailable for a while as the midpower platforms were rolling out, at least in the lm305 platform. In cuts that I have run hundreds of times, the resin production and overall biomass under 4000k has consistently out-performed 3000k with 660nm enhancement utilizing identical power inputs.

UVA/B is a trap, especially with leds. UVB will torch your tops if you aren’t only giving them a few seconds a day, and those diodes are absurdly expensive. There hasn’t been much to write home about with UVA, no discernible difference between using it and not.

Side lighting is something you have to be really careful about. It seems to mess with auxin distribution and your stuff can be totally blown out with foxtails if your intensity is too high. Some really low wattage side-lighting can definitely fatten up your lowers, but I would just advocate for more top-down intensity and a very thorough defoliation in the first couple weeks of flower (usually day 21 for me).

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Nice! These are the things I’ve been looking for. Tbh, I just got kinda bored with growing, so I wanted to tinker. I do two round of plucking myself, once one day one of flowering, second time around week three as well.

I’ve been super happy with the eb strips so far, the hlg boards are ok, honestly I think the strips are better, but the hlg boards are easier to piece shit together with, less wiring.

And I’m finding out the hard way that whole more red thing is a joke too from my experience with this far red board. But again, I was bored and enjoy building lights lol.

So do you run your lights hard to get more penetration, things still get a little thick for me towards the end of flowering even after the second pluck,or run them softer for more efficiency and keep them closer to the canopy?

Also, I never even considered the auxin distribution, that’s an interesting find.

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does anyone have any experience running the ChilLED logic pucks?

Not with those pucks personally, but I expect they are similar to cobs, just more efficient.

I remember you talking about an led build a little bit ago, I can’t remember, have you messed with them before?

This is one area where I’m somewhat confident in my knowledge.

i’ve been eyeing them up for a while now, haven’t gotten around to pulling the trigger on anything yet as I haven’t figured out the best way to spend 1k+ on lights :rofl:

Lol, yeah, good plan.

How do you grow? How high is your ceiling? Do you keep your canopy even?

If so, you might want to look into something that spreads the light more. I found my cobs didn’t spread the light enough to the edges of my tent.

With strips or boards, the light is nice and even on the whole canopy.

I got the chilLED and the the cobs from rapid led, have them each over a 4x4 area. The cobs are 3000k and I think the chilled is 4000k. Wasnt too satisfied with the LEDs for flowering compared to CMH so I took the LED racks apart and currently im trying an LED on each side of a CMH.

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I have two 4x8s under 1100 watts of the gen 1s and gen 2s, they really suffer from the stupid red enhancement thing I mentioned earlier. I really want to convert them back to 4000k COBs but I’m lazy and they’re working alright. The whole passive heat sink thing is such a crock, I have two fans constantly circulating air around them or they’re getting nuclear hot in standing air at like 66w/piece.

I did just see a new fixture utilizing Samsung’s horticultural diodes, and shocker, they’re using 6000k whites with red enhancement to bring the average color temp to around 5500K. Those strips look really promising, the whole fixture looks bad though and poorly engineered for thermals. I swear, people are terrified of a 12v leg running some CPU fans. When has anyone had a failure with a PC fan? All these off the shelf units need to retire the passive cooling schtick, active cooling is way less nail biting hoping that your circulation is going to be enough to disperse heat in a closed space designed for trapping radiation.

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Here’s a picture of the 1100w Gen 1s I have running. Note the little clip fans on the top of the tent, it’s whack but necessary. I can pull some decent numbers out of the two little test tents I run pheno hunts in, but my COB setups seemed to produce more dense and colorful buds. The biomass difference is likely marginal, but these nugs being for personal use, I am not willing to compromise on quality over slightly more quantity.

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perpetual grow, low ceilings (5.5’). Never have an even canopy to save my life lol. I’m a put it in flower and forget it kinda grower.

Probably have to just stick with the strip build I had planned out, or bite the bullet and get like 4 315 CMH’s.

I can’t make up my mind to save my life lol. I want to change my veg setup, flower setup, and add a clone area… and I make $0 off all of this too :rofl:

If you’re going strip digikey is having a crazy sale on the eb gen 2 strips…

Like I said, I was bored lol. And like @ValueHorse said, higher k seems to be better. I personally have had good luck with 4000k

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Also, I didn’t like the heat with passive cobs either

I love my fluence vyprx plus

In 2 years with the power savings (British Columbia about $0.12 per kw) I’ve already paid off the cost of 20 lights vs gavita or Any other DE fixture. Flowering picture to follow. Best yield so far was 30lbs from a 20 light room. 525 watts per fixture. Some of my friends with more experience get double that.

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I ran a mix of 600w of 4000 and 5000 strips next to a 1000w CMH. Both grew great. Higher yield with the strips, slightly frostier under the CMH. Not by much. When I set back up I will try the LEDs w some UV tubes to suppliment. I think that will beat all.

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fluence vyprx plus day 50ish of grease monkey. i let it go 70 days.

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Those look like normal t8/t12 tubes vs the spydrX lights.

Nice pull you have there. I always do 64-71 days from flip runs.

this latest round looks alot better. no bug issues, lowered my beds 6" and will be raising the boxbeam that secures the lights 6". they are way too close in these pics.

https://nforcebiotech.com/ check out this product my friends make. favorite product of 2019. mites, thrips, gnats. PM. kills them all. havent tried a root drench for soil bugs yet tho.

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That N-Force looks promising. It would be great if they could sell a smaller bottle to try out for us small scale hobbyists.

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They do, just inquire with the company

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