Hi peeps,

I haven't been on for a bit but I was just wondering if anyone could update me on the newest LED's if anyone knows anything about them?

I am a bit worried about the new laws and any possible changes in policy on detection of growers etc. Now if the started looking for large or unusual power draws etc. So I was thinking of changing my lights to LED's.

Thing is the last time I looked into em I was told that they are great for Vegging (if you ignore the cost) but crap for flowering as they just don't give out the intensity etc.

But now I'm coming across sites that are doing comparison grows between 400w HPS and 100W LED's and even with flowering plants like tomatoes etc they seam to come out on top. So I want to know from a growers lips rather than a manufacturer of shop etc weather they are better than HPS when disregarding initial cost of purchase (which seams to vary a lot!)

P.S. I don't want anyone posting about the fact that they don't think that police have the power to look into such things as power consumption etc (thats a whole other thread). Just info re: LED's Thanks

Kind regards, Maxi

Well i haven't heard many great things involving led's. Really, from what i've seen, your better off going with cfl's if your conserned with the power/heat produced from hids. But I'm not saying they dont work, if your heart set on them, i know they work, just not as great for packing on the girth. One thing you might try if you do go with them, they produce so little heat in a good scrog grow you can lower them right along the tops and keep the distance from them compact and that might help in yeilds under led. Hope you find all the info your lookin for either way mate.

i too would like to hear some more info about this topic. i once heard someone refer to them as toys and to stay well away, but that was a while ago and things have prob changed by now!!! when you talk about led lights are you talking about that UFO thingy........................coz thats what i would love to hear a review on

If you folks would bother to use the search option in the right forum (say, lighting perhaps? ), you can find out what folks who have used them think of them.

Generally they are crap unless you want to spend a LOT of money and basically envelop the plant in LEDs. Which is tough as every time the plant grows (daily) you need to adjust all the lights. And that is just for one plant.

The nature of LEDs is that they disperse light in all directions. What canna growing needs is light (photons) that (radiates) flies a bit more in a line. HIDs with the right hoods do this. And they do it with an intensity that canna can use.

The other aspect of lighting that most people ignore is even coverage. Surrounding your plant with reflective walls aids in this aspect and light movers do even more to help with this.

Be more concerned with paying your 'leccy bill on time.

i too wanna know more on this subject.... i would happily spend a few days making a soldering my own pannel if the propper led bulbs for growing existed yet.

i'm pretty sure it won't be to long till they have it down

i'd tend to dissagree with you there randy, as an electronics hobbyist (and a bloke who's interested in led growing) i know from experiance that 75-90% of it's light comes from the tip (unless your talking about the crappy 80's one's, that is why they point them outwards in most applications such as torches, car tail lights, kids toys and growing etc etc.)

all i can say is the intesity is going up, the price of bulbs is gowing down and there are a fair few people trying to perfect led grow lights for market

If it happens it will be a very good day for a lot of people.

but....


Do you have any evidence of grows that contradict my statement above?

i wanna see the evidence too coz wot the randilizer said is pretty much what i hear from everyonr that has tried them. from wot i heard, you could do with 2 LED UFO's for every 1 plant

the only grow i've seen where the led's came out 'on top' was one shown on youtube, the plants took longer to flower under the led's but the grams per total amount of energy used was a bit higher....... and everyone was like, led's are the bollox bla bla bla, what they neglected to notice was that the hps grow pulled in less than 0.25g/watt and nearly every grower knows 1g/watt is achievable. if the hid grow had hit that target it would have pissed ALLOVER the led grow!! i am yet to see an led grow come even REMOTELY close to beating an hid grow watt for watt. if you're worried about high leccy usage, then use a smaller HID! you'll still get more bud than from an led grow. led's pull a distinctive load as well as hid's anyway, so you wouldn't be fooling any smart meters either! (they put out exactly the same harmonic as an hid in fact, it's the diode effect in hid's that makes them distinctive)

Apparently now it's now possible to produce Gallium Nitride needed for high power LED's on silicon rather than on costly sapphire as before, so banks of LEDs should become more affordable from now on.

yeah i read about that the other day too. but cost is irrelevant really, as they still wont be as cheap as hid's and even if they were, they're still crap for growing. if they could produce a 100watt led as a point light source rather than loads of tiny little ones, then that would be interesting!!!

like a fucking idiot i purchased 4 blue led grow board from ebay. i know what's been said about them before, but they take 14w each and i'm planning on using them for mother plants only. because of this i'm not too ashamed, but i wont get a chance to try them for a while. veg is the only benefit i see from led's right now.

If its from the guy i think you got them from then he talks bollocks.....

although this looks promising..

