LED Grows

Anyone know how to do this? What lights are needed? What spectrum? How to wire the lights? Any help is greatly appreciated!

I tried doing some research on the 'newest led lights', a few months ago, but I could never find out how many lights are required. The company websites never offer any real specific data on how much light is being emitted. What led me to give up on the research, was that most of the sites claimed the LED lights were 'supplemental lighting'. Anyone have any experience with these?
Someone in the 1oz cup competition is using them, I'll be following along.

For LED light panels you will probably want to go with 5mm in blue and red. Blue with some red mixed in for veg and red with some blue mixed in for flower. I think the lowest light angle bulbs that are made are 20 degrees. These will give the most intense light, but over a smaller area. The wide angle bulbs disperse the light over a much broader range, but that deminishes their intensity. And you want the lights to be as intense as possible. LED's are definitely not cheap. You can look into the few companies that are selling LED lighting systems. I was curious to see if I could have large panels of hundreds of LED bulbs made completely surround my plants. For a panel that is 11"H x 5"W that contained roughly 600 bulbs it would have cost approximately $425 per panel. For that much money you can buy an HID system and get excellent results.

Just so you understand what I was going for...I was going to just have larger panels made of what you see in the first picture. The second picture is made by another company. I think it costs somewhere around $1100. I suggest checking on ebay to see other stuff thats on there. Just search under led grow light and you'll find what I'm talking about.

So lazerkittens, did you abandon your idea because of the initial cost to setup?
I would think that, if over the long run, the LED lights proved to be more effective per $ spent, then we'd be seeing a lot more LED lights being used.

What's the lifetime of LED lights, something like 50 000 hrs? HPS bulbs are around 20 000 hrs. I don't think they make replacement LED bulbs either.
I wish I had the numbers to do the math, but I guess they're not comparable, being that LED uses a more focused wavelength.

I forget how long the LEDs will last, but it's in years. You can buy packs of bulbs. You'll just have to resolder them to the board and you're good to go. I abandoned LEDs simply because of the cost. It made a lot more sense to me to just buy an HID system for the price of one panel that would give me proven results. I have yet to see a full grow with LEDs. If they weren't so expensive I wouldve liked to try it out. They use so much less electricity and put out very little heat. And supposedly you're able to feed the plant the two light wavelengths it uses most for photosynthesis.

LaserKittensGoPewPew said:

I forget how long the LEDs will last, but it's in years. You can buy packs of bulbs. You'll just have to resolder them to the board and you're good to go. I abandoned LEDs simply because of the cost. It made a lot more sense to me to just buy an HID system for the price of one panel that would give me proven results. I have yet to see a full grow with LEDs. If they weren't so expensive I wouldve liked to try it out. They use so much less electricity and put out very little heat. And supposedly you're able to feed the plant the two light wavelengths it uses most for photosynthesis.

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Exactly!!! I've seen a full grow with them on another forum(pm me for a link) and the growth was amazing, to say the least. I found some leds on ebay and personally I didn't think the price was bad. How many bulbs would you say I would need? How do you wire them? Where do you get the board you solder them to?http://cgi.ebay.com/100-PCS-5mm-8Kmcd-Fast-Flashing-RED-BLUE-BI-COLOR-LED_W0QQitemZ320096064810QQcategoryZ66954QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItemAre these the right kind? I'm wanting to experiment with this so bad! Thanks for any and all help!!!

I picked up 4 of this company's LED grow lights off ebay a few months ago, but never used them:

http://cgi.ebay.com/LED-Grow-Light-RB66-growing-lights-Orchid-4-PACK_W0QQitemZ290100215905QQcategoryZ43555QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

There is a really good discussion about the LED lights at that auction. Check it out!

They say the four lights will cover a 4 sqare foot area. I doubt that is true.

Right now, I am finally using them to flower my plant in the 16 oz grow thread:
http://www.marijuanapassion.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10461

Feel free to follow along and we can all learn together.

What are the specs on those? Thanks!

The price for the bulb packs eventually adds up. Depending on how many you buy, you may be able to get a bit of a discount by volume. The 5mm bulbs will have two long metal prongs that go through the circuit board. And you solder those inline with all the other bulbs. You have to make sure you're doing it properly and soldering resistors in the correct spot to make everything run how it's supposed to. For the circuit boards or even having everything completely done for you, try going to www.customled.com. They're the ones I got the quote from for those big led panels. I really don't know how many you would need for the best growth. But they say the more light you have the better. But lots of LED power comes at a very high price.

I actually found an article somewhere online about NASA's interest in using LEDs to grow different vegetables in space. They showed a picture of what they used and it was basically a giant square plate of hundreds, maybe a couple thousand LED bulbs.

