I use a DIY lamp..3500 K samsung, 660 osram, 730 osram, UVA and blue leds , UVB leds ..5 independent channels.. Yes I have spectrometer .Yes I have temp gun,
I am using this kind of spectrum now, too high in blues and far red ..but I am just experimenting..
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and also this..
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I cant tellya how bad I want a spectrometer.. But the $$ are crazy high. I do plan to build one eventually, DIY sensor from a dig cam and an open source platform for pc. But now I am all about lights... I want to get them here so I can move on to all the other countless tasks ahead.
While I have you, what temp gun are you using, and are you happy with it? How are you DIYing your light? I watched how they make the boards, that was interesting, so you buy a board and cannibalize it to add the leds you want? Or buy board with all the white color flavor
and then pull some chips and put in your reds or blues?
Lights.. I am old dog, but I need to know how this led stuff works so I have been reading, watching, and listening. I look at specs for a board, linear lighting module, not even sure the proper term for that, and the specs are... shit, over my head. Old bench tech, I remember 70's and 80's tech, so the construction of this I get. But those specs. Let me take a stab, forward voltage, lets say 10 volts, is what the led calls for to fire. anything below the threashold and no led output. so you give it ten, regulated by the driver and now you have light, how much light is the function of current through the led. I see test currents, and max currents, which I assume will chew up the chip prematurly mostly do to the heat produced within the chip, so driving leds is a bit of a balancing act. To keep the heat down in an enlclosed grow space, running chips at 50~75% amperage is the deal. so whatever you want for total wattage, say.. Ummm.. 500 watts, would take 1000 possible chip watts to accomplish? So to keep from having 100' of linear strips to accomplish what 50' would do, you need to have higher wattage leds? How am I doing?? So at 50% power no heat sink and all the little critters are glowing and happy, while I just want to get out my buggy whip and beat them into compliance. So I add a heat sink.. formula for heat dissapation I have, thats doable, but now I have a shitload of marking, drilling and tapping for the screws to hold those boards on the strips.. OK, if I have to.. Then I crank up a board thats says its comfortable at 25w, to 50w or 500ma to 1amp and now we are cooking.. right? OR---> do I seek out a board that at 50% puts out 50w/100w? Is there such an animal?
Now I see myself in the cob range.. fairly big ones I think to cut down all that pesky mounting bullshit. augmenting with some fancy hi output reds and ir. Am I tracking?? I was all set to use the Samsung horticulture boards with a few red chips in them, but they were kinda spendy, not bad, I was ready to pull the trigger, and while taking one last spin around the dance floor, I found CRI.. holy cow.. whats that? Back to the specs on the boards and everything is 80. So I started looking for 90's, thats when I found, what seemed to be the holy grail.. there were angels singing, birds chirping and dogs howling..BAM.. the spectrum charts where so fat. Then a guy here says screw the fat spectrum. It doesnt really mean anything. He said it better, and used some simplified math as an example, so I took it to heart, and went out with question for google that had never occurred to me to ask, "why dont I want 95CRI leds for growing?" Havent heard back from him. After spending 2 solid weeks reading and listening to growers and educators talk about light and plants, I figure outside is best.. right? Outside they get the full monty. So if I give them the the fattest, spectrum from 280~800nm I can, proportionately in outdoor percentages matching the sun, the plant can take what it wants and be happy. Is this just all wrong? I spent some time hanging out with my best friend in humbolt, they were outdoor growers. They did take a stab at indoor grow with hps, but that was in the 70's. We didnt know shit about all this stuff. But those plants filled up his garage with some skank buds. Skank in the best of ways.
Those bulbs, I'm sure were a pale imitation of whats out there now, and the spectrums of HPS/MH/CMH fall short, spectrum wise of these 98cri leds. So if the spectrogram for the cmh, the fattest one I could find, falls short of the 98cri led, what does that mean? I mean REALLY??
If that guy is right, and the fat spectrum of the 98cri cutter board wont grow weed as good and tight as the cmh with less of most everything, then what am I doing? Just go buy a bulb reflector and ballast and forget all this shit..right? But I live in the bush, and if I have an equipment failure with a bulb or ballast, I am screwed. And if i buy 2 of everything I am in the shit for $$. If I go led, I can break the total lighting into segments all powered seperatly, and if failure occurs I can replace a driver as I will buy a couple extras just for that fail, and if some leds go out, who cares. When I pull the trigger I plan to get a handfull of all the chips on those boards just for repairs.. My grow light spare tire if you will.
I will attempt to post a couple of these here. The last time they came out all fuzzy so I must be doing something wrong. Sorry this was so long. And I sincerely thank anyone with the fortitude, and/or the time to read this. I hope it makes sense to someone as I need answers.
Being new to all this posting stuff, I think this topic is in the wrong zone. I was attempting to reach a fella that answered me yesterday.