New lights, new spectra and some High Light strips

[Grow Lights Australia]

Just had an extra thought on this, it’s more for my setup but I’m sure others might benefit the details. I have some uva strips that I was using before I got the highlight 420 boards and I kept them in that room. My concern is they’re totalling 16-18w (if I remember correctly) alongside 440w of highlight 420 and 100w in the canopy. The strips are a mix of 385/395/405 and would be adding 3% uva on top of the gen 1 highlights, this now seems like too much uva, especially with already having the pc blue in the 420 boards. From your experience and research, would this be detrimental or within a comfortable range of uva? Or do I overthink everything, probably.

Hi mate, the UV percentage will be based on efficiency x watts. So let's say your UV strips are 30% efficient and our boards are 60% efficient, then the actual percentage of UV light out of the total would be closer to 1.5% than 3%. Our LED panels are just over 60% efficient (at lower currents), but are minimum 55% efficient at higher current and your UV strips will probably be around 35-40% efficient so I'm guessing they would maybe account for 2%, which is not excessive but may be slightly detrimental to yields. The only way to know would be to try it. I think it would be OK to try and I don't think you would do any real damage to your plants but it also depends on the light spread. If you concentrate a lot of UV in one place you may see some slight damage but if you can spread them out I reckon you'll be OK. If you could get samples tested of the same strain grown under the different lighting arrangements then we would be very interested to see them.

 

[Grow Lights Australia]

how did you learn to make this light? did you have to go to school for a special degree? its fascinating. nice light!!

An old-skool grower by the name of @Prawn Connery did a lot of growing and research to find what worked best. He was involved with Australian hemp famers who first noticed the increase in D9THC levels in hemp crops grown under the Australian sun with its higher UV index and postulated that UV would have the same effect on indoor plants. Trial and error and cannabinoid testing led us to discover we could achieve the same results with higher levels of UVA which were safe to work under and more efficient to produce than shorter bursts of UVB. Prawn has been growing indoors for may years and grew outdoors prior to that. He invented the original High Light. I just look after business because unfortunately it is still illegal to grow in Australia and Prawn needs to keep a low profile. You will see him around these parts every now and then. I know he is working on something at the moment which we are keen to see.

 

[hillbill]

I want to be a hemp famer

 

[Speedtriplebbc]

Hi mate, the UV percentage will be based on efficiency x watts. So let's say your UV strips are 30% efficient and our boards are 60% efficient, then the actual percentage of UV light out of the total would be closer to 1.5% than 3%. Our LED panels are just over 60% efficient (at lower currents), but are minimum 55% efficient at higher current and your UV strips will probably be around 35-40% efficient so I'm guessing they would maybe account for 2%, which is not excessive but may be slightly detrimental to yields. The only way to know would be to try it. I think it would be OK to try and I don't think you would do any real damage to your plants but it also depends on the light spread. If you concentrate a lot of UV in one place you may see some slight damage but if you can spread them out I reckon you'll be OK. If you could get samples tested of the same strain grown under the different lighting arrangements then we would be very interested to see them.

This is the sort of technical information you don’t get many other places, that’s a great explanation and although I’m not seeing any damage on my grows, I think I’ll play safe and run one in my veg/mother/clone room. Seems what you’ve posted about uva so far it would benefit both rooms if I split it. It’s two strips of eight diodes so easy enough. Should cover if I get it high a central. Thanks for that information

 

[Prawn Connery]

I want to be a hemp famer

Mate, those hemp farmers are fucking famous! But it's also a true story. At the time, Chinese and Indian hemp seed was testing <0.3% THC in their own countries – which was the initial cut-off limit when industrial hemp legislation was first introduced in my state – but because no-one had experience growing the same strains under the Australian sun, the local farmers soon found out that their crops were exceeding 0.3%, and so they needed to lobby the government to increase the limit due to environmental conditions – namely, the higher UV Index. The limit is now 0.5-1% D9THC, but if you import any seed stock then it needs to have tested at 0.5% or less in the country of origin.

There's a little bit more to the story, as we've always known that outdoor weed had the potential to be stronger than indoor weed of the same strain due to the UV component. We also knew that Metal Halide, Mercury Vapour and Fluorescent lights contained UVA/B and we used to mix those with HPS to improve the quality of our indoor buds. So it wasn't really a secret, but it was hard to find DIY LED lights in the early days with UV and almost impossible to find a "true" full spectrum light on the one channel, so that's what I set about designing. I just did it for fun, mainly, but people kept buying them and so I had to make more and eventually I brought in GLA and then LED Teknik joined us and we turned it into a business venture. It's still a very small operation.

 

[Prawn Connery]

This is the sort of technical information you don’t get many other places, that’s a great explanation and although I’m not seeing any damage on my grows, I think I’ll play safe and run one in my veg/mother/clone room. Seems what you’ve posted about uva so far it would benefit both rooms if I split it. It’s two strips of eight diodes so easy enough. Should cover if I get it high a central. Thanks for that information

Mate, I would give it a go if I were you. I don't think you have much to lose. Even if you don't have access to a mass gas spectrometer, the smoke test shjould tell you if it's successful or not. You might take a very small hit in yield, but 385, 395 and 405nm UVA is not at the pointy end of the spectrum, so I would expect you will notice any minor plant damage before it gets worse – if you see any at all.

 

[Prawn Connery]

Pretty curious about these strips.

They're not too far away from what I understand. We need to chase up the prototypes, as this has dragged on a bit longer than I would have hoped.

 

[MidnightSun72]

They're not too far away from what I understand. We need to chase up the prototypes, as this has dragged on a bit longer than I would have hoped.

Would love to see the specs when you guys get them. Curious the umol/J @ max watts and nominal. Or can I just divide the highlight baord specs by 5 for amperage?

 

[PSUAGRO.]

Talking about hemp farming, how's the d8 situation in Australia? Here(pa) its like a second green rush, very tempted to jump.

Interesting that you thought halide arcs emit significant uv-b past the glass envelope? Was it a specialty one?

 

[Dr.Amber Trichome]

An old-skool grower by the name of @Prawn Connery did a lot of growing and research to find what worked best. He was involved with Australian hemp famers who first noticed the increase in D9THC levels in hemp crops grown under the Australian sun with its higher UV index and postulated that UV would have the same effect on indoor plants. Trial and error and cannabinoid testing led us to discover we could achieve the same results with higher levels of UVA which were safe to work under and more efficient to produce than shorter bursts of UVB. Prawn has been growing indoors for may years and grew outdoors prior to that. He invented the original High Light. I just look after business because unfortunately it is still illegal to grow in Australia and Prawn needs to keep a low profile. You will see him around these parts every now and then. I know he is working on something at the moment which we are keen to see.

that is very cool. i follow the australian growers thread and it is ine of my favorite threads in rollitup. the australian sun sure does produce some amazing buds.

 

[MidnightSun72]

They're not too far away from what I understand. We need to chase up the prototypes, as this has dragged on a bit longer than I would have hoped.

Let me test some prototypes too

 

[Grow Lights Australia]

Would love to see the specs when you guys get them. Curious the umol/J @ max watts and nominal. Or can I just divide the highlight baord specs by 5 for amperage?

They should be the same efficiency as the boards and because the strips won't exceed 5A each which is the connector rating we can get a little more power out of them. They will be rated at 1.08A at around 47V for roughly 50W each. The spectrum was going to be the same as the High Light Gen2 boards but some of the prototypes have a slightly tweaked spectrum for us to compare. It's a very minor change where we replaced one of the 5000K CRI70 Nichias with a 3000K narrow-band phosphor to bump the red up a notch between 610-630nm.

This is what the narrow band phosphors look like on their own. They are around 2.77 umol/j so not as efficient as the 5000K CRI which are up to 3.15 umol/j

 

[Speedtriplebbc]

They should be the same efficiency as the boards and because the strips won't exceed 5A each which is the connector rating we can get a little more power out of them. They will be rated at 1.08A at around 47V for roughly 50W each. The spectrum was going to be the same as the High Light Gen2 boards but some of the prototypes have a slightly tweaked spectrum for us to compare. It's a very minor change where we replaced one of the 5000K CRI70 Nichias with a 3000K narrow-band phosphor to bump the red up a notch between 610-630nm.

This is what the narrow band phosphors look like on their own. They are around 2.77 umol/j so not as efficient as the 5000K CRI which are up to 3.15 umol/j
View attachment 5101967

I recently saw the Bridgelux F90 spectrum that’s very similar to this and I believe it’s the same technology, I was thinking it’s a great way to boost the 630nm range efficiently.

 

[Speedtriplebbc]

After looking again at the 2700k spectrum I came across, it’s identical. Would these be what your using?

 

[Grow Lights Australia]

View attachment 5102034
After looking again at the 2700k spectrum I came across, it’s identical. Would these be what your using?

Same technology but we use different chips. We've actually been using narrow band phosphors since we released the original High Light 420 board in 2020. Ours are made by LED Teknik and are triple-die 3030 diodes. The Nichia narrow bands are single die and the Bridgelux are dual die chips. That just means ours maintain good efficiency at higher currents.

 

[Speedtriplebbc]

Same technology but we use different chips. We've actually been using narrow band phosphors since we released the original High Light 420 board in 2020. Ours are made by LED Teknik and are triple-die 3030 diodes. The Nichia narrow bands are single die and the Bridgelux are dual die chips. That just means ours maintain good efficiency at higher currents.

Good old LED Teknik again, I think Bridgelux market them as cri90 with cri80 efficiency, but I certainly believe LED Teknik has improved efficiency on this idea.

 

[Prawn Connery]

Talking about hemp farming, how's the d8 situation in Australia? Here(pa) its like a second green rush, very tempted to jump.

Interesting that you thought halide arcs emit significant uv-b past the glass envelope? Was it a specialty one?

D8THC?

You have to remember this was back in the day. We had no testing equipment and we didn't really differentiate between UVB and UVA because we all thought it as just "UV" and it seemed to work. Of course you are right that glass filters out most UVB and I believe halide manufacturers also put iron in their glass (green tinge) to filter out harmful rays, but we still believed there was something in these bulbs and a quick look at a typical MH spectrum shows they emit a fair bit of UVA, so I don't think we were too far off.

 

[MidnightSun72]

Is there any advantage or disadvantage to this spectrum with this method of achieving CRI90 vs the normal low efficacy way?? Lol

 

[PSUAGRO.]

D8THC?

You have to remember this was back in the day. We had no testing equipment and we didn't really differentiate between UVB and UVA because we all thought it as just "UV" and it seemed to work. Of course you are right that glass filters out most UVB and I believe halide manufacturers also put iron in their glass (green tinge) to filter out harmful rays, but we still believed there was something in these bulbs and a quick look at a typical MH spectrum shows they emit a fair bit of UVA, so I don't think we were too far off.

View attachment 5102102

Yes, d8thc, an isomer? made from hemp(cbd isolate)

 

[Grow Lights Australia]

Let me test some prototypes too

We will have to do something with the prototypes so that might be an option. I can't promise.

Is there any advantage or disadvantage to this spectrum with this method of achieving CRI90 vs the normal low efficacy way?? Lol

I can answer this. Narrow band phosphors are more efficient and on their own they are nice diodes. But they cost a little more and they suffer the same as CRI80 diodes that have very little cyan and not a lot of deep or far red that you will find in a typical CRI90 phosphor. That is why they are called "narrow band" because they have a narrow band of red that bumps the CRI with no efficiency penalty but in all other respects have a similar spectrum profile to a typical CRI80 diode.

There are also more efficient ways of making CRI90. You can mix a bunch of CRI70 5000K diodes with some 660nm monos and achieve close to CRI90 but you have really just made an RGB chip as the 5000K CRI70 has blue and green spikes and the 660 monos add in the red. The spectrum is not very well balanced.