Looks like an over-priced mood light.

I blame the drugs ....

::

no fucking way will that cover a 5x5foot area, the plants around the edges would stretched to SHIT!!!

Thanks for the input guy's,

"If you folks would bother to use the search option in the right forum (say, lighting perhaps? ), you can find out what folks who have used them think of them."

Well I did that and maybe I'm not using it right or maybe they changed the way it worked. But when I did it, it diddnt come up with anything worth reading. An personaly I'm not int wasting precious hours of my life looking through shit loads of crap to find a gem. So I though I'd post and get the exact info I was lookiing for.

This

Click to view attachment

is why I was interested. If you notice the graph (if what it's saying is true) You will notice that the led lights peak at 625nm but chlorophyll is more like 665-670nm. Now I hear they have released 660nm LED's that are 1 watt+ each! Which should surely make a difference.....shouldn't it?

The fact is that I personally couldn't give a flying feck if they cost 10 times as much as a HPS if they did what they were originally rumoured to. IE same results as a 600W HID from about 20W with no Heat etc.. Now we all know that it ain't gonna happen really is it.
But even if they did the same job, with no heat and for say 50% or the wattage of a HID with a lifespan about 50 times longer of something.... That'll do me!

So if anyone knows of any that are worth buying or can make em them selves for a fee etc. Please let me know.

Kind regards, Maxi

Hay Max,

Yea, the search function is a bit less than perfect. But under my search for LED Lighting I managed to come across a few topics. But the point is (in all of those topics) that all the experienced members here have pretty much seen all the reviews on available LED lighting, including a very high end, water cooled system.

They're all crap. Not to say that someday we may have a great LED lighting system to use, but no one here has seen it yet.

e2a: Thanks for the spectrum chart!

Nice one matey ;-)

Can anyone remember this led grow?...... i cant believe its nearly a year ago..

http://www.uk420.com/boards/index.php?show...mp;hl=david+zap


Not that impressed with the result..

plasma lighting is the future. led's suck atm.

I have a torch with a single Q5 CREE led which produces 220 lumens on turbo mode or 60 lumens on normal. Dont know much about leds so dont know if these could be used all i know is they are very bright, battery dont last long on turbo, the torch is a Fenix TK10.

Hi guy's,

So just to clarify do we still think that they are great for vegging?

The reason I ask is. I'm thinking of scaling down the 2m tent with 16 plants, (5-7wk veg+8-9wk flower) to having a 1.5m tent with 4 larger plants (flowering) and a 1m tent for vegging them in. So I'm obviously thinking that I can have far less numbers and yield (per crop) but get a crop every 8-9 weeks as oppose to every 13-16 weeks. I was thinking of having 4 x 400w in the 1.5m tent and having LED's in the 1m tent.

An seen as though I use the scrog method I reckon it should do OK as long as the LED's work well for veg and the transition between LED and HPS doesn't make em go loopy and turn Hermie etc

Any thoughts??

Save your money.

LEDs are for torches.

If you need 20 watts, go to the supermarket and ask yourself how many replacement 99p lamps would justify using a very expensive and unweildy assembly of 285 LEDs with an arbitrary longer life instead.

Larger lights are more efficient - if you need 70 watts, look for a 70 watt lamp, not 1428 x 70mw lamps... or even 70x 1 watt LEDs.

If you need 250 watts, muse on how you will house 250, 1 watt LEDs with their heatsinks.

LEDs run just as hot as any other lamp of the same power.
(have you seen the heatsink on a 4 watt MR16 spot ? )

Click to view attachment

Yeaj ive used em and they are shit unless you have masses of them canopy's 2ft square panels and spots. Another problem is the old bill will think your runing a brothel be warned and stick to CFL's if your para about the heat and energy consumption.

Thanks guy's,

It's not so much the heat as the power really. The original thing with LED's was that they give the same (usable PAR) light as a HID for way less wattage and heat. We all since found out that the light alone without the intensity to drive transpiration isn't good enough to grow MJ to full maturity and potential etc. I'm just thinking that if I can veg 4 plants in 8-9 weeks to fill a 1m tent without using anywhere near as much power as a HID would use then I'm onto a winner.

If not I will just use a 600W grolux like I normally would and veg for slightly less time etc. I just could have done with saving the watt's. I was thinking of getting an air con etc. So that I can work off the old, "less is more" idea of having fewer but much healthier happier plants by having a much more controlled environment etc. But if I have HID's in both the veg and bloom tents. Then an air con as well! I think I would be pushing it a bit.

It's far worse than that.

