knna,

Sorry I've been away for a few months, or I would have chimmed in sooner.

First, thank you so much for your thread here and postings on the other LED thread. I've spent days catching up on my reading here, and I have gotten a whole lot of good info from your postings, plus a bunch of confirmations to things I've seen and done.

I started experimenting about 2 years ago, and in the last year just said screw it, let me apply the technology NOW; build some DIY stuff and also try what's out there: I bought two Procyons last year and two SmartLamps this past August.

Last year I had a failed experiment for a bloom bulb set-up, a combo of red Cree's and (another mfg) whites. What I found was the actual spectograph of the white sucked, it was a bunch different then the mfgs graph. The blue die used was way to the left of ideal blue and the coating (phosphor ?) responce really lacked any red. Oh, it's light output was white...to the human eye, but lacked blue and red for a plant. The real dissapointment was, I had solved other physical problems (I was growing in a rotating garden and needed 360 degree light output, not LEDs strong point!) using an octagon aluminium piece mounting the LEDs inside the glass tube used for HPS.

I stripped the white LED PCBs from the alum octagon (don't ever use heat sink epoxy- gease and mechanical fasteners are better) and replaced them with 2' T5s driven to VHO, 40watts a tube. 8 times 40w gives 320watts of T5 and 8 strips of 2 watt red Cree for 160 watts, the resulting 480watt hy-bred exceeds my wildest expectations. It out grows a 600watt HPS by a good amount. IMHO LED/T5 together is better then either on its own.

I'm just about to build a 4 light 4' T5 VHO (340watts) to supplement a TI SmartLamp (300watts) to get enough "umph" to cover a 4'x4' aero/fog grow tray. We'll see how well it does soon.

I have some questions for you, hope you'll be around awhile. There have been so many good LED experimenters on these boards, both DIY like physicsnole, redline, veggi and others and the guys willing to take the plunge and buy then document thier grow experiences, led by the likes of snsstealth and now others. While some here just want to do pure LED, I think many will start to embrace the hy-bred concept, untill we can get ideal LEDs manufactured.
oldmac Reviewed by oldmac on . Building LED lights from facts, no theories I was going to post this at the Perfect LED Grow Light thread, but as some of what im going to post was posted 2 years ago on the stickied thread about LEDs and people still continue developing lights from wrong ideas, i think a thread about this topic is largelly needed. The main problem is related to efficacy of spectrums. When the firsts LED experiments at Overgrow, we work on the hypothesis that blue and red light are more effective. It was an appealing hypothesis that promises large Rating: 5