LED or not

HID, plug and play, guaranteed to work, only thing to worry about is your growing skills and removing the heat.

L.E.D, expensive, have to learn about a whole new lighting that you may be disappointed with, You have to grow different under l.e.d
they are cooler, yet,plants need to have some heat,It's natural.
they use nutes differently then with hid.
you might buy one that is obsolete in 2 months.
you may or may not get the same yields.
to many variables at this time. There are lots of good growers doing the work right now, When they get it figured out so it is plug and play,no guess work or changing this and that, then it will be time to buy an L.E.D, IMHO

Marlo95 said:

So I've been reading a lot about led lights lately and I'm not sure if I'm convicted. I watched tons of videos comparing led and hid but there doesn't seem to be much benefit of an hid. Led lights seem to use a little less energy but I don't know if it'd be worth the steep price of a led light, and I'm not sure if having multiple light sources from the diodes on a led are as good as having one light source that a hid light emits. I'm kind of stuck, I like to try new things but this would be an expensive experiment that I don't have time to waste on. If I get a led I won't get that 3w bullshit, each one will be 5w. And I also wanna know if led will increase or decrease yields. Let me know what you think and what your experience with led is and what you've heard.

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I have been using Vipars for a few years now and can safely say my HID is long sold!

AirAnt said:

Most LEDs are configured to be all-in-one growing lights or balanced towards the red spectrums, and that is not how LEDs excel. You either need two lamps, bluish for veg and reddish for flower, or some kind of toggle to turn from veg to flower mode.

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wrong... so totally wrong.

Positivity said:

Warm white light is all that is needed

If you don't want to DIY a light together I recommend waiting a few months for the first commercial cob lights to come out. Maybe a year from now there should be enough different models out to bring the prices back down to earth.

I'd stay away from anything other than cobs from a major led manufacturer.

Anything else will be a relic shortly.

Sorry...was just polishing my crystal ball.

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Is this just heresay or do you have some sort of inside info the rest of us dont know about

See StarDustSailors LED DIY

Grown with only 3000K COBs

New pics

Hard to believe just18 days from breaking ground

https://www.rollitup.org/t/4x-cxa3070-z4-further-tests.837695/page-3#post-10733709

This is true, but the same holds true for LCD displays. It's possible for an entire string in a COB to go out if 1 led in that COB burns out, but you'll still have all the other strings in that COB. Its characteristic curve will change with a string being out (less current for the same forward voltage), so it will have to be designed in sort of a "failure" cob lamp.

I have 2 vero 29s that lost a string... probably from a poor connection while originally testing. So far, the other 2 cobs have not lost any strings. I would personally like it if they offered high voltage cobs, where there's just one long string vs a parallel array of series strings.

AirAnt said:

idk, I was looking at purchasing one but read that if one component fails the entire light is kaput whereas with multiple single-LED fixtures only part might fail while the majority still works.

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This isn't true. If those dies are driven in series, it won't matter if they have different voltage drops. The drop across each die would depend entirely on the current running through the string. As long both types of dies can run at the same current without issue, having different Vf won't affect anything.

Then, those strings can be put into parallel with total forward voltages being matched.

Example,

35V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0V
|-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-B-B-B-B-|
|-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-B-B-B-B-|
|-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-B-B-B-B-|
|-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-B-B-B-B-|

PetFlora said:

Having various spectrums on a single chip driven by a single driver meaning varying voltages which are incompatible and will likely break down

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Cupid Stunt said:

Is this just heresay or do you have some sort of inside info the rest of us dont know about

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???

I think it's rather obvious where most of these companies do their spectrum/product research. Either having customers do it or eavesdropping on growers in online forums.

If they were doing there own testing they would be way ahead of the game. Instead they are a step behind.

There's a reason the lights I build work well. I'm a grower. Not a businessman.

churchhaze said:

This isn't true. If those dies are driven in series, it won't matter if they have different voltage drops. The drop across each die would depend entirely on the current running through the string. As long both types of dies can run at the same current without issue, having different Vf won't affect anything.

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^^^^ Exactly.
Still...

The ' issues ' are elsewhere...

