Planning to switch to LED grow lights. Your Opinions/Suggestions/Exper

[my name is erl]

Its not nessary to replace the bulbs on a LED panel.

LED bulbs are called diodes ... there is no "bulb" since LEDs do no contain a filament or plasma arc thats pontentially danergous there is no need for a "bulb".

A diode consists of a die and a clear plastic package that basically protects the die and an acts as a lense (a bit like a bulb I guess).

 

A well designed LED panel (one with decent thermal management) should last 10 years at 12/12.

 

By the time the diodes wear out LED technology will have advanced significantly and they will be up for replacement (or upgrade if they were designed to be upgraded).

 

Also you may wish to build the light in a way that allows the diodes to be upgraded to more efficent models in the future.

You would do this by either attaching LEDs to heatsinks using a thermal plaster (basically non perminant glue) or if you have the skill and equipment nessary you would drill and tap your heatsink.

With either method you would need to de-solder and re-solder the replacement diodes.

 

If the question is about replacing LEDs in an Apache Tech panel .... if its possible you would be replacing boards of LEDs ... the only reason to do this would be if they failed or there was an upgrade released both of these senarios are pretty unlikely. I personally would go for Area51 over Apache. IMO and expirence as an owner of panels from both apache and area51 apache is only slightly better if at all and is much more expensive .... I'd go for Area51.

 

FYI the basic components of a LED light are:

 

1) LED diodes: this is basically the equivilant of the light bulb

Note: COBs (chip on board) LEDs are a special type where there are many diodes on a single chip. There are specific models of COB LED that work very well, better than HPS for growing. These COB LEDs make building the light really easy as you need maybe 8 or 10 to replace a 1000w HPS vs 50 or 100 individual diodes (far less work to construct and also much cheaper).

 

2) LED constant current driver: this is the equivilant of a ballast (basically a special power supply to take whats comming out of the AC mains power outlet and converting that to a form that works with the diodes

 

3) Heatsink: LED diodes need help shedding the heat they produce ... most setups use a heatsink with a fan blowing into it.

 

An example of a DIY build is:

 

1x CXA 3070 3000K COB chip

1x meanwell LPC-60-1400 constant current driver

1x CPU cooler (heatsink and fan from a modern computer)

other materials: solder, heatshrink, wire, thermal plaster, 12v power supply for CPU coolers fan

 

1) glue COB to heatsink

2) solder driver output wires to COB (plus goes to plus minus goes to minus)

3) install plug onto driver AC input wires (the plug generally HPM or delta brand includes detailed instructions)

4) attach cpu coolers fan to power supply (red to red, black to black ... solder and heatshrink)

5) power on CPU cooler

6) power on LED driver

7) grow plants

 

Its very simple but should only be done if you have an actual understanding since working with mains power is potentially deadly.

 

I feel its nessary to have at least a basic understanding of electronics if your going the DIY route.

In my case I remembered all of this stuff from high school and found it very simple to get started.

 

It may seem like learning this stuff is too complicated. I did not know how to solder when I started my DIY LED light. I learned how to solder from youtube videos.

Some technical aptitude and a willingness to learn will almost definitely result in success IMO.

 

How replaceable are the bulbs. For a novice how technical would bulb replacement be. Do they come in spare pannels or individual bulbs, Cheers for the feed back.

Edited November 19, 2014 by my name is erl

[Sixty-Eight]

i just errected a 1x1m tent and tossed in two 300w LED lights from mars hydro and i can now say they illuminate the whole 1x1m grow are the thing was the tent quality from a rubbish tent to top of the line made the world of a difference

[iTiC]

Good one, yes LED's are exciting, Project buit.

[GrowSmartLEDTech]

Hi all, I'm new here, but I want to provide some proper information on the LED grow light side of things - since I'll get banned for providing links to our website I will just try to help inform good from bad LED wise. To provide background on my specific knowledge, I run a lighting company that has been doing residential and commercial lighting design ONLY with LED for the past 6 years. We both retail and manufacture light fittings so I understand whats involved in the manufacturing and design process. This knowledge has moved the business into new regions (grow lights) - same product, different market.

 

Anyway here I go.

 

Light is linear, but to plants it's not quite. A 600W HPS bulb + ballast runs at ~ 650-700W, to have a LED light engine (multiple LEDs, COB or whatever composition of LEDs) produce the exact equivalent amount of light (in lumens) would require a similar efficacy (lumens per watt). HPS are above 100lm/w, whilst most LEDs don't even reach this with the losses from heat, driver and optic inefficiencies. If you start at 160lm/W with LED, you'll gain about 20% power consumption from the driver reducing lm/w, lose 20% through optics and anything between 0-20% on the heat side, depending on the cooling techniques and the drive current supplied to the LEDs. Plants don't care how many lumens the light has, they care about weighted PAR light or PPFD.

