How far to keep your LED's / Quantum Boards from the canopy?

Pparker88

Well-Known Member
HLG never has answered a single email i have sent either...i get my info from their site and a few dedicated threads here where robin and a few others have addressed this directly several times.

Options for lenses are shown on HLG's site, right now. Look for them. About $6 each. How much they diffuse if at all I cant say.

My point was this...Samsung designed the chips specifically to have a 120 degree beam angle. They could change it...they don't. They are the engineers behind everything about the chips.

The boards are designed knowing all the specs including the beam angle. This allows them to have boards that are used at certain distances. More boards at lower power allows for more even coverage and closer to the canopy. Since many people just want plug and play....HLG until just recently has not offered a fixture designed specifically for this. That new Scorpio is designed for this purpose. 6 boards spread out on a single fixture. Check the specs and you will see what Im talking about.

Can you diffuse each board with a cover to diffuse them? Sure...but they have multi board slates already. So unless i wanted only 1 board diffused across a big space or very close to the canopy...i wouldnt do it. Any other situation allows me to run more efficiently by simply dimming more boards attached to the same power supply.
I emailed them with that very same question and got this response. Hope it helps.
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insomnia65

Well-Known Member
That's kinda what I'm doing now. I have 4 kingbrite 240W V4's running in a 5X5. Honestly I was a little disappointed even with this for coverage at over 100% higher distance above the canopy than my old setup (about 20" in veg). The corners of the tent are much less lit than where the lights are directly above, and I do have them pretty evenly spaced out in the tent. And it turns out I'm running about 4 degrees Celsius warmer at this cycle stage (running about 70% now) and I'm using more power with more watts. WTF?

Efficiency may be better with these fancy diodes, but it's costing me more money to run, more heat to extract, and when my plants are small I'm lighting up areas of the tent I shouldn't be. Here's my old setup: https://www.rollitup.org/t/my-budget-5x5-setup.982183/

Granted I haven't flowered with them yet and I've only had this new setup for a couple of weeks, and I'm old and change comes hard these days. Took me a long time to try any LED and switch from HPS in the beginning. Yield will tell, but up to now I'm not as impressed as I thought I'd be. They look cool though.
Any news on those lights mate.
 

insomnia65

Well-Known Member
Did you see this one?
They're out there.
Brilliant, wondering if you can buy some for quantum boards or do should you diy
 

hybridway2

Amare Shill
Brilliant, wondering if you can buy some for quantum boards or do should you diy
 

insomnia65

Well-Known Member
Yes, can be done both ways. For instance an HLG 65 OR 100 Board with the spread diodes & a ceiling full is one way. 288 clustered boards have been doing well with x4 equally spaced in a 4x4, hung high enough though I feel diffusion would help them as well. If they were bigger in dimensions then they'd be even better.
Now say its the new Diablo 650R or the 550 model, all in one board. Or the Trinity, 96's, HO- COBs, Those I feel would do magnificently diffused & there would be about 1/4 of these threads going on. Because as I showed on my thread with pics. Its not just about distance when showed covered 96's pushing 1250 umol on the plant & it was healthy n flowering like a beast, then showed 700umol on the same plant (other side) via the other 96's , uncovered & the plant was stunted & yellowing in that section.
It was a documented. Either on my "LED vs HPS" growing thread I'm locked out of using or my"Amare Bar-8" thread that has mysteriously disappeared.
Its not like I speak with no experience in both situations. My 96 covers are getting a wet-sand as are my Bar-8 Proto covers. All cobs are getting diffusion plates of different types to experiment. There are several options that would blow your mind out there with 95% transmittance or close. Ill take whatever light-losses I have to take in order to accomplish up to a 30% higher yeild, healthier plants, prob no purple stems, 200% more use of the light. I have yet to fully test to see how close I'll align with previous Sites or documented tests.
Hey, that's just me, I'm not saying to encase your diodes if they're not designed to be. Causing overheating & losing longevity. More like if you watch Shane's video from MiGro about his HLG, QB review. He built a suspended clear glass cover with like a 1" gap or more between it & the diodes. Just like that is how I'm doing mine, but sanding it. For early testing for the Big QB's I bought 2x4' pixilated drop-ceiling light covers to be set in a drop-ceiling setting, suspended off the diodes by at least 1.5". He got the idea off HLG 's website.
But, I have no fight about any of it, just sharing my experiences for those who care to listen. Just one experience in a test & a few yrs struggling with QB's prior. I had the first QB's with Lenses. Oh boy, they fried x2 of my plants before I took them off & those are like 4 evenly spread in a 4x4.View attachment 4713922
Have a great day & safe Halloween. Going to set-up a bunch of burples for the light show along with 90• lenses COBs/Monos arrays up into the sky like Bat-Man. bongsmilieView attachment 4713896
Some SBS Action if anyone's interested.
What video of migro with diffuser have you a link mate, I'm.just wondering what height away from a quantum board these diffusers should be.
 

hybridway2

Amare Shill

insomnia65

Well-Known Member
He did not have a diffusion plate but a clear peice of glass suspended about an inch below the diodes. That csn be done with a polycarbonate or some sort of non melting transparent plastic with a light 400-600 grit wet-sand probably . https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2015.00704/full
I did see Shane put a cover on a HLG but I thought that was to keep out any moisture, I ask because I have a HLG build, I have taken your diffuser on board, thank you.
 
