O
ookiimata
- 131
- 18
Hey Guys. This section seems to be addressing a certain brand of LED Panel, so I hope it's okay to post here. I didn't see a more general LED area. Please delete or move as appropriate if this is the wrong section.
Alright. Having many (around two dozen, relatively "many" for some, relatively few for others) grows under my belt, having had to sacrifice my lighting equipment two years, and preparing a new micro two cab grow, I obviously needed some new lighting. Because the cabs are quite short, I considered LED. Here are some thoughts and resources I've put together through my research, as well as more detail about my cabs just to give you a better idea about what kind of setup I'm considering the LEDs for.
I'm adding a new aero grow area, one cabinet for mom and clones, one larger cabinet for veg/flower. Neither cabinet is particularly tall, so I'm going with scrog. Used srcog before with good results under HPS in a roughly equal sized, but taller, area. Because the area is small, but I'm also someone who demands more-than-adequate lumens per sq ft, I obviously became interested in the LED technology. The potential depth of an LED panel is also appealing, as it could save me a couple inches in the height department. And, as always, there's the heat issue. Using a 400W or 600W HPS in the flower cabinet would require extensive ventilation, and while this isn't necessarily a "stealth" grow, I'd prefer to have as little vent holes as possible in the cab, and use as little fan energy on cooling the light as possible. Looked into water cooling the light, but that seems too bulky for my situation, and I hate the idea of the light having to go through the water and layers of glass. Because the cabinet is not very tall, and I'll be scroging, light penetration is not my greatest concern. Up front costs are not my biggest concern. I either build efficient, high quality rooms, or I don't grow. I'm growing tomatoes, by the way.
My instinct is to play it safe as far as the light efficiency is concerned, buy a new 400/600w digi ballast, mount the ballast outside the cabinet, and cool the hell out of the bulb. I still worry this will put out too much heat/per distance to the plants. Every inch of available plant height is a concern in this situation, even if I ultimately don't use it all.
But I read all these things claiming you can keep LEDs inches away from the plants, that they put out minimal amounts of heat, and that they're long lasting. Well, hell, who wouldn't want that? So I began researching. I'll share some of the things I've found here with you guys.
http://www.ledgrow.eu/
That guy is one of the best resources I've found. Grow journal details seven LED grows with images, and images of final dry weight on the scale. He's in the middle of a new grow now. Some wonderful tips on there. He found that adding far-red bulbs to the spectrum dramatically decreases the delay in flowering common in LED grows. He improves his setup each grow, experimenting with different bulbs and panel placements. He found that adding side panels eliminated the stretching problem. This seems like an obvious solution in retrospect, but I notice that all the commercially available LED setups are still working with stronger and stronger sole top panel designs (well, I guess in theory you could buy three of their panels and use two as side lighting, but the cost is prohibitive as hell in a real world situation). Looking at the improvements in spectrum claimed by the newer commercial LED panels, I'm assuming they've found the same thing out about supplementing far-red and various white bulbs to the initial red/blue claims and designs. With his small SOG LED grow, his last (and best) yield was 53grams from a 60w setup. So around .66g per kwh. We all know this is inferior to HID. But that's not necessarily the point, merely a point of interest. 53grams of nice product from 60w is acceptable for me at this stage of LED grow research, considering this is a homemade light rig and a soil grow. Tweaking veg times and slightly scaling up the grow dimensions and number of lights (visit the site and check out his pics to get an idea about his grow size) could potentially offer the grower a steady supply with very little wattage - just building off the design that guy is using. He achieved those results with the Rebel LEDs. He's switched to the CREEs this grow, and his calculations predict something like 1.4x increase in light output at the same wattage. Time will tell how the math translates to a real world grow. His site also offers a great faq on truth and myths surrounding LEDs based on his experience and research. His notes on heat generation are particularly interesting. One thing about his light setup is a lack of lenses. I think a narrow lens, which would unfortunately lead to an increase of bulbs needed to cover the same width/length, would significantly improve penetration. I wrote, "I think," meaning that is the general consensus of the industry, not some breakthrough I've discovered. Lenses for the LEDs seem to claim efficiency of around 83-88%. So you'll be losing some light, but air cooling a HID bulb without sucking out precious CO2 will also require some kind of pyrex or glass, so I don't necessarily consider that a draw back.
http://www.reefcentr...d.php?t=1587273
That thread details a saltwater aquarium light build using LEDs. Great information. He even took a PAR reading of the light at different distances. As with the first builder, this gentleman does not use light-concentrating lenses to improve penetration. If nothing else, his experience demonstrates that LEDs are effective for vegging. Reefs require blue veg light, not the red spectrum we're looking for. So his light is entirely blue and white. So while it's interesting to have some kind of confirmation on the effectiveness of maintaining vegetative growth, the real question for growers still hasn't been answered. Flowering. CFLs can veg adequately for negligible costs, what's important to us is flowering. In this regard, the grow journal discussed above seems to be the best source I've found.
