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Led Light 90 W UFO lumen??

S

salemsson

Hi there, I was wondering why there are never any Lumen data on the
led lights such as the 90 W UFO thing? Is not that a sort of measurement
to understand how strong light it is compared to the sun etc.?

Those of you who has used LED-light.....have ever of you thought, heck, why
did I miss out on this one before??

Thanks in advance.

Yours respectfully,

Michael S

( http://michaelsalemssonchili.blogspot.com/)
 
http://www.theledlight.com/lumens.html

Explains light measurement.

Outside I got 33,000 Lux in the open sun.
My homemade panels at 24 inches away measured 12,000 lux for 5mm Leds(400+leds)and 19,000 lux for 135-1/2 watt , 10mm Leds.

I don't have my 30 star Leds running yet-should be even higher-3watt , 80-140 lumen leds.

LUX is Lumens per sq. meter.
Harbor freight has a combo/does everything meter for $30.
 
SM,

Your light meter must be whacked out. In the summer, I get 100,000-120,000 lux at mid-day. Last September, in the GH that had 13-mil, non-clear (about 80 percent transparency) plastic on it, I was getting 30-40,000 lux.

Mike
 
tpp,

Yes and no! The more lux, the stronger the beams of light. A 14 watt LED panel will only give about 500 lux at 8". A 125-watt panel, at the same distance will be far higher. My broccoli, 7-pod and a tomato are doing great at a distance of about 16" from the 125-watt panel, under the 14 watt they would have legs longer than Twiggy. I have found that tomato seedlings need a full spectrum of light to inhibit a long internode length. That's why I have a 2.8-watt, 60 bulb LED over the heart. So far, it seems to working!

Mike
 
I don't think the guys meter was messed up.He just got it.
It's made so inspectors can measure workplace hazards and in the vehicles/motorhomes we sell(gas,sound etc.).
My friend just got re certified and the teacher of the coarse recomended the meters to the class.(For whatever that is worth-doesn't mean anything except the guy liked the meters for whatever reason.)
It did give out readings the same as other meters my friend has that do the other-non light- individual tests.He didn't have a Lux meter though to compare reading for light-just for the other stuff it does.

I don't know where the light sensor was on the meter-if it was pointed forward or up.
I measured the light by putting the meter on an empty pot where I grow my plants to see what the plants were growing in.
The meter did say not to try and measure light by pointing it at the source.
You are trying to measure light per Sq. meter not how bright the sun is.
It was afternoon over a couple hours time.
I know it wasn't cloudy but there might have been haze-don't remember.
According to what I've read the sun puts out 32,000 - 100,000 lux depending on different conditions-altitude,weather etc..

Actually I don't really care if the readings were right or not- I was looking to see how far from sunlight my LEDs were.
As long as I used the same ruler for both measurements the comparison still gives me an idea about the difference between outside and on my shelf.
I just used a 12inch ruler that was possibly a little short but I used the same ruler for both places.
Now I'm going to have to borrow the meter and play with it some more to see readings on different days and see if my panels always read the same too.
This time paying attention to more details.haze etc.
I was suprised the one panel was so bright.
I do have to turn them off when I walk into the room or they screw up my eyes when I leave the room-see dots. LOL

Ahhh,a chance to play with other peoples toys. :)
If I find different readings for the panels every time I measure them I'll post about it so nobody possibly wastes their hard earned cash on these meters if they are no good.
 
Hi there good sir.

I am not sure I obtained much answer to my questions. This meaning that my questions could have been asked
in a rather clumsy way. If so, I apologize and requestions them in a clearer way.

If you have a LED 90 W UFO lamp. How many Lumen does it give specifically? I want to compare it to
my simple light bulbs that uses 108 W.

Has anyone used LED 90 W UFO and thought, " ALAS, this is what I should have used in first place!"
If so, WHY? Some people claims that LED light is so much better etc. I am trying to bring an order to
see if they are product sellers or people with honest intentions. I hope it is clearer. Thanks in advance.

Yours respectfully,

Michael Salemsson

( http://michaelsalemssonchili.blogspot.com/ )
 
Michael,

It's hard to compare LEDs to HID or CFL bulbs. The latter two are a much wider spectrum of light, much which is not used or used very little by plants. But the photons they produce are read by a lux meter. LEDs usually produce light in two, three or four specific spectra, depending on how it is built. I have a 125-watt LED; at a distance of 18", I get a lux reading of 2000 (21,500 lumens). It covers an area comparable to a 400 watt HPS system.

