LED Lights Pros and Cons

[Startreken]

Greetings All,

First of all, great new Thread by the way. I am happy to be the first to post here.

As one who is intrested in this new technology I would love you hear more. As I understand, it produces almost no heat, costs less to light it up but is more expensive than most other lighting systems. The real question that I have is, does it work as well as traditional grow lights and does it help the plants to produce the right mixture of quality bud? Does it have the right light spectrum? I would be intrested in hearing about that.

Thanks

[sonoran sam]

tried em...and for me it was wasted bucks. maximum stretching, very low finish weight and ultra-light feather-buds. i went back to my hid's after 1 grow with led's and recommend not wasting time and money until they come up with better technology. i've seen better grows coming from those aquarium gardens and we all know how much they suck!

[Xora]

They make good complementary light.
Not solo.

[bf74]

I'm with xora-I'm growin with leds and cfls, my first led run was 100% led- I got 3oz off 7 clones.This is with the newest tek-deep reds for flowering.Still, I felt I got much more out of my hps-hortilux grows.Heres a pic from the led experiment.These were dp blue-berry clones. I think the the current phase of led tek lends itself as a supplementary light source-0and a damn expensive one at that.But now, with the addition of cfl-and for my current situation, I'm happy.Just wait until these units have higher flowering capabilities, and its proven, until you drop some cash on them.

[bf74]

btw-I test, as a hobby, ufo's, and the only one that I've used that has performed well, by led standards, is the illuminator from prosource.Still a bit pricy IMHO, but it will sufficiently flower a handful of small plants.I've seen quite a few pissed off cash-croppers try their hands with led, and come away sour from the experience.These lights are extremely useful in the right circumstances, but comparing led to hid is like comparing a 22 duck hunting rifle to a street-sweeper shot-gun.Same sport-different league.Just wait til they have a billion of these ufo's in surplus, they'll be giving them away with subscriptions to high times.peace

[bf74]

If anyone wants to play with leds, I suggest adding cfl's to the mix.I'm an advocate of going green, thats what drew me to this technology.The addition of cfl just seemed natural.Heres my micro garden-current as of this post.

[the6peace8keeper]

I used full spectrum cfl lights years ago when they were still semi hard to get, everyone said it was a lost cause. But they worked.

Ive 3 120 watt LED units that rate between 400-600 each now they have one out thats a 300 watt that says to equal a 1000 watt.

However, for me if your looking for quality more then quantity? They work great but alot of attention though is needed.

[bf74]

right you are-you can burn the hell out of your babies if you're not careful-someone told me it was because of lower transpiration rates, I was too embarassed to admit that I didnt know what the hell he was talking about.

[lostminty]

From what I've read most people will need to add heating to their grow room when using led, and that led's are 3x more efficient

The older generation led lights are only effective for veg cycles

What I see happening is that the led's need a much more accurate spectrum output, at the moment its very lacking in some of the trace elements

[bf74]

you got that right= red and blue arent enough in my experience.

[Startreken]

Good Tips, thanks for the information. I will stick with the regular lights for now.

[mrung0wa]

Awesome! I'm just glad to be here...:cheers2:

[snowsurf]

:DLEDs are still expensive and have mixed results depending on the lights you buy. For me veg was ok but flower took a long time and was not dense like hps . Also there are many cheaply made par 38s that fall apart soon after they arrive they work great for a month then fall apart. Leaving you with foot high plants and no light. It was an expensive experiment that yeilded very little in the way of harvest. IMO LEDs need some work still and some price drop before they will be what the ads claim.:D

[elga35]

From what I've read most people will need to add heating to their grow room when using led, and that led's are 3x more efficient

The older generation led lights are only effective for veg cycles

What I see happening is that the led's need a much more accurate spectrum output, at the moment its very lacking in some of the trace elements

lol...what a great post...this made me smile



led grow lights (http://www.hidhut.com/catalog/led-grow-lights-c-147.html)

[bw2855]

im using a prosource 2nd gen. ufo.just started to flower they are growing great cant tell about the flower part yet but so far i love it . no heat only 90 watts they use half the water and nutes.i do have two flour tubes stood up by them. i read that a regular light bulb on provides what leds are missing. i have seen them for 5 and 6 hundred only paid 349.00. well if it flowers im in love if not im pissed

[agro87]

Don't waste your time with LED's despite what ad's might tell you. Fluros are 10 fold better and thats not saying much.

[mean1010]

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[snowsurf]

leds claim long life but fall apart when they get the slightest bit warm they are junk high priced junk:mad:

[dadda j]

I'm running a 300 watt illuminator pro series from prosource and so far i am really pleased.I.m in the fifth week of flowering and it s looking pretty good. we'll have to see how the weight is. I have 1 question to ask and it is how far away lights should be from plants so you get a 5x5 area?

[pypes]

I know fuck all about all this growing nonesense, but I do know you can get RGB LED DMX colourwash panels for like £40 (~$60) now. Probably not vast quantities of light, but they are much cheaper then the shit people are talking about on here, built to be abused, and you can dial in any colour you want. You could rig up some fancy computer controlled day / night cycle too if you wanted to be all technical about it.

[lostminty]

I think those panels produce very narrow bands of each color...and use combinations of 3 colors, like you're tv. So you don't actually get a very full spectrum (which is a big problem with the led grow lights) what you get is something that a human will see as full spectrum.

To put that into perspective, magenta is not a real color. It does not exist in the visible spectrum, but through combinations of other colors of light we see it