Quote Originally Posted by Paht_Hed
I think given the right wavelengths and at least 5,000 lumens per sq ft you could get as good of yields if not better than HID.


But at what cost, my dear man? Have you no conscience? Think of the lost lives!

I mean, I sure hope so, as I've said many times. No but really, at what cost to encase the plant in the light you speak of, and end up with some beauties?

Unfortunately it aint that simple. Please don't get me wrong, some of you guys seem fairly knowledgeable on the subject, and thanks for spending the time and money so we don't have to.

There are so many things to consider and study. I started, and I was all excited. I had no doubt that I was going to be the first one to come up with the exact perfect combination, since it didn't really seem like anyone else was interested in trying. Soon I began to realize that there is soooo much to study and learn, and a shitload of experiments that need to be done before even deciding what color LEDs to order. Oh yeah, I nearly forgot to mention the fact that in no way could I afford to make prototypes or even conduct necessary experiments. I needed plants, and I needed barrels of test LEDs. After a couple months of studying in some of my spare time, interest waned, at least in the dream of building my LED lighting empire. Itā??s still there, over in the corner in a box with some clothes on it, but I shut out itā??s muffled pleas to be released. I donā??t feel comfortable divulging the entire contents of the box at this time. As far as I know, some of the things in there are completely unique to the collection of grow LED ideas. I just thought it might be best to remove the temptation of borrowing part of one of my ideas for financial gain or dots of rep. Who knows? The box my spring a leak some day. Now, you guys have a go, and more power to you. And hereā??s some damn good advice, at least from my point of view: Try to think about some things you havenā??t previously.

In this thread and others Iā??ve said that I want you guys/gals to succeed, and hopefully within the next couple 3 years. Iā??ve also said several times that Iā??ve yet to see a side by side study in which the LED side came anywhere close. Please link me if someone else has.

And Phat, 5,000 lumens. How far from the plant? Lumens is a measurement of the light people see, not plants. But Iā??m sure you knew that. Is that close to what the plant sees at those nm?

So an array produces light at a hypothetical distance of 2 feet. It produces 8x as much light at 1 foot, and 16x as much at Ā½ foot. Is that how the inverse square law works? (been awhile). Hypothetically itā??s not producing enough light for the nice big dripping pieces of corn on the cob that you were hoping for, so you move it to 1 foot. OK good. Thatā??s getting results much closer to what you had in mind since itā??s getting 8 times more light. Oops, but where did the buds go on the surrounding areas of the grow? They nearly stopped growing, darn it. Since the manufacturer wanted to claim more light output than the competitor, they decided to use a 15 degree dispersal instead of 30. Sure glad that helps, but you have to go buy (incidentally exactly) 8 times more arrays to surround the one you lowered, so that all the plants can get light. So weā??ve gone from what $500, up to $4000? Aaaaallright! Awesome, thatā??s not too bad to hypothetically seem like a pioneering, cutting edge bad ass hero in the weed farming community. Uh oh. Damn it! Seems like this manufacture forgot that lights need a mixture of somewhere between 6 and 30 different reds to be as efficient as possible during flowering. Seems like they got the best test results during vegging and using blue lights, so thatā??s what most of their advertising and production efforts were concentrated on. So then you decide to get the lights from the other guys, since they advertise 30 degree bulbs for a wider coverage. It doesnā??t take more than 10 minutes after you set them up to realize that since the light is spread out twice as much, the grow is going to need twice as many to get the same amount of light. Iā??ll let you guys deal with this and much more.

NOTE: HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION EXAGGERATED FOR ILLUSTRATION PURPOSES.