I play with light a lot and use hundreds of LEDs ... red LEDs are a winner - compared with a normal car rear incandescent lamp ...

LEDs of around 4 watts are starting to compete with 30 watt QH spots - I haven't done the sums, but they probably would pay for themselves eventually at over 20 quid each.

But for a decent dollop of light in yer room, fluorescents win hands down.

In street lighting where beam patterns are less precise (or rather amenable to beam patterns that make the optics simpler) and colour rendition / control / longevity are the priorities, you'll probably see them sneaking in ... but not once you hit the junction for the bypass ... there it will be 1,000 watt metal halides and HPS that will carry on doing what they're best at.

I'm very fond of LEDs, but anyone who's made the transition from linear fluorescents to HPS (for me about 13 years ago), will just know any thought of using LEDs for this purpose is just daft.... maybe it's because we've run out of challenges and people are dying to make a discovery of benefit to the community ...

The key reason for me flogging this dead hobbyhorse is, apart from an obsession with scientific accuracy, is I hate to see people get ripped off and waste money and electricity growing rubbish ganja.

Hey there composteverte. I'm thinking about switching from linear fluro tubes to HIDs for my veg/mums room. How much of an improvement was there when you switched? Are you using 250W or 400W?

If you're literally just keeping quite a few mums going, linears are the best option.
I found a 4 tube office fitting with baffles was brilliant for the job - though I gave up on keeping mums - which is a pity as I had some really good genetics ...

A 250 watt HPS is a "production" lamp in that same area.

think i got this rite leds i have tried growing with them and they are crap i bought two grow boards from states and got grow tent the works but had to take the leds out as they just did nothing brought the seeds up got two leaves but that was it so changed toeco lights got a two hundred and two fifty watt put them on en but didnt work so got some clones from my mate and just put them on twelve twelve they going ok few probs but will get a few o so cant complain but my opinin big NO NO to leds its al LIES

Welcome to UK420 jayk1! Thanks for sharing your story! Thats how we all learn here.

sulphur plasma perhaps?

Led's only really work for vegging to a limited point. This is known from experimentation (100W LED will cover 5X5 space for veg). the problem is that the plants need white light (including spectrum between red and blue) to get the correct triggers to develop properly. The key is to mix a CFL with led for veg, or just #$%^ it all together (from someone who built a 100W led light). Led's are great for other plants tho

Sorry mate but that's a load of cow crumpets - unless the plant you're "vegging" is moss.

Click to view attachment

... unless it's 5x5 inches ....

Hi Guys,

just thought I'd add my tuppence worth!

LEDs will be the main future of lighting, though in their current format, probably not. Materials development and nano technology will allow surface substrate and lamination techniques to occur on nano levels addressing issues of heat dissipation, wave length generation and directional output. The big factor at the moment is cost, but as with other technologies, after time, manufacturing processes become more cost effective so the cost will come down.

The point is at present, the horticultural aspect, especially to our current preferred crop , isn't optimised.

There is a bulletin board in the US where I read a very intense study of the lights in action, backed by the input of some lights from the mfer, and the results were very interesting. The lights did work fantastically (these are not the 1w board type but the 56 XCree mini sun version) for the vegging and did manage to flower, I think by memory by using a black light UV as addition. The second, more commercial catch up grow used the LEDS + 70W HPS which mullered everything in terms of the yield per watt measure.

Coming back to the more theoretical view, the principle of using just red and blue light sources predominately.

Does anyone else think this is flawed thinking re: mj?
My reasoning goes like this:
- good grow light mimic the best grow light, the Gods' nuclear torch, the sun. Now this throws out a mega spectrum of all sorts of wave lengths.
- HPS / CFL / MH are broad spectrum output, thus we assume waste aspects of light the plant allegedly can't use.
- LEDs are narrow spectrum, hence good when a simple response is required. (NASA tests of leaf foodgrowth suing LED)
- We keep seeing this spectrum of response to wavelength, which is interesting as it is focussed about the red blue bit, but has response at all levels.

So what's so wrong with using white light LEDs in the same ways as CFLs?

Maybe the problem of mj response to LED for flowering is too complex for 2 or 3 wavelengths to adequately stimulate the correct sequence within the plant. By using a broader spectrum, this applies stimulus in all ranges. Not optimised but maybe a pointer to an alternative.

It may be interesting to see a high power (XCree etc) white light grow.

If anyone wants to lend me such a lamp, I'm up for it.


regs to all attending the Uni of Canna, UK420

FrangiNeuron

Too expensive. And I must say you sure don't seem to know what is what in grow lights. Black lights put out mostly UVA. UVB is the radiation supplement preferred by knowledgeable growers!