The drivers needed to effectively power the LEDs are a significant portion of overall cost. For anyone electrically inclined, this guy has written some interesting DIY methods for building your own efficient drivers.
http://www.instructa...gh-Power-LED-s/
I'm not proficient enough with electrical work to comment on his methods. I've purchased several books on electric work and wiring and am working my way through them now, trying to attain the knowledge to judge and attempt his methods. They seem easy enough, and the prices vary from pennies to a few bucks for the required parts of the varying designs. If anyone here is willing to take a look at this DIY guide and provide informed feedback, I'd certainly love to hear it.
So, looking at the new 5 band spectrum panels being sold for (current price as of 10/29/2010) $1,199, I would assume they've added/increased far red bulbs and possibly white bulbs (although looking at the image on their site, I can't make out any individual white bulbs). I'd further assume they've added optics to increase penetration. Their site says varying angles for different applications. I don't know what this means. They give you several complete sets of optics of varying degree which you can manually swap in and out? If anyone can clear that up, I'd appreciate it. They also only give a three year warranty, which I find somewhat discouraging. It seems that if their components are built to work the claimed length of the bulbs' effectiveness, they'd have something closer to five years. Not a deal breaker, but just something that caught my attention. So they're expensive. But if they're using the same high-quality parts that one would use in a DIY build, they're testing for optimum light efficiency, they're doing all the assembly and wiring for you, the end user is only receiving one shipment rather than many (as well as having to shop around to different stores to find parts) the convenience factor and professional (I assume) construction would make the price reasonable enough for consideration. However, being the finicky bastard I am, not knowing what kind of bulbs (brand, wattage) and optics they're using is a problem, pretty much because the technology is in such an early, relatively untested stage. I'd also like to know how many heatsinks and fans they're using to cool it, as well as some rough idea about what kind of heat this thing exhausts (I realize temperature will vary depending on room size and ventilation, but some kind of rough idea would be nice). They also claim that a separate LED panel, a flower booster, will increase yields by a large margin. For a considerable additional charge. For $1200, it seems that I shouldn't need to be buying additional $200-300 lights. I'm not sure if constraints arose due to a desired final size of the big panel, desired final wattage draw, or if they're just splitting it up to make more money. Otherwise it seems that they would have just incorporated whatever lights the flower booster has into the main panel. I would hope size and/or wattage draw to be the cause.
The cabinets are constructed, the aero units as well. I took my time and researched both designs, as with all my rooms. Yet I'm torn on the light issue for this particular space. While I have the funds, I don't enjoy throwing money around on things I'll find are not what I hoped, or are not worth the money. If anyone can shed any more light onto the questions and data I've discussed, PLEASE do. I'm not afraid to have someone more informed than myself correct me.
That was the original post I made on another site (only received one helpful reply there, so I came here to try my luck). Since then, I've been in contact with Chinese manufacturers, and have figured out a little more about factory costs of these things, and factory cost of buying the individual bulbs for a DIY panel.
I've also seen a great LED grow using 3 150W panels (bought direct from China) made up of the following color ratio: 50% 660nm, 10% 630nm, 10% 600nm, 10% 3500k warm white, and 20% 460nm. The grow is featured on another forum. I'd be glad to link to it, but I'm not sure of the rules here regarding that, and I also wouldn't want to link to the gentleman's grow without his permission. But he grew the tallest, densest, most bud-packed plants I've seen with LEDs. It's actually impressive enough that I almost have a hard time believing he only used LEDs, but he's not selling the lights, and he clearly shows them at work growing the plants, so I'll take him at his word. Due to his success, I'm taking those colors and approx. those ratios as a starting point for a successful panel design.