Any green or FR chips will show a pretty steep output power decrease,if those chips heat up.
Next ones to drop in power , are the amber,yellow re and deep red dies ...
Blue dies ,remain relatively ,'unaffected ' by Tj rising ...
So ,any multichip Cob or Led ,should have as low thermal resistance between junction and case.

Another issue is the wl dependent light dispersion .
Shorter wls disperse ,longer stay 'directive' ...
Led dies should be carefully placed ,so overall light to be as 'even' as possible .

Another issue is the different efficiencies of different dies ,that might cause 'hot spots' ,in the
small surface/ area of a multi -wavelength COB or- worse-led..

As far as I'm concerned ,I'm not that fond of the idea of multispectral cobs or leds ...

What I would love to see ,is a Cree CXA Photo-red COB.
With 100+ photo red dies ,on a CXA style ceramic case and same flat LES ,
of phosphor-less ,super transparent silicone....



You guys ,at Cree...
What are you waitin' for ?

When we 're going to see some photo red COBs ?

Can be great as " rear-fog lights",too ...


Cheers.

Positivity said:

???

I think it's rather obvious where most of these companies do their spectrum/product research. Either having customers do it or eavesdropping on growers in online forums.

If they were doing there own testing they would be way ahead of the game. Instead they are a step behind.

There's a reason the lights I build work well. I'm a grower. Not a businessman.

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^^^^^ Hell yeah !

The rest of us all watch positivity's experiments.

Cupid Stunt said:

Is this just heresay or do you have some sort of inside info the rest of us dont know about

Click to expand...

Pass it Around said:

wrong... so totally wrong.

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Unless you're talking about a predominantly white LED, I agree with AirAnt. I have a Blackstar veg-specific light which produces much better results in veg than their "blurple" flower spectrum. They call the later "full spectrum" and it will grow a plant from seedling to harvest. But, the veg light produces better results in veg.

Marlo95 said:

Well to give you more info. I run 2 400w in veg and 2 600w in flower and I run a DWC system

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You're talking $3,000 or more to replace that with good quality LEDs. You can go cheaper, but may have reliability issues. If you currently have your temps under control, I would stick with HID.

churchhaze said:

China is winning at business even if they aren't winning at efficiency. It's like they know exactly what us DIYers want, patented it, and started selling it, just like that.

Prices are going to be half what they are in 2 years.

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What I've been saying. I see no reason to rush to LEDs when you can get twice the bang for the buck by just waiting a year.

PetFlora said:

Multispectrum chips are another bad joke played on mj growers

Having various spectrums on a single chip driven by a single driver meaning varying voltages which are incompatible and will likely break down (lose high percentage of lumen output) fairly quickly, though not to the eye

Monochrome WW COBs are easier to drive correctly and have 90%+++ of what mj needs

If anything mix with a FEW CW monochrome diodes for the win

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WW is not monochrome. A 630nm diode is an example of a monochrome light.

budman111 said:

I have been using Vipars for a few years now and can safely say my HID is long sold!

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What you mean?

az2000 said:

Unless you're talking about a predominantly white LED, I agree with AirAnt. I have a Blackstar veg-specific light which produces much better results in veg than their "blurple" flower spectrum. They call the later "full spectrum" and it will grow a plant from seedling to harvest. But, the veg light produces better results in veg.

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Was watching this vid where this guy was raving about how great Growblu's veg light was:


He said LEDs were the best veg light he's used but for flowering he still prefers HPS (at 47m20s...whoops). Just got me to realize that there really should be two different LED configurations as standard, flowering and veg spectrums.

I really have to say I disagree with any more than 25% white ratio. White mostly provides blues, a task probably better suited to mmm, let's say blue LEDs, I would guess. The only guys I see running predominantly whites in the LED configs are also, coincidentally charging 2 to 3 times more than their LEDs should actually cost, because 'Space Magic'.

Positivity said:

???

I think it's rather obvious where most of these companies do their spectrum/product research. Either having customers do it or eavesdropping on growers in online forums.

If they were doing there own testing they would be way ahead of the game. Instead they are a step behind.

There's a reason the lights I build work well. I'm a grower. Not a businessman.

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My question had nothing to do with your DIY skills...you hinted at commercial lights being available in a few months... my inquiry was whether you have information of this or if this was just an opinion...

Space Magic is expensive.