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hybridway2

Amare Shill
I did see Shane put a cover on a HLG but I thought that was to keep out any moisture, I ask because I have a HLG build, I have taken your diffuser on board, thank you.
Nice! Lmk how you make out? Running the indoor lighting diffusion testing next run if you wanna get down pls do join.
So many have the issues of pre-mature yellowing leaves, where the undiffussed light hits. Almost no matter how dimm the white led light is in flower. Lowers are always green. Hoping these tests will show us keeping them green in comparison.
 

jonnynobody

Well-Known Member
This question about lights is probably as old as the first people who started to grow weed with electricity, and has been asked tons of times here too without end in sight. I didn't see a "real dedicated" topic about it either so decided to make one. Maybe some official or unofficial infotopic would be nice, unless it already exists and i'm just unaware. But if there isn't, maybe this topic would be a good start and very useful to especially newer growers like me who owns LED's.

I'm sure there's lots of studies about lights and how much plants (and this case weed) can absorb and use, and how much is too much or too little, and most importantly, what's the optimal amount of light to give your plants. And also i'm sure there's other must know things you have to keep in mind when trying to optimize how much light your plants can use, would love to hear about those too. I'm sure many of you are about min-maxing your setup as much as possible as i am, so i'd like to learn everything about this topic.

And if people would like to share their own setup, including their growing space and light distance/power from seed to harvest, and optionally their own personal experiences for example if someone managed to burn their buds with LED lights.

Lately i was a little bit confused when i saw my buddies 240w QB blasting at full power like 8-9" (20-23cm) from the canopy. I was like wtf, pretty much everyone i've asked and all sites tell to keep your LED's 18-28" (46-71cm) away from the canopy without much other information. He seems to be doing well, i saw his fat buds growing and my own look so thin compared to them. I started growing the same time as him, but i listened to someone's advice and kept my Quantum Boards way too high with little power, so vegging time was pretty long as you can imagine. And i even kept the boards at low power into flower too, after seeing my buddies setup i realized how far behind i am and adjusted my lights much more in hopes to get better results of course.

My setup:

4x4x6.5 (120x120x200cm) tent, a little over 500W total power shared with 4 Quantum Board so 125w per board, and one plant under each board in 5 gallon (19 liter) pots. Managed to train them enough to fill the tent from wall to wall, starting day 40 in flower now. My lights are currently at 14"-16" (35-40cm) away from the tops at about 75-80% power. Temps at day have been lately around 82-84F (28-29c) and humidity 50-53%. It's like 2f (1.5c) hotter at the canopy level, i think that's pretty normal right under the light. I was doing some testing and reading about VPD too, i'm out of the optimal zone because of the high temps/lower humidity that the plants would really want, but that's another topic.

I see in youtube videos people having expensive meters to measure light levels when testing lights, probably would be waste of money to get one of those just for this purpose, unless you know some cheap meter that would work well, and what kind of readings i should be aiming at?

Some of you guys must have perfected the craft and know everything about the topic for sure, what should i do about the lights at the moment? And is there some kind of easy/cheap way to measure the lights on top of charts what are optimal levels in different stages, so i would never have play any guessing games again. That would ease my life so much and i'm not the only one! Also how do you notice if the lights are a little bit too close, what signs should i be looking for?

And of course i'm trying to adjust my temps/humidity at the same time as close to the perfection i can. Even planning to get some extra deep red LED's (and maybe some kind of UV too if the cost/performance is worth it), there's so much studying to do but i've read/seen they really make a difference compared to just plain white Quantum Boards :)
The short answer is there is no standard distance. Some strains can take more light than other strains. I've got a Jager in my flower room presently that's one of 7 different strains being flowered this cycle. Jager is the only plant in the flower room that doesn't like the light intensity and her leaves closest to the light have clawed, whereas every other strain is absolutely loving the light. Each strain has the potential to provide a different response, because like us humanoids they are all unique and different in their genetic makeup.

LED light manufacturer's notoriously offer terrible advice about their equipment, because they're in the business of manufacturing and selling lights. They are not in the business of growing cannabis. My spider farmer SF-4000 operates at 450W. SF says the light is good for a 5'x5'. Wrong. I was unable to operate the board at any more than 50% power otherwise light bleaching occurred on all 4 plants of different strains within that nursery. What can be learned from this? Spider farmer doesn't know shit about growing cannabis. However, they make a great light. It's just far too much power for a 5'x5' grow tent. It does fantastic in my flower room with fully developed 5' tall plants, but it fried my vegging plants which necessitated a 50% power reduction. I've since moved the SF-4000 permanently into my flower room where it can be used at full power as it was intended.