 

Plants desire various blends of light with peaks in red and blue and the exact amount of reds or blues is variable with different plants, however they are also known to grow better with a full spectrum of light as well, ie. the bridge between red and blue on a spectral distribution graph, evidence shows that UV and IR also assist in plant growth but do not help the photosynthesis effect. The true energy savings come from this spectrum balance when compared with HPS bulbs. What I mean by this is the amount of energy a plant can absorb from the PAR spectrum peaks in reds and blues. When you use LED and deliver red, blue and the bridge in between (which can be from white light ranging from ~2000K - 7000K colour temperatures) then you are providing the plant with exactly what they want rather than wasting light on regions that the plant can't absorb as much or reflects (like green). Green does play a part in growth though also. HPS bulbs have a pretty broad spectrum between green and red (obviously the dominant spectrum in the orange region). This in turn is like a shotgun approach to growing plants, provide as much light as possible. 

 

People appear to have a bad time with LEDs because they're not doing a few things. Some aren't comparing the true power draw and relevant spectral distribution, IE. they're looking at the nominal LED power which tells us how much LED power there is available if they were all driven at their name plate drive current - if you look at any LED grow lights these days they all seem to say roughly 300W LED - 90W power consumption. You NEED to look at the power draw, not the nominal LED power.

 

 Some of the cheaper LED grow light are wasting light by NOT using focusing optics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law), where the light beam is too wide, or doesn't have any optics. This allows the light to spread over 150 degrees which incur losses from reflection and reduces the central beam intensity (which is hitting your plants). The only way to overcome this is to focus all the light produced down to the plants. Despite reflectors, white paper optics and lens being 95% reflective they ultimately become much less efficient once in the real world where there is dust in the air and they don't get cleaned. There's also an aspect of total internal reflection as well when comparing with HPS bulbs, where light is in a reflective trap and unable to escape. This is particular with fluorescent tubes, bulbs and HPS/MH HIDs. This is another area where LEDs gain efficiency over HIDs.

 

Ballast losses vs. driver inefficiencies also shows that LED drivers are more efficient, thus gaining efficiency. There is also efficiency gains by the removal of radiant heat.

 

Plants ALSO require proper day/night cycles. I've spoke to many growers that simply leave the light running all the time blasting the plants with light. In fact this is a bad approach to plant growth. Some plants at their different stages of growth require shorter or longer day periods, as such having a grow light that can control this is helpful - of course using timers also assists.

 

Happy to help if people want more info. LEDs have some real potential and some friends in the US who are using a previous generation of our product have had really good results: here's their youtube journal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWn6rg5_DtU

[iTiC]

Hi all, I'm new here, but I want to provide some proper information on the LED grow light side of things - since I'll get banned for providing links to our website I will just try to help inform good from bad LED wise. To provide background on my specific knowledge, I run a lighting company that has been doing residential and commercial lighting design ONLY with LED for the past 6 years. We both retail and manufacture light fittings so I understand whats involved in the manufacturing and design process. This knowledge has moved the business into new regions (grow lights) - same product, different market.

 

Anyway here I go.

 

Light is linear, but to plants it's not quite. A 600W HPS bulb + ballast runs at ~ 650-700W, to have a LED light engine (multiple LEDs, COB or whatever composition of LEDs) produce the exact equivalent amount of light (in lumens) would require a similar efficacy (lumens per watt). HPS are above 100lm/w, whilst most LEDs don't even reach this with the losses from heat, driver and optic inefficiencies. If you start at 160lm/W with LED, you'll gain about 20% power consumption from the driver reducing lm/w, lose 20% through optics and anything between 0-20% on the heat side, depending on the cooling techniques and the drive current supplied to the LEDs. Plants don't care how many lumens the light has, they care about weighted PAR light or PPFD.

 

Plants desire various blends of light with peaks in red and blue and the exact amount of reds or blues is variable with different plants, however they are also known to grow better with a full spectrum of light as well, ie. the bridge between red and blue on a spectral distribution graph, evidence shows that UV and IR also assist in plant growth but do not help the photosynthesis effect. The true energy savings come from this spectrum balance when compared with HPS bulbs. What I mean by this is the amount of energy a plant can absorb from the PAR spectrum peaks in reds and blues. When you use LED and deliver red, blue and the bridge in between (which can be from white light ranging from ~2000K - 7000K colour temperatures) then you are providing the plant with exactly what they want rather than wasting light on regions that the plant can't absorb as much or reflects (like green). Green does play a part in growth though also. HPS bulbs have a pretty broad spectrum between green and red (obviously the dominant spectrum in the orange region). This in turn is like a shotgun approach to growing plants, provide as much light as possible. 

 

People appear to have a bad time with LEDs because they're not doing a few things. Some aren't comparing the true power draw and relevant spectral distribution, IE. they're looking at the nominal LED power which tells us how much LED power there is available if they were all driven at their name plate drive current - if you look at any LED grow lights these days they all seem to say roughly 300W LED - 90W power consumption. You NEED to look at the power draw, not the nominal LED power.

