RackitMan,

Yeah I saw those induction tubes a few years back. I discounted thier use because they where only available in the same light range as MH, not really good for blooming. And a good producing bloom bulb is what we need to get to, we already know that in terms of dgrees Kelvin we would like a color temp of about 2,500 for MJ, that is why I was excited about finding 2,700K T5 tubes finally. ( Instead of the usual 3,000K)

Damn knna, I'm pissed at you! You have gotten me reading spec charts and science papers again, and going crazy in my head how to build a perfect LED light to meet my coming needs. Really fell back into the too much "theory" and too much thinking. But late yesterday I got some aluminum channel to build with, and started to layout my T5s when it struck me.

I need to produce LED strips of about 4', using Red only. Maybe a combo of Cree and some 660 from somewhere else. Each 4' strip could be made of aluminum extrusion, with a heatsink profile. My current design for the T5s is 4 tubes at VHO, all I really need to do is sanwhich them with 5 strips of LED, hopefully about 100watts per strip, depending on the ability to cool them.

That just made me think that I wish I had the two Ti SmartBars instead of the SmartLamp. The bars would fit the design of using 4' T5s better and would have a few more watts of LED. Oh well, let me see what I get with what I've got.

I actually have a 600 digi ballast and bulb, and was going to use it over one of my 4x4 trays and use the LED /now to be hy-bred over the other. Try to get direct comparisons. I think tho, because of some recent money set backs I'm going to have to wait a bit to build some more LED based lights.

Right now me and my partner (I'm slowly passing the baton to someone younger then I) are setting up a "quick and dirty" grow set-up in our new location in order to regroup some money losses, so that we have the money to finish off my dream grow set-up room(s). Plenty of room to work and grow, and systems that produce. He is a frustrated dirt farmer, does hydro to waste in pots of soilless mix. Setting up and 8'x9' room, with 48 sq' of grow space and 2- 1000w and 1- 600w HPS (was mine). Once he's underway, I'll set up a table to hold my 2- 4x4 aero/fog grow trays and get started with at least 1 LED/Ti SmartLamp hy-bred.

Oh, in running designs in my head, I thought about the Reflex tubes you mentioned. I think it could be good to do away with reflectors for the T5s in a LED strip design hy-bred....it could give more space to the heatsink aluminum. I googled them and can't find anything about them. Could you steer me to more info on them. Thnx knna. I'm not really pissed at you BTW, you just got me thinkin' and thinkin' about some of this stuff again.