Mike
 
Watt is voltage times amps. has nothing to do with lumens except that certain materials use a certain amount of watts to put out whatever amount of lumins.
The fly in the ointment is that not all light sources use the same materials to make light.

You can find charts that say to multiply lumens by .0015 to get watts or divide watts by .0015 to get lumens- but the .0015 number comes from regular incandescent light bulb outputs at specific voltages in a lab.
Probably not even in the ball park for other lighting types.

http://www.botanical.com/botanical/convfact.html

scroll down to light.

I have 1 watt stars that put out 80 lumens and 3 watt ones that put out 50 and visa versa.
Same with Fluoros-#8 bulbs put out more light per watt than #12's and less than #5's in general.

Lumins is more determined by whatever the LED is made out of (kind of Phosphorous or whatever) and the juice that that material is getting to make it put out light.
In general the more modern the tech. the more efficient it will be.
I think I read somewhere that cree or someone has/had a LED that puts out almost 200 lumens per watt as a general rule.Don't remember how old the data is.
I do have some older , blue 1 watt LEDs that say they put out 140LM.

I haven't really played long enough with my homemade LED panels yet but so far I'm finding that some of my panels with more of the different wavelengths on it between 430nm and 665nm do better than higher lumin ones with only a couple wavelengths on them.
I'm not saying you can use a 1 lumin light source to grow a plant because it has more of a wavelength assortment on the board.
There still has to be a min. of X amount of light/Lux/Lumens so the plant can use it before any light source will grow a plant.

I guess you could use the .0015 figure for comparison purposses only ,keep in mind 1 guys lights might be older LEDs and their 3 watt or higher Leds might not put out what a newer,more expensive , same watt LED puts out today.

I think all you can do to get more accurate info is go to LED boards and sift through the pros and cons of whatever you are thinking about buying.
Though a lot of the LED forums are for growing specific plants-not grow anything but that plant in general.
They are also a lot of times filled with posts from the guys who make their own and speak geek that doesn't mean anything to me-Some of these sites I spend more time Googling terms etc. than reading the posts so I can figure out what they are talking about in the first place. LOL
 
Smoke,

With LEDs the beam angle is also very important. If you know how many mcd each bulb produces and its beam angle, you can determine the lumens. Generally lumens is the measurement of light falling on a surface one foot from the source.

Lux is the intensity of the light. I have a 2.8 watt, 60 bulb LED rated at 300 lumens yet at the distance I keep it from the plant (less than 1/2"), I get nearly 30,000 lux.

When it comes to plants like tomatoes or peppers, the most important measurement is not lux, type of light or hours of lighting but all of these rolled into one. It's called Daily Light Integral and it measures the amount of PAR light plants receive in a 24-hour period. Toms and peppers need about 20-22 Mols per day. It's a rather simple calculation:

Average foot candles of light (or Lux divided by 10.76) times .000718 for sunlight (.000473 for HPS, .000546 for MH, ,000524 for cool-white fluros) times the hours of light. For instance, on a bright sunny day in September, you get a light reading in a greenhouse of 35,000 lux. That gives you 3,252.79 foot candles of light. Multiply that by .000718 and you have 2.33 mols of light per hour. If you get that amount of light over a 12 hour day, you would collect 28.02 mols - more than enough for tomatoes.

Unfortunately, I do not have a conversion factor for LEDs, probably because there is no standard of what spectrum bulbs are used.

Mike
 
The angle of the LED is a very important thing I didn't mention because he is more or less not going to know what angle the maker of a commercial growlight uses.
Most only tell watts,wavelength and # of bulbs and size of panel along with usually untrue comparisons to other light sources.

Recently a friend baught a growlight that was advertized as putting out a gazillion watts or lumins -whatever it was-gods gift to indoor growers,latest tech going etc.
When I saw the light it must have had LEDs with an angle of 180 degrees + or something.
It wasn't that bright though it did light up a larger distance from closer to his plants. LOL
I don't think they were any brighter than fluoros if that bright.
He couldn't figure out why it was so dim.
He didn't know that lumen and watts mean nothing unless they are refering to specific LEDS that you know everything about which includes angle of the beam.