 

 Some of the cheaper LED grow light are wasting light by NOT using focusing optics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law), where the light beam is too wide, or doesn't have any optics. This allows the light to spread over 150 degrees which incur losses from reflection and reduces the central beam intensity (which is hitting your plants). The only way to overcome this is to focus all the light produced down to the plants. Despite reflectors, white paper optics and lens being 95% reflective they ultimately become much less efficient once in the real world where there is dust in the air and they don't get cleaned. There's also an aspect of total internal reflection as well when comparing with HPS bulbs, where light is in a reflective trap and unable to escape. This is particular with fluorescent tubes, bulbs and HPS/MH HIDs. This is another area where LEDs gain efficiency over HIDs.

 

Ballast losses vs. driver inefficiencies also shows that LED drivers are more efficient, thus gaining efficiency. There is also efficiency gains by the removal of radiant heat.

 

Plants ALSO require proper day/night cycles. I've spoke to many growers that simply leave the light running all the time blasting the plants with light. In fact this is a bad approach to plant growth. Some plants at their different stages of growth require shorter or longer day periods, as such having a grow light that can control this is helpful - of course using timers also assists.

 

Happy to help if people want more info. LEDs have some real potential and some friends in the US who are using a previous generation of our product have had really good results: here's their youtube journal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWn6rg5_DtU

You sound like you have to offer. Im sure there are rules about links etc. However, a Sponsor can post as many links to their tech as they like. A few orders could come out of it.

Just a thought.

[PainMan]

I know this is an old thread but ...  there are a ton of people doing very well with LED tech. The difficulty is that if the light is inexpensive it won't do the job very well (for people who want to produce a lot). You have to get something with good coverage, and that puts out enough light. If you're just mucking about then getting a MARS II 700 will probably be OK, but if you are serious... you don't get something for nothing. Black Dog and California Lightworks are the only two companies I know of that are honest about their products and honor their warranties.  Have a web site to look at :

http://www.compareledgrowlights.com/conclusion/

I am really torn between ceramic and LED. Ceramic runs much hotter. That means wasted electricity (producing a lot of unnecessary infra-red) and the need to dump heat, and the need to keep the things 18 inches above your plants (and at that height the inverse square law is a bitch).  But they make killer light. Way more that HPS (without that almost useless huge yellow spectrum being 80% of the light made). However they do make more yellow than most balanced specrum LEDs...BUT ... they also cost less to buy... but you have to keep changing bulbs.

Pluses and minuses.

If you buy a cheap LED unit, then you can't really expect great result (if it sounds too good to be true ... then it is)

 

[cenzo6969]

Hay guys, built my own led. Followed the growmouse DIY Excellent advised.

All the parts sourced locally in vic.

Started with HPS 600w good then got a Mars 2 1200w. 12 months in they started popping diodes and LED's. it was good producers. On par with the HPS 600w while it worked fully.

Have added a pic of the near completed build. 2nd build. First build was just 4 LEDs for a test run. Very impressed.

 

 

(

)

[Serrated edge]

Hay guys, built my own led. Followed the growmouse DIY Excellent advised.

All the parts sourced locally in vic.

Started with HPS 600w good then got a Mars 2 1200w. 12 months in they started popping diodes and LED's. it was good producers. On par with the HPS 600w while it worked fully.

Have added a pic of the near completed build. 2nd build. First build was just 4 LEDs for a test run. Very impressed.

image.jpeg

(https://youtu.be/fAoXBKVcHeY )

Good stuff

Yeh I've heard of people and DYO LEDs

 

Hopefully these are decent , I'm going to look into this

 

Might be worth trying for my little ones

 

So is yours with 100 watters to run on 50 w ?

 

How much for your set up?

 

 

 

 

How much power did the Mars 1200 draw?

 

I'd have thought it would be equivalent to two 600s

 

Cheers

Edited September 7, 2016 by Serrated edge

[Indycar]

Whoever is talking in the video (post #34) mentioned that they've yielded more with this tent's current 540w setup, than what he did previously with a 1000w HPS setup.

For mine, there'd be 10-12oz of cured bud in that tent (at best). So if he was getting less with a 1000w HPS he might want to figure out where it's going south on him. Because he should be pulling a lb with a 1000w HPS without too much trouble (depending on the strain).

Edited September 7, 2016 by Indycar

[cenzo6969]

Good stuff

Yeh I've heard of people and DYO LEDs

Hopefully these are decent , I'm going to look into this

Might be worth trying for my little ones

So is yours with 100 watters to run on 50 w ?

How much for your set up?

How much power did the Mars 1200 draw?

I'd have thought it would be equivalent to two 600s

Cheers

I have 16 cobs altogether. 14, 36v cobs at 1.4 amps (50w rounded) and the other two are at 75w (1.75amps. Using 72v cobs.)

In regards to cost look at the kits at cutter. If you go there, they take cash and will chop you out on price

Mars draws about 500w. Got almost a pound on the first grow. Then down hill from there as the diode started popping.

My first use with the cobs was in comination of cobs and Mars light. Got well over a pound.

I'm in the process of changing site. Got paranoid and so now I'm moving grow site.

But have popped some beans. White widow, AK-47 and Purple Haze. Will see how she goes on there own.

 

http://www.cutter.com.au/products.php?cat=MAU5+KITS

Edited September 8, 2016 by cenzo6969