So knowing what colors and how many I needed, I got on Alibaba and started sending messages back and forth with about 18 chinese manufacturers. They're chomping at the bit to sell these things, so there's no trouble getting a hold of them for anyone interested. It seems that buying the pre-built panels is roughly the same cost as buying the bulbs individually then building the drivers, cooling and final assembly oneself. I suppose this is because they have hundreds of workers making 10 cents an hour to put these things together, and the driver components probably cost about two dollars for them. The panels they are selling are the same thing I've seen being used on this forum from the so-called "LEDgirl." They also look the same as Prosource. The majority of the manufacturers ask you, the buyer, to specify what colors and what ratios you want, then they build X amount of panels for you with those specifications. For example, using the above colors and ratios, I was quoted a price of $500 shipped to my door for a single 300W panel. The panel itself is around $340, the shipping cost making up the rest of the $500 total. Every manufacturer I contacted is selling these panels for slightly more than a dollar a watt. This is inline with the price for the actual bulbs if one were to order them from China. Different manufacturers use different bulbs. Some of the people I talked to use Crees.
Here is the pre-shipping cost I was quoted if I were to buy the bulbs individually:
Thank you for your inquiry. Now I quote you the price as below:
100x Deep Red 1W : 640nm~660nm $0.98/pc
30x Red 623nm 1W : $0.92/pc
30x Amber 590nm 1W : $0.92/pc
60x Blue 460nm 1W : $0.68
20x Purple 390nm 1W : $3.8
5x Neutral White 5200K 1W : $0.90/pc with 100lm
5x Cool White 6500K 1W :$0.90/pc with 100lm
1W led bulb price: warm white 3000K: $6.78/pc AC 85~265V, which can replace the common 20W bulb.
I added "cool" and "neutral" in my inquiry just to get an idea of what that would cost. I also asked for 10x warm white, so I'm not quite sure what that final quote of $6.78/pc is on those. I believe they can be bought cheaper than that on the internet from American sellers.
Most of the panel manufacturers offer the three year warranty (hence the three year warranty being offered by the companies reselling them here). Driver failure seems to be the biggest issue. Some of the manufacturers I spoke to addressed this issue and claimed they have fixed the problem. I dunno.
At this point, I have pretty much just decided to pick up a 400w Digital Greenhouse setup and drop that in the cab (mounting the ballast externally). A little over 200 bucks, and I have experience with the technology and know it works. But I thought I'd at least share the info I've gathered on LEDs for those interested. It's a shame to pay a $500 or more markup on a product that someone is just ordering from China then re-sending to you.
Hope this helps people looking into LED purchases.
Alright. Having many (around two dozen, relatively "many" for some, relatively few for others) grows under my belt, having had to sacrifice my lighting equipment two years, and preparing a new micro two cab grow, I obviously needed some new lighting. Because the cabs are quite short, I considered LED. Here are some thoughts and resources I've put together through my research, as well as more detail about my cabs just to give you a better idea about what kind of setup I'm considering the LEDs for.
I'm adding a new aero grow area, one cabinet for mom and clones, one larger cabinet for veg/flower. Neither cabinet is particularly tall, so I'm going with scrog. Used srcog before with good results under HPS in a roughly equal sized, but taller, area. Because the area is small, but I'm also someone who demands more-than-adequate lumens per sq ft, I obviously became interested in the LED technology. The potential depth of an LED panel is also appealing, as it could save me a couple inches in the height department. And, as always, there's the heat issue. Using a 400W or 600W HPS in the flower cabinet would require extensive ventilation, and while this isn't necessarily a "stealth" grow, I'd prefer to have as little vent holes as possible in the cab, and use as little fan energy on cooling the light as possible. Looked into water cooling the light, but that seems too bulky for my situation, and I hate the idea of the light having to go through the water and layers of glass. Because the cabinet is not very tall, and I'll be scroging, light penetration is not my greatest concern. Up front costs are not my biggest concern. I either build efficient, high quality rooms, or I don't grow. I'm growing tomatoes, by the way.
My instinct is to play it safe as far as the light efficiency is concerned, buy a new 400/600w digi ballast, mount the ballast outside the cabinet, and cool the hell out of the bulb. I still worry this will put out too much heat/per distance to the plants. Every inch of available plant height is a concern in this situation, even if I ultimately don't use it all.
But I read all these things claiming you can keep LEDs inches away from the plants, that they put out minimal amounts of heat, and that they're long lasting. Well, hell, who wouldn't want that? So I began researching. I'll share some of the things I've found here with you guys.
http://www.ledgrow.eu/
That guy is one of the best resources I've found. Grow journal details seven LED grows with images, and images of final dry weight on the scale. He's in the middle of a new grow now. Some wonderful tips on there. He found that adding far-red bulbs to the spectrum dramatically decreases the delay in flowering common in LED grows. He improves his setup each grow, experimenting with different bulbs and panel placements. He found that adding side panels eliminated the stretching problem. This seems like an obvious solution in retrospect, but I notice that all the commercially available LED setups are still working with stronger and stronger sole top panel designs (well, I guess in theory you could buy three of their panels and use two as side lighting, but the cost is prohibitive as hell in a real world situation). Looking at the improvements in spectrum claimed by the newer commercial LED panels, I'm assuming they've found the same thing out about supplementing far-red and various white bulbs to the initial red/blue claims and designs. With his small SOG LED grow, his last (and best) yield was 53grams from a 60w setup. So around .66g per kwh. We all know this is inferior to HID. But that's not necessarily the point, merely a point of interest. 53grams of nice product from 60w is acceptable for me at this stage of LED grow research, considering this is a homemade light rig and a soil grow. Tweaking veg times and slightly scaling up the grow dimensions and number of lights (visit the site and check out his pics to get an idea about his grow size) could potentially offer the grower a steady supply with very little wattage - just building off the design that guy is using. He achieved those results with the Rebel LEDs. He's switched to the CREEs this grow, and his calculations predict something like 1.4x increase in light output at the same wattage. Time will tell how the math translates to a real world grow. His site also offers a great faq on truth and myths surrounding LEDs based on his experience and research. His notes on heat generation are particularly interesting. One thing about his light setup is a lack of lenses. I think a narrow lens, which would unfortunately lead to an increase of bulbs needed to cover the same width/length, would significantly improve penetration. I wrote, "I think," meaning that is the general consensus of the industry, not some breakthrough I've discovered. Lenses for the LEDs seem to claim efficiency of around 83-88%. So you'll be losing some light, but air cooling a HID bulb without sucking out precious CO2 will also require some kind of pyrex or glass, so I don't necessarily consider that a draw back.
http://www.reefcentr...d.php?t=1587273
That thread details a saltwater aquarium light build using LEDs. Great information. He even took a PAR reading of the light at different distances. As with the first builder, this gentleman does not use light-concentrating lenses to improve penetration. If nothing else, his experience demonstrates that LEDs are effective for vegging. Reefs require blue veg light, not the red spectrum we're looking for. So his light is entirely blue and white. So while it's interesting to have some kind of confirmation on the effectiveness of maintaining vegetative growth, the real question for growers still hasn't been answered. Flowering. CFLs can veg adequately for negligible costs, what's important to us is flowering. In this regard, the grow journal discussed above seems to be the best source I've found.
The drivers needed to effectively power the LEDs are a significant portion of overall cost. For anyone electrically inclined, this guy has written some interesting DIY methods for building your own efficient drivers.
http://www.instructa...gh-Power-LED-s/
I'm not proficient enough with electrical work to comment on his methods. I've purchased several books on electric work and wiring and am working my way through them now, trying to attain the knowledge to judge and attempt his methods. They seem easy enough, and the prices vary from pennies to a few bucks for the required parts of the varying designs. If anyone here is willing to take a look at this DIY guide and provide informed feedback, I'd certainly love to hear it.
So, looking at the new 5 band spectrum panels being sold for (current price as of 10/29/2010) $1,199, I would assume they've added/increased far red bulbs and possibly white bulbs (although looking at the image on their site, I can't make out any individual white bulbs). I'd further assume they've added optics to increase penetration. Their site says varying angles for different applications. I don't know what this means. They give you several complete sets of optics of varying degree which you can manually swap in and out? If anyone can clear that up, I'd appreciate it. They also only give a three year warranty, which I find somewhat discouraging. It seems that if their components are built to work the claimed length of the bulbs' effectiveness, they'd have something closer to five years. Not a deal breaker, but just something that caught my attention. So they're expensive. But if they're using the same high-quality parts that one would use in a DIY build, they're testing for optimum light efficiency, they're doing all the assembly and wiring for you, the end user is only receiving one shipment rather than many (as well as having to shop around to different stores to find parts) the convenience factor and professional (I assume) construction would make the price reasonable enough for consideration. However, being the finicky bastard I am, not knowing what kind of bulbs (brand, wattage) and optics they're using is a problem, pretty much because the technology is in such an early, relatively untested stage. I'd also like to know how many heatsinks and fans they're using to cool it, as well as some rough idea about what kind of heat this thing exhausts (I realize temperature will vary depending on room size and ventilation, but some kind of rough idea would be nice). They also claim that a separate LED panel, a flower booster, will increase yields by a large margin. For a considerable additional charge. For $1200, it seems that I shouldn't need to be buying additional $200-300 lights. I'm not sure if constraints arose due to a desired final size of the big panel, desired final wattage draw, or if they're just splitting it up to make more money. Otherwise it seems that they would have just incorporated whatever lights the flower booster has into the main panel. I would hope size and/or wattage draw to be the cause.
The cabinets are constructed, the aero units as well. I took my time and researched both designs, as with all my rooms. Yet I'm torn on the light issue for this particular space. While I have the funds, I don't enjoy throwing money around on things I'll find are not what I hoped, or are not worth the money. If anyone can shed any more light onto the questions and data I've discussed, PLEASE do. I'm not afraid to have someone more informed than myself correct me.
That was the original post I made on another site (only received one helpful reply there, so I came here to try my luck). Since then, I've been in contact with Chinese manufacturers, and have figured out a little more about factory costs of these things, and factory cost of buying the individual bulbs for a DIY panel.
I've also seen a great LED grow using 3 150W panels (bought direct from China) made up of the following color ratio: 50% 660nm, 10% 630nm, 10% 600nm, 10% 3500k warm white, and 20% 460nm. The grow is featured on another forum. I'd be glad to link to it, but I'm not sure of the rules here regarding that, and I also wouldn't want to link to the gentleman's grow without his permission. But he grew the tallest, densest, most bud-packed plants I've seen with LEDs. It's actually impressive enough that I almost have a hard time believing he only used LEDs, but he's not selling the lights, and he clearly shows them at work growing the plants, so I'll take him at his word. Due to his success, I'm taking those colors and approx. those ratios as a starting point for a successful panel design.
So knowing what colors and how many I needed, I got on Alibaba and started sending messages back and forth with about 18 chinese manufacturers. They're chomping at the bit to sell these things, so there's no trouble getting a hold of them for anyone interested. It seems that buying the pre-built panels is roughly the same cost as buying the bulbs individually then building the drivers, cooling and final assembly oneself. I suppose this is because they have hundreds of workers making 10 cents an hour to put these things together, and the driver components probably cost about two dollars for them. The panels they are selling are the same thing I've seen being used on this forum from the so-called "LEDgirl." They also look the same as Prosource. The majority of the manufacturers ask you, the buyer, to specify what colors and what ratios you want, then they build X amount of panels for you with those specifications. For example, using the above colors and ratios, I was quoted a price of $500 shipped to my door for a single 300W panel. The panel itself is around $340, the shipping cost making up the rest of the $500 total. Every manufacturer I contacted is selling these panels for slightly more than a dollar a watt. This is inline with the price for the actual bulbs if one were to order them from China. Different manufacturers use different bulbs. Some of the people I talked to use Crees.
Here is the pre-shipping cost I was quoted if I were to buy the bulbs individually:
Thank you for your inquiry. Now I quote you the price as below:
100x Deep Red 1W : 640nm~660nm $0.98/pc
30x Red 623nm 1W : $0.92/pc
30x Amber 590nm 1W : $0.92/pc
60x Blue 460nm 1W : $0.68
20x Purple 390nm 1W : $3.8
5x Neutral White 5200K 1W : $0.90/pc with 100lm
5x Cool White 6500K 1W :$0.90/pc with 100lm
1W led bulb price: warm white 3000K: $6.78/pc AC 85~265V, which can replace the common 20W bulb.
I added "cool" and "neutral" in my inquiry just to get an idea of what that would cost. I also asked for 10x warm white, so I'm not quite sure what that final quote of $6.78/pc is on those. I believe they can be bought cheaper than that on the internet from American sellers.
Most of the panel manufacturers offer the three year warranty (hence the three year warranty being offered by the companies reselling them here). Driver failure seems to be the biggest issue. Some of the manufacturers I spoke to addressed this issue and claimed they have fixed the problem. I dunno.
At this point, I have pretty much just decided to pick up a 400w Digital Greenhouse setup and drop that in the cab (mounting the ballast externally). A little over 200 bucks, and I have experience with the technology and know it works. But I thought I'd at least share the info I've gathered on LEDs for those interested. It's a shame to pay a $500 or more markup on a product that someone is just ordering from China then re-sending to you.
Hope this helps people looking into LED purchases.