Do any LED fixtures produce an HPS-like color?

tstick

tstick

Well-Known Member
Just curious as to why I can' find an LED fixture that produces the "sick, plasma-orange" color light, similar to the color that an HPS bulb produces.

I have an HLG quantum board, a Timber COB light, an Area 51 light and a Nextlight Mini. Most all of them produce a "full spectrum" white type of light. The Area 51 is the only one that includes a separate circuit for red LEDs, but even with them switched on, the light is nowhere near the color of an HPS spectrum. If anything, most of my LED fixtures produce light that looks more the color of a metal halide bulb -that being more of a "daylight" white/blue.

This run, I have decided to break out my old school Hydropot MH fixture and magnetic ballast that I used back in the 80's. I run the MH for vegging the plants and then I switch to am HPS conversion bulb (that runs on the MH ballast), for the flowering mode. I just use the standard, cheap stadium type MH bulb -nothing specific for plants. I think I paid about $25 for the MH bulb. The HPS conversion bulb was a bit more...can't recall, exactly how much I paid.
I have found that almost all the strains I am running seem to love the HID bulbs more than they do the LEDs. I believe this is because the plants are responding to, not only the spectrum, but also that the heat is coming from the same source as the light -as opposed to running cool LEDs with a space heater in the room.

I just switched the bulbs yesterday and I started thinking abut the question of why there are no LEDs that put out light that looks like HPS light -at least as far as I've found. I know that many companies have added red LEDs, but they still don't produce light that looks like HPS light. It seems like it would be possible to recreate the HPS color with LEDs. I think I saw an ad for some lights that have a customizable spectrum, but I'm not sure what that's all about, either.

Has this been done already and I missed it? Please fill me in. Thanks.
 
Tolerance Break

Tolerance Break

Well-Known Member
tstick said:
Just curious as to why I can' find an LED fixture that produces the "sick, plasma-orange" color light, similar to the color that an HPS bulb produces.

I have an HLG quantum board, a Timber COB light, an Area 51 light and a Nextlight Mini. Most all of them produce a "full spectrum" white type of light. The Area 51 is the only one that includes a separate circuit for red LEDs, but even with them switched on, the light is nowhere near the color of an HPS spectrum. If anything, most of my LED fixtures produce light that looks more the color of a metal halide bulb -that being more of a "daylight" white/blue.

This run, I have decided to break out my old school Hydropot MH fixture and magnetic ballast that I used back in the 80's. I run the MH for vegging the plants and then I switch to am HPS conversion bulb (that runs on the MH ballast), for the flowering mode. I just use the standard, cheap stadium type MH bulb -nothing specific for plants. I think I paid about $25 for the MH bulb. The HPS conversion bulb was a bit more...can't recall, exactly how much I paid.
I have found that almost all the strains I am running seem to love the HID bulbs more than they do the LEDs. I believe this is because the plants are responding to, not only the spectrum, but also that the heat is coming from the same source as the light -as opposed to running cool LEDs with a space heater in the room.

I just switched the bulbs yesterday and I started thinking abut the question of why there are no LEDs that put out light that looks like HPS light -at least as far as I've found. I know that many companies have added red LEDs, but they still don't produce light that looks like HPS light. It seems like it would be possible to recreate the HPS color with LEDs. I think I saw an ad for some lights that have a customizable spectrum, but I'm not sure what that's all about, either.

Has this been done already and I missed it? Please fill me in. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Plants don't need that much yellow light as far as we are aware, so they don't use valuable LED diode space and power allocation to achieve a seemingly irrelevant part of the spectrum

Aside from that, they're entirely different processes. The only thing they have in common is that they turn power into light.
 
lusidghost

lusidghost

Well-Known Member
Hmm. I have a rotating grill fan hanging horizontally between my lights that blows the heat down onto the plants. I have one in each tent, but one of them died recently and I haven't replaced it yet. I noticed my plants in that tent are negatively reacting to the cold a lot more than during previous winters. Now I'm putting two and two together. I need a new fan.
 
Star Dog

Star Dog

Well-Known Member
I don't think it's just heat, if you change from mh to hps there's a similar temperature and the plants respond well to it for whatever reason.

I was under the impression 2.8/3k is best for flowering.
 