To put a little more rubber to the road here I will offer another example. Knowing that I had great success with my SF-4000 @ 50% power or 225W I realized the problem wasn't with the quantum board. The problem was with how much horsepower was under the hood. It was simply too much power and light for the space it was intended to be used and recommended for by the manufacturer. Again, they don't know shit about growing cannabis. They know a lot about efficiently manufacturing quantum boards. With that in mind I shopped for 2 quantum boards at 110W each to replace the over powered 450W SF-4000. I installed them at the maximum height I could hang them from the tent frame and operated them both at full power. For the past 4 days I have had fantastic results. No light bleaching, rapid growth, and overall very happy little ladies.

What I'm seeing across the board with LED manufacturer's is that they are telling people to keep the boards far too close to their canopy which is why so many new LED growers wind up burning their plants. Poor advice from the manufacturers. Nothing more. The technology is great. The problem from what I have seen is there are more people with a poor understanding of how to effectively use these lights than there are people with a sound understanding.

Stop listening to the manufacturer's and start listening to your plants.
Start your lights too high not too low. You can always move them closer as you read your plants over 2 or 3 days.

Here's a picture of my two 110W quantum boards and how far away they are from the plants. As you can see my plants are very happy and lush. Start the lights far away and move closer as needed. Light burn has never made a plant grow faster or produce better buds. That's my story and I'm sticking to it :)

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DukeFluke

Well-Known Member
Of course i know there's zillion other variables too, but i'm hunting some kind of baseline
If you're hunting a baseline then you need the other variables. You need to know the Rh and temp of the room, the feed strength and the nutrient ratios. And then you need to know the power of the light and how close it is to the canopy of healthy vigorous plants

You also need to know what light stressed plants look like. It's not often the case that they're burned. It might be the direction of their leaves, the colour of their stems, or a sign of nutrient imbalance.
 

Comparator

Well-Known Member
The short answer is there is no standard distance. Some strains can take more light than other strains. I've got a Jager in my flower room presently that's one of 7 different strains being flowered this cycle. Jager is the only plant in the flower room that doesn't like the light intensity and her leaves closest to the light have clawed, whereas every other strain is absolutely loving the light. Each strain has the potential to provide a different response, because like us humanoids they are all unique and different in their genetic makeup.

LED light manufacturer's notoriously offer terrible advice about their equipment, because they're in the business of manufacturing and selling lights. They are not in the business of growing cannabis. My spider farmer SF-4000 operates at 450W. SF says the light is good for a 5'x5'. Wrong. I was unable to operate the board at any more than 50% power otherwise light bleaching occurred on all 4 plants of different strains within that nursery. What can be learned from this? Spider farmer doesn't know shit about growing cannabis. However, they make a great light. It's just far too much power for a 5'x5' grow tent. It does fantastic in my flower room with fully developed 5' tall plants, but it fried my vegging plants which necessitated a 50% power reduction. I've since moved the SF-4000 permanently into my flower room where it can be used at full power as it was intended.

To put a little more rubber to the road here I will offer another example. Knowing that I had great success with my SF-4000 @ 50% power or 225W I realized the problem wasn't with the quantum board. The problem was with how much horsepower was under the hood. It was simply too much power and light for the space it was intended to be used and recommended for by the manufacturer. Again, they don't know shit about growing cannabis. They know a lot about efficiently manufacturing quantum boards. With that in mind I shopped for 2 quantum boards at 110W each to replace the over powered 450W SF-4000. I installed them at the maximum height I could hang them from the tent frame and operated them both at full power. For the past 4 days I have had fantastic results. No light bleaching, rapid growth, and overall very happy little ladies.

What I'm seeing across the board with LED manufacturer's is that they are telling people to keep the boards far too close to their canopy which is why so many new LED growers wind up burning their plants. Poor advice from the manufacturers. Nothing more. The technology is great. The problem from what I have seen is there are more people with a poor understanding of how to effectively use these lights than there are people with a sound understanding.

Stop listening to the manufacturer's and start listening to your plants.
Start your lights too high not too low. You can always move them closer as you read your plants over 2 or 3 days.

Here's a picture of my two 110W quantum boards and how far away they are from the plants. As you can see my plants are very happy and lush. Start the lights far away and move closer as needed. Light burn has never made a plant grow faster or produce better buds. That's my story and I'm sticking to it :)

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Knowing what you now know at the end of your post do you still think the beginning is accurate? Your SF-4000/450w board is to much for a 5x5? How did you ever decipher that to begin with? SF recommended a 6-12" hanging height?
How's things these days? What's your thoughts on leds or your specific leds 2 yrs later?
 
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