Wordwiz,since you seem to know more than I do about LEDs and light etc.
I wanted to find out about some red LEDs I have been using that seem to make my sprouts act wierd at times.
I have some red , 660 nm , 2400mcd , 5mm LEDs.
Actual data sheet says they put out 1300mcd , put out between 645 and 657nm.
I know all LEDs put out some other wavelengths both above and below what the dominant wavelength a bulb is sold as...
Could these be putting out enough infa red to mess up my plants after too much exposure?
I also noticed the much wider angled LEDs in the same light range but wider angle don't bother the plants at all.

I made a bunch of 3in X 4in panels to use to test different wavelengths on pepper plants.
I lined a plastic,99cent store shoebox with foil and put a piece of cardboard with a 4X3 panel in it.
The plant only gets light from those LEDs period.
I found that with that particular LED , Plants seemed to like it at first but then would turn away and actually bend over to avoid it.
After the light had been off the plants/sprouts would stand back up and look normal for a while- under that specific LED only,not with any other wavelengths so far.
It seems like by the end of a certan period of time that LED seemed to overdose the plant or somehow cause it to turn away.try to extremely avoid it.

Only thing I can think of is maybe that LED puts out infa red too in amounts plants can feel but we can't or something.
I don't feel any heat from the beam of light put out by the panel so I'm only guessing that these bulbs are putting out some form of lightwave plants can only handle some of it for limited periods of time.
Playing with the different LEDs is very interesting too.
I have 3 4" X 3" panels about 6 inches away from some sprouts. and a 12" X 7" panel on 1 small manzano plant.
Both panels are making the plants grow ok but the MUCH brighter 12X7 with 10mm , 1/2 watt leds in 470nm , 425nm and 415nm grows a very light green plant where the 3 lesser lumen panels with basicaly 425nm - 660nm grows a plant thats dark green and about the same as far as leaf number ,plant height etc.
The 700 or 800 lux panels are doing better than the 22,000lux one as far as looks of the plants go.
Both are about the same distance from the plants and both plants are grown from the same pods seed and started in the same media etc.
Only difference is light brightness and wave lengths.
Interesting stuff.
Got sidetracked.
Do you know if a red LED (even a low MCD 5mm) could put out enough infa red to mess with a plant?
Do you know what too much infa red does to a plant besides cook it-heat.

I've read that different wavelengths actually turn on and off different plant genes.
I wonder if it's infa red or some other wavelength thats making my experimental sprouts do the turning away and then standing back up when the lights get turned off.
It would seem that since a narrow beamed LED is the only ones that do it it must be because of the low mcd of the ones I'm using and the wide beam ones just spread the light around so the plant doesn't get past it's tollorance threshold or whaever.
Any ideas?Experiaces with light wierdness?
 
I'm not an expert in LEDs! But I have played with them for a few years. What I have studied more than bulbs is what kind of lighting levels are necessary to raise plants.

The sun puts out more infrared than visible light so I doubt that is the problem, plus you would notice the heat more than the light. There is also a huge difference in wavelengths, though far red is very close to super or ultra red. (700-720 vs. 660). Far red would tend to promote stem elongation though I don't know what it alone would do - never tried! I have seen that not having enough distance between the light and the plant can cause problems. My 54-watt, 5mm LED panel stunted seedlings when I had it about a foot from the seedlings. Raising it made a difference. The panel I'm using now measures 2,000 lux at 18" and the plants seem to love it. If your panel is 10 times stronger, that would suggest a very, very strong light intensity, especially in PAR light.

Mike
 
Hi there.

To be honest, I just got more confused. I obtained a B minus on my electromagnetism and wavelength course at my engineering program.
But you guys just confused me even more. With that said, I at least want to thank you for your enthusiasm !!

You guys are incredible when it comes to that.

Thanks for the help attempt.

Yours respectfully,

Michael Salemsson
 
Michael,

For me, it's more trial and error. I got lucky and have the LED panel positioned nearly perfectly for the 7-pod pepper. It's not growing rapidly but beautiful, thick, dark green leaves and very short nodal length. The Celebrity tomato has a bit longer nodes but that may be because it is hydro. