White LEDs?

Most of the diy led builds I see here use full spectrum/white LEDs. Why not use a mix of mostly red and blue like the commercial panels out there?

I think a lot of people here use whites and reds, and some use violet and UV-A.

The thing about white is that it's easy to get right. Everyone has been blown away by the recent grows, so it makes sense they'd want to copy.

In an extremely basic view: white light is a mixture of all color spectrums. Most big name light companies are finally coming around to using mostly white light.

it's best to use mostly white with small watt red/blue leds to "hit" certain spectrums "chlorophyll a&b" better.

white light is mass produced commercially for many purposes besides growing so it's cheaper and simpler for people to construct a one voltage LED setup. It isn't best by any means, most convenient is more accurate. the rest is marketing hype and kool-aid.

Thanks for the info, folks.

How much experience do you have with red and blue leds?

Did you have a lot of success growing with them? Maybe the reason we don't all use red and blue still is because we haven't seen your grows?

" simpler for people to construct a one voltage LED setup."

You mean a "one current" LED setup, not a "one voltage" setup.

I'm just saying, unless you have seen a lot of success with all monochromes, it doesn't make sense to automatically assume that whites are just a hack "kool-aid" marketing scheme.

Not everyone is a pioneer. Most of us just want to copy success. When people start consistently showing success with only monochromes, that's when I'll invest my money and time.

Theory is nice, but the proof is in the pudding.

AirAnt said:

white light is mass produced commercially for many purposes besides growing so it's cheaper and simpler for people to construct a one voltage LED setup. It isn't best by any means, most convenient is more accurate. the rest is marketing hype and kool-aid.

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churchhaze said:

How much experience do you have with red and blue leds?

Did you have a lot of success growing with them? Maybe the reason we don't all use red and blue still is because we haven't seen your grows?

" simpler for people to construct a one voltage LED setup."

You mean a "one current" LED setup, not a "one voltage" setup.

I'm just saying, unless you have seen a lot of success with all monochromes, it doesn't make sense to automatically assume that whites are just a hack "kool-aid" marketing scheme.

Not everyone is a pioneer. Most of us just want to copy success. When people start consistently showing success with only monochromes, that's when I'll invest my money and time.

Theory is nice, but the proof is in the pudding.

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It's not theory, it's science and common sense. 90% of usable Plant light is from like 440-460nm and 630-660nm. LED lights should therefore be 90% within those spectrums to get the maximum spectral intensity of usable plant light per watt.

If you're using white LEDs, you might as well have 300 little 3 watt HPS bulbs. Could you grow weed with that? yeah, you could. Would it be as good as lights set in the range of 90% usable plant light. Don't be freakin ridiculous.

You try it yourself. Put a white LED on one side of the plant and a blue LED on the other. I bet you all the wax in B.C. the plant leans toward the blue. I've seen it happen with different kelvins of white, plants prefer the bluer hues. Now take that same, obvious visual example of the plant showing preference for one bandwidth of light and apply it to the other end of the spectrum. Except that instead of leaning towards a bluer light, the plant will use a redder light to develop better buds and more complex cannabinoid structures.

The argument for white LEDs is ridiculous, actually.
Blue light is better for Veg, Red light is better for Flower. To say that white is superior, you'd have to be making the argument that white was better than blue for veg and red for flower and that is insane. The best the white led camp can hope for is 'white LED is better at vegging than red and flowering than blue'. As in, it's better and easier to have a non-growth stage specific light fixture through the entire growth than it is to switch from a veg lamp to flower lamp or move plants from a veg room to a flower room.

There's just no way that a white LED can match the spectral intensity output that Red and Blue LED can in the 90% usable plant light range which is 90% blue and red. Lol. I know there's some smart people in the white LED group so it wouldn't surprise me that much if I were wrong. Until then I'd rather rely on my own common sense for judgement than an opinion fostered by the operations of a government agency or it's affiliate organizations..

