LED grow lights... input please.

[veggii]

Got mine today from fleabay. Took it apart and snapped some pics.. Could not take it all the way apart due to some technical difficulties, meaning the led light circuit board was glued to the aluminum heatsink so could not pry it off and take a look at the back of the board.

Now... Question is where do I put the pics? Do not see where I can include it here.


When I reassembled it did break off one piece but plugged it in and still works. Not sure what the piece was for, maybe a thermostat? Probably can't call them up and say "hey, lookie what I broke, can you fix it?"....

Back on topic.. Very very nice buds SnS.... :rasta:

"hey look this piece broke how do I fix it ,,and can it run without the piece safely You don't want to burn it up !! ???
:rasta::rasta::rasta:
" must have 50 posts to attach pics to post"

[veggii]

I haven't messed with LEDs yet, beyond trivial use. The only LEDs I have laying around pre-date the availability of 1w and above LEDs. Totally useless to the discussion, in other words.. just some random Radio Shack junk.. although I can make some nifty "eyes" with two reds and an old watch battery..

man... I have been looking n looking for some of those "eyes"

[oldmac]

BlueBong;

Little 5mm LED's do work and have applications now. I think they can do things the hi-power LEDs can't...like a shelf that has only 16" clearance. I have a 2'x8' shelf that I use for transplanting my clones or seedlings into RW blocks. I veg them under 5mm panels until they are 8-12". Works just as well as fluro, and I use 198w vs. the 420w fluro.
Plus I made my own 5mm panels heavy on the blue for my clone/seed trays.

BTW: I can not recommend enough IceCap fluro ballast if you like to over-drive tubes.
Holy crap a T5 4' goes to 85watts! AND big plus; opens use of regular T5 bulbs and there is a greater K's to choose. I digressed.

Now to those "eyes". Did you ever make stickies?
A few years back I got a few thosand cheap LED's in multi-colors, alot of reds and blues. I got small magnets and batteries and shipping tape. Gathered up my grandkids who where in HS and about 20 of their friends, and made over 2,700 stickies. Then took them all to town hall and had them sticky the ugly steel sculpture there. Great fun, but got in a shit load of trouble with my daughter, son-in-law, and a bunch of parents.

[physicsnole]

:wtf:

call it education veggi. i am in no way going to reverse engineer the procyon in any manner, i simply wanted to learn (hmm not learn, ive already learned all this in physics, but more reassurance that im not gonna fuck up and blow 400W of LEDs) the fundamentals of power supply as my array is going to require a much larger power supply. all i wanted to see in the pic was the components used (was wondering if they used an inductor or not), so i have somewhat of an idea where to start. I have a completely different thermal management plan than the procyon, completely different circuit, different LEDs, different wavelengths, different ratios, so I am in fact creating a unique array.

[Opie Yutts]

I sense I may not be around much longer to say this, so I might as well get it over with:

... I just won't be posting about it on this forum, most likely. Too much bitch-fighting around here. (not specifically in this thread)... I don't remember it being quite so bitchy as it is around here..

The bitching around here seems to come and go, kind of like the tide. Don't forget you always have an ignore button, both for this forum and your brain. This forum has its problems, but it's kind of like the USA. Sure it sucks, but it's still the best.

[BlueBong]

I know I have an ignore button. I even mentioned it once in SnS's LED grow log, but it got deleted with the random arguing, whenever someone got around to cleaning it up.

The problem is, there's at least one mod I'd need to use it on in addition to some normal users, and boards don't generally allow you to put mods/admins on the big iggy. I'm using my mental ignore button on that one.

[veggii]

hey blu
ya gotta remember on any public forums there will be Jerks.
I call them "pissing contests" It is best not to enter these contests
becaue they are like "PISSING IN THE WIND" Just ignore them

[Opie Yutts]

hey blu
ya gotta remember on any public forums there will be Jerks.
I call them "pissing contests" It is best not to enter these contests
becaue they are like "PISSING IN THE WIND" Just ignore them

Ha. That's a good way of putting it. There are jerks and assholes in every aspect of life, just like there are occasionally some decent people. This will happen no matter where we go or what we do. There's not a whole lot we can do about it, and trying to change it ends up getting piss on our legs. I've been really angry at this forum a couple times in the past, and specifically a mod or two.

If you think it's bad now, you should have seen how extremely unfair some mods were before we got an infraction system, and some other things ironed out a little. I got so pissed I took nearly a year off from this forum, and when I came back things were not perfect but they were much better. One blessing you can count is the fact that we no longer live in a time where it's perfectly fine for a mod to ban someone "for any or no reason". (Notice the quotes.)

I can empathize with you. I believe that at some point I have felt very similar to the way you (BlueBong) are feeling. If you go through life bothered too much by the negative or idiotic things people do, it will adversely affect the quality of your life. There is so much negativity and idiocy that you cannot avoid it unless you are a hermit or stranded somewhere. I know it's hard, but we need to constantly strive for patience, understanding and love or we'll all go crazy real fast. If that doesn't work, then I go into ignore mode. If that doesn't work, well I'll just say the next steps may be illegal.

[devilgoob]

When you use red and blue LED's together, don't the two spectrums cohere? I believe it creates a bell curve between the blue and red spectrum. It follows the theory of RGB light, you mix them and get white, you mix red and blue, you get a purplish-red (at least with LEDs and their high red to blue count).

The plants do use more than one wavelength, but can they survive on one wavelength? It depends, I hear that once light enters the plant material, it hits Chlorophyll A and then B or something (could be backwards on that one) and that the wavelength of the light could change during that. Also blue and red LED's aren't one wavelength, they are a combination of wavelengths of almost the same color, like red LEDs are 600-670nm wavelengths, that are all in different ratios, with the peak output of wavelength 627nm(on average).

I think you can grow with only one color..blue or red, but the emerson effect is like a car upgrade. Red makes the plant grow, blue makes it grow, but if you combine them like numbers and those numbers are photosynthetic rates...then red is 5 rate and blue can be 5.....so you would think both together would be a grow rate of 10, but it's actually probably a 12-15 grow rate. It's the emerson effect (thanks physicsnole, I believe).

[physicsnole]

When you use red and blue LED's together, don't the two spectrums cohere?

no LEDs create non-coherent light. check it out

" LED- a semiconductor diode that emits incoherent narrow-spectrum light "- from wikipedia