You could say I am using innocent hardware store plants to test my theories and gain the skill I will need when I move on to bigger and better things.

So I can see from your other posts that you have figured out the limits of the knoledge base of this hobby/sport/buisness as well. I looked over all of your data and I believe I can really now endorse some of your findings in the ability of some of these new fluorescents to hit the right light spectrum with more energy proportionally than HID. I have questioned the broad spectrum of the HID lights before. Now I am really curious about single spectrum LEDā??s. I checked out the LED topic and posted there too.

Ok so roughly LEDā??s are up to incandescent output levels in lumens per size bulb but I am curious what kind of rating in your system they would receive if they used the proper semi-conductor to generate only photons in the peak photosynthetic spectrums. Ultimately, what amount of light would be required and if LEDs could really be as good as they say? I can tell that the ā??grow LEDsā? that are on eBay now are just something put together from stock LEDs that are somewhere close to the right spectrum but not ever initially engineered for this use. There could be a big future there.

Thanks for the info on electric ballasts. I caught their crafty math already on them for sure and my industrial experience with their big brothers generally involved them catching on fire quite often. Not the roaring blaze type of fire, just the melting white smoke of electronics burning followed by a big BOOM and then circuit breakers tripping. I am sure the technology will be there soon but I think I am going to take advantage of the $50 core and coil ballast kits they have all but made ā??obsoleteā? in the market hype that IS hydroponics.

I am planning on fluorescent light augmentation on my grow room. I will check out the digital ballasts for them.

I am more than willing to collaborate on anything in this field. I have seen many different arenas that good science and engineering could affect but none as prime as this field. The entire range of hydroponics could benefit from careful application of some new emerging technologies like LED grow lights and the increasingly prevalent augmentations to standard fluorescent bulb inner coatings.