Science is the process of putting theory to the test, and then making an unbiased (put "common sense" aside for this) conclusion based on the results of the test. The results of the white led grows already show similar or better results than HPS, so your reasoning about how we may as well use that for white light doesn't hold salt. It doesn't make sense to compare against lots of tiny 3 watt HPS lamps, because that's not the current conventional alternative.

I don't think you understand what "useable light" means. The absorbance curves of chloraphyl A,B, and accessory pigments, are not indicators of what light is more useable, simply absorbed more (penetrate less). 660nm is absorbed at the top layer, and causes the top layer to have a very high %Pfr, as well as a dense supply of food (photons more likely to be absorbed).

Yellow-orange photons are not less useful than red photons (660nm), just more likely to be absorbed. It's food for the LOWER layers, and it calibrates phytochromes by letting the lower branches know they are not receiving direct sunlight (with the red).

Long story short, (660nm) is an indicator to a layer of plant that it is unshaded.

As for moving toward the blue leds, your reasoning is very oversimplified. Phototropism is a SENSOR with absorbance peaks in the blue spectrum. Look up phototropism. It is a very bad assumption that plants like a light more simply because they're moving toward it.

AirAnt said:

It's not theory, it's science and common sense. 90% of usable Plant light is from like 440-460nm and 630-660nm. LED lights should therefore be 90% within those spectrums to get the maximum spectral intensity of usable plant light per watt.

If you're using white LEDs, you might as well have 300 little 3 watt HPS bulbs. Could you grow weed with that? yeah, you could. Would it be as good as lights set in the range of 90% usable plant light. Don't be freakin ridiculous.

You try it yourself. Put a white LED on one side of the plant and a blue LED on the other. I bet you all the wax in B.C. the plant leans toward the blue. I've seen it happen with different kelvins of white, plants prefer the bluer hues. Now take that same, obvious visual example of the plant showing preference for one bandwidth of light and apply it to the other end of the spectrum. Except that instead of leaning towards a bluer light, the plant will use a redder light to develop better buds and more complex cannabinoid structures.

The argument for white LEDs is ridiculous, actually.
Blue light is better for Veg, Red light is better for Flower. To say that white is superior, you'd have to be making the argument that white was better than blue for veg and red for flower and that is insane. The best the white led camp can hope for is 'white LED is better at vegging than red and flowering than blue'. As in, it's better and easier to have a non-growth stage specific light fixture through the entire growth than it is to switch from a veg lamp to flower lamp or move plants from a veg room to a flower room.

There's just no way that a white LED can match the spectral intensity output that Red and Blue LED can in the 90% usable plant light range which is 90% blue and red. Lol. I know there's some smart people in the white LED group so it wouldn't surprise me that much if I were wrong. Until then I'd rather rely on my own common sense for judgement than an opinion fostered by the operations of a government agency or it's affiliate organizations..

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This is as simple minded and wrong as saying "N is for vegging and P is for flowering".

Believe me, red is for vegging and flowering. I know plenty of people who veg with HPS (although I think it's overkill if you don't have flowering rooms over 2k at least) and it comes out great.

AirAnt said:

The argument for white LEDs is ridiculous, actually.
Blue light is better for Veg, Red light is better for Flower. To say that white is superior, you'd have to be making the argument that white was better than blue for veg and red for flower and that is insane.

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Your common sense should be telling you that only results matter in the long run.

Currently, the result of white and red+white grows have been surpassing the results of everything else. This could be because it's more efficient, or simply cheaper to setup.

The only good commercial R+B units on the market imo is the hans. I've been following him from the very beginning, and that guy really seems to knows his stuff. (i just don't see the same success with RB units from competitors. They all went white. So did hans it seems.)

AirAnt said:

Until then I'd rather rely on my own common sense for judgement than an opinion fostered by the operations of a government agency or it's affiliate organizations..