I think your best bet as far as growing with LEDs is to use what alienbait is using. That company puts out those premade fixtures that are packed with individual diodes. You can even find them on ebay for not a bad price. I've 9 packs of all red go for around $100. You would need to buy the all blue fixtures though. But those seem to be the most reasonable as far as price goes so far. The square panel in the pictures I posted above are selling for $30 on ebay, but you have to solder every single bulb in yourself. Resistors and AC plug are already mounted to the board. That's a lot of work.

Here is a picture of the board/led bulbs so you get the idea. That board measures 5” x 4.75” and holds 245 individual LED bulbs.

Not sure what you want to know, but if you click on the first link I posted, you will get a ton of info.

Here are some numbers for you though:

The lights are 5 watts each with 12 blue LEDs and 54 Red LEDs. It screws into a normal light socket. They are suppose to last 15 years and the manufacturer offers a warranty. They are all sealed glass and "Water resistant."

The Red LEDs emit light at 662nm - 680nm
The Blue LEDs emit light at 430nm - 460nm

They say that 10 Watts of LEDs is equal to 500 Watts of HID. I seriously doubt that claim. They also say that 4 of these lights will cover 4 square feet. I also doubt that claim.

The 16 oz. cup grow is the first time that I am using them, so I do not know how well they will perform. I've got all four pointed at one little plant, so it should explode with flowers, if the manufacturer's claims are to be believed. We shall see.

Hey I checked out that grow you sent me. Doesn't look like it's doing bad at all. I do think to flower with good results you would need more lights though.

I do think they're right though in saying that 4 fixtures will cover 4 square feet. Figure 1 foot per fixture right. Well the picture below is the light coverage of that LED panel I posted above with the red/blue bulbs. Check it out.

I do however seriously doubt that 10w of LED light is the equivilant of 500w of HID...There's no way.

also...if you're interested, right now on ebay there is a 9 pack of red LED fixtures starting at 1 dollar.

Here is the link

http://cgi.ebay.com/LED-Grow-Light-...ryZ42225QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Thanks but those things are probably gonna be $400 or more at the end of the auction. I think i'm going to try the one on your 1st post, 1st pic, square one. Thanks again though.

just be aware that you're going to have to solder all those bulbs in yourself. It's not hard, but it's just time consuming. I'll definitely be looking for your grow journal though. I'm actually really interested in the use of LEDs for growing. Depending on the results I think they really may be worth the cost upfront.

LaserKittensGoPewPew said:

just be aware that you're going to have to solder all those bulbs in yourself. It's not hard, but it's just time consuming. I'll definitely be looking for your grow journal though. I'm actually really interested in the use of LEDs for growing. Depending on the results I think they really may be worth the cost upfront.

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I'd probably need about 3 of those for flower and thats probably for a couple plants. It's just 245 leds so i'll probably use them with my hps and see if I notice a diff. I have a total of 8 plants(2 ak48, 2 afghani, 2 white rhino and 2 indoor mix beans[i'm doing the 16 oz cup grow with the last 2]) under about 500w in a 2 1/2ft x 3ft room. I don't know if i'll try a complete grow with this light alone is all i'm trying to say.:joint:

has any one tried fiber optics for light supply

i think led lighting is interesting i never thought about it, it doesnt really seem econmical though

nobody wants to reply

has any one tried fiber optics for light supply

fiber optics for light supply .. i dont understand how that would work

LED lighting is actually more economical that using HID lighting. The only question now is how good the yields will be after growing with only LEDs.

This is from the LED light discussion thread in the "lights" section. Alien Bait figured out how LEDs are more economical than HIDs.

AlienBait said:

LaserKittens, that is a picture of what I was using as the "400 Watt HPS equivelent." They go for around $1200.00 on this website:



http://www.growwithleds.com/ledproducts.htm



So, it is around $1000 more than a 400W HPS (with enhanced spectrum bulb).



It uses 80 watts.



So, lets to some math....



80 Watts x 24 hours x 30 days = 57600 Watt-Hours = 57.6 KWH/month

At $0.11/KWH (Yes, I pay a lot!), We have 57.6 x .11 = $6.33/month



With a 430 Watt HPS

430 Watts x 24 Hours x 30 days = 309600 Watt-Hours = 309.6 KWH/month

At $0.11/KWH, We have 309.6 x .11 = $34.06/month


Difference = $27.73


So, You would save $27.73 per month in energy by using the LEDs (maybe a little more because you wont need as much ventilation).



1000/27.73 = 36 months = 3 years. SO, It would take 3 years to make back the initial investment in the LEDs in power savings.



And that is if their claims are true that their light is the equivelent of the 400W HPS.

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Also...LEDs last for years. I think they have a life expectancy of around 7 years. That's even more cost cut down in replacement bulbs.

NASA has been experimenting with growing under LEDs for some time now. It really does work quite well. Check out Alien Bait's 16oz cup grow under all LEDs. Now all we need to see is the kind of results that you can get from using them. And also how many LED fixtures you would need to get large yields. In the end HID systems might still be the most efficient option for getting the massive yields per light. You're probably going to need a whole crap load of LEDs to get the equivalent yield as a single HID.