Howdy
I'm new to this place, thought i'd share a little project I've finished/been working on (I'm an constant tinkerer).

I've played with growing small plants under LED lights for quite some time, starting with a few cress seeds in my early attempts with some success ,so decided to try out a larger system.

(Sorry for the crap photo's, my only decent camera uses film)
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The current system resides in the back of my practice amp, it uses 3x 3w Red High power LED's and 1x 3W high power blue LED All attached to a mack-off great heatsink. The power supply was picked up for £2.50 from a local electronics shop and the current limiting circuitry is from this design:

Circuits for high power LED's

The current is limited to half an amp so they are not quite running at full power, but they chuck out a hell of a lot of light, and get quite hot.

Also to the left of the image is a fan blowing down into the top of the power supply to keep things a little cooler and some air circulating in the box.

Here is a photo of my little plant thats been vegging right up next to the blue LED for 5 days now:
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Things seem to be going OK for now, hopefully they'll continue that way, although my little plant only has about 6 weeks before it's gonna have the chop due to moving house. When i get settled I'll be building a bigger system with more LED's.

Best part of the whole thing? the amp still works, so my little plant can rock out to some dirty blues.

welcome electric gardener

sweet wee set up dude, and the amp still works! what plant is that youve got growing? shame it only gets six weeks, no bud

but its nice to see something different.

rock on

Cheers tsk!
The plant is afgaan, wasn't sure on the type to use for such a small grow (this is my first grow aswell) , so just picked up some of the cheapest seeds i could find.
I hear indica's tend to grow smaller and bushy-er? anybody any breed recommendations for a small setup?

I might try and rescue the little lady (fingers crossed its a lady) by entrusting him to my brother while the moving happens, I've started to get quite attached to her.
Hopefully i'll get a larger LED hydrophonic system will be set up in a couple of months.

btw, if anybody's interested in how this works i pretty much re boxed this inside my amp and added bigger heatsinks because it was getting a little hot:

LED grow lights mk.2

Have you heard about the LED UFO (google it) they say -

The LED UFO is the most revolutionary plant lighting product since the inception of High Pressure Sodium lamp. Consuming only 80 watts of power and producing virtually no heat, it boasts light intensity and growth rates exceeding that of a 400W HPS.

I don't know much else about it i'm afraid

Yhea, I've been pointed in the direction of that LED UFO thingy before. it costs aroud $600 (£300), and by the looks of it ,it uses pretty standard ultra bright LED's (costing about 50p each max), personally i think it's pretty over hyped by marketing people, and for what it is considerably over priced (i reckon with a bit of niffty DIY-ing you could get something pretty much the same for under 50 quid).

I've tried using the same type of LED's used in the UFO thing before, and although they run cooler you need considerably more of them compared to the high power ones i used.

I'm I DIY-er at heart!

Here are a couple of better shots of the back of the amp and the lights
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I left the plant a few mm from the blue led over night and in the morning the leaves seemed to have curled , I've heard this may be due to overwatering? I think I got a bit over enthusiastic being a newbie to all this.

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is that you emu?

ARRRGH!!!
SAMS C++ in 10 Mins book.


Burn. BUUUUUURRRRRN.