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now i'm sure you're being intentionally obtuse. LED manufacturers put out blue specific veg lights to exploit the common consumer's misconception about phototropism.

well i'm sure if you're right, every single LED manufacturer will be releasing white LED lamps within a few years, if not months, and it won't just be a couple fringe boutique LED manufacturers from 'murica that charge 5x's the cost of components.

AirAnt said:

now i'm sure you're being intentionally obtuse. LED manufacturers put out blue specific veg lights to exploit the common consumer's misconception about phototropism.

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I'm pretty sure they just assume all their customers will glaze over if they mention the word "phototropism" anyway. Photo..whatism?? what??

You only need a tiny bit of blue for phototropism to work, even in veg. I'm using my 3000k veros (with very little blue) to veg right now, and it's working fine.

AirAnt said:

well i'm sure if you're right, every single LED manufacturer will be releasing white LED lamps within a few years, if not months, and it won't just be a couple fringe boutique LED manufacturers from 'murica that charge 5x's the cost of components.

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I already got a 100W cheapo chinese cob just to fuck around, and tapped 4 holes into some old cpu heatsink i had.

11bucks prime on amazon for the 100W cob (100 dies. 10 parallel strings of 10 in series)

It's chinas equivalent of the vero. No idea if whether it's efficient or not.

Airant...you have a lot to learn.
Sds's 3000k spectral analysis thread is a great place to start.
Actually you should look at what spectrum a white led puts off...cause clearly you are near clueless.
If you haven't learned anything by the time I get to a computer I will lay it all out in front of you.

But in the mean time, keep reading and ask you self why one of most respected and wanted led company(apache) has been using and validating white:red LEDs since 2010 and is one of the only companies still aroun from back then. They have been proving it with actual science...not what you think is right based on info you don't even understand to begin with.

Go ahead...say whites are rediculous again...but you're just making your self look ignorant and uneducated.

It's really hard to argue with proven results.

when your getting 1.25gpw average using 80% white 20% redand blue that to me says whites do grow amazing and better bud then just red and blue.

@church I bought a similar china cob to play around with and coming from cree's the light just seemed I don't know how else to describe it but sloppy, very high heat output and not as intense, coming from the veros I'm sure your findings will be similar. I didn't run an actual tests with it because i really was not happy with the output vs the heat. But i would be interested in how yours does perform.

I have used leds for years, and high quality white COB leds work. I don't even waste my time with adding red and blue. This still has a few weeks.

Those plants aren't very healthy and don't look well-tended to. No offense, but you'd get a much higher yield if you lollipopped the bottom 30% instead of leaving little popcorn buds there to steal plants' energy.

yeah, there's a lot of talk. the funny thing is, i know you're more knowledgeable than I am, but you're still fundamentally wrong. You're looking at the way that the things exist as they are now, and I'm looking at their total possible output potential. White Leds will never be as good as monochrome for growing, all else being equal. Right now all else is not equal, and you base your judgement on that, but that is not scientific empirical observation. It is opinion formed through the looking glass of bias. Bias formed from capital commercialism and pandering to the lowest common denominator and applying the philosophy of 'well, i guess that's good enough' to every fucking thing you ever do. 'murica.

You're just digging your grave deeper by implying that those of us who use whites are the lowest common denominator. You're really not going to make any friends that way, and you don't look very smart comparing yourself with some of the very bright posters on this forum who are currently experimenting with whites, whites+reds, whites+730nm, etc.

AirAnt said:

Right now all else is not equal, and you base your judgement on that, but that is not scientific empirical observation. It is opinion formed through the looking glass of bias. Bias formed from capital commercialism and pandering to the lowest common denominator and applying the philosophy of 'well, i guess that's good enough' to every fucking thing you ever do. 'murica.

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You mean like this. They were trimmed up twice. For around 3 or more weeks it has been in the mid to high 80* in the room. My house has been mid to high 90*.

ozdude said:

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Looking good ozdude, the all white Onyx panel looks like it's kicking ass.