Budzbuddha

Budzbuddha

Well-Known Member
I would think an LED with 2700k range would be close enough to a typical 2100k bulb. Although HPS has that IR advantage . Blended led kelvin range would be broader over single bulb.
 
coreywebster

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
lusidghost said:
I think the old "HPS wins yield. LED wins potency" is true. I had few big grows with HPS, but when I switched over to full spectrum LED the increase in frost and terpenes was for sure noticeable.
Click to expand...
For me it wasn't the case. LED beat HPS on both fronts in flower

But not in veg so I stick to cmh or mh for that and the reason was temps, I either paid to heat the area and stubbornly use led or I carry on using what I liked, the bulb.
 
F

f.r

Well-Known Member
Tolerance Break said:
The simple answer is HPS is closer to the sun.

The complicated answer is either buried in scientific literature or undiscovered.
Click to expand...
Closer to the Sun at what time during the day during which season?


Anyway get your leaf surface temps up under LED watch the yeilds improve! The lack of IR hitting leaves from HPS is big.
 
Star Dog

Star Dog

Well-Known Member
All temps are important there's no doubt about that imo, but ime lst appears a bit overrated, i can't get near ideal temps with less than 650w so in the early days lst temps are relatively low.

There's 2 days between pictures in 22/23c ambient daytime and 19/20c nighttime.

I'd just finished re potting the last of them in the 1st pic.
_20220928_102626 (1).JPG
_20220930_144358.JPG
I know better temp would've be better, what I mean is i don't think lst is the difference between healthy growth or not.

They've not been tied and re orientated making them look different it's purely 2 days growth.
 
grotbags

grotbags

Well-Known Member
tstick said:
Just curious as to why I can' find an LED fixture that produces the "sick, plasma-orange" color light, similar to the color that an HPS bulb produces.

I have an HLG quantum board, a Timber COB light, an Area 51 light and a Nextlight Mini. Most all of them produce a "full spectrum" white type of light. The Area 51 is the only one that includes a separate circuit for red LEDs, but even with them switched on, the light is nowhere near the color of an HPS spectrum. If anything, most of my LED fixtures produce light that looks more the color of a metal halide bulb -that being more of a "daylight" white/blue.

This run, I have decided to break out my old school Hydropot MH fixture and magnetic ballast that I used back in the 80's. I run the MH for vegging the plants and then I switch to am HPS conversion bulb (that runs on the MH ballast), for the flowering mode. I just use the standard, cheap stadium type MH bulb -nothing specific for plants. I think I paid about $25 for the MH bulb. The HPS conversion bulb was a bit more...can't recall, exactly how much I paid.
I have found that almost all the strains I am running seem to love the HID bulbs more than they do the LEDs. I believe this is because the plants are responding to, not only the spectrum, but also that the heat is coming from the same source as the light -as opposed to running cool LEDs with a space heater in the room.

I just switched the bulbs yesterday and I started thinking abut the question of why there are no LEDs that put out light that looks like HPS light -at least as far as I've found. I know that many companies have added red LEDs, but they still don't produce light that looks like HPS light. It seems like it would be possible to recreate the HPS color with LEDs. I think I saw an ad for some lights that have a customizable spectrum, but I'm not sure what that's all about, either.

Has this been done already and I missed it? Please fill me in. Thanks.
Click to expand...
the simple answer is the led grow light market is driven by efficiency not spectrum.

also you cant really use kelvin to judge a grow light spectrum, you can have two lights both with 3000k temps but with very different spectrums.
 
grotbags

grotbags

Well-Known Member
lusidghost said:
Hmm. I have a rotating grill fan hanging horizontally between my lights that blows the heat down onto the plants. I have one in each tent, but one of them died recently and I haven't replaced it yet. I noticed my plants in that tent are negatively reacting to the cold a lot more than during previous winters. Now I'm putting two and two together. I need a new fan.
Click to expand...
yer this is a good method of clawing back a couple of degrees of heat when it gets cooler. i have two rotating ceiling fans that i only use in the cooler months.
during the summer these stay off letting the excess heat rise to the ceiling where i extract from the top of the room , when it gets cooler the ceiling fans come on and push the warm air back down through the plants and i extend my extraction pipe to extract from just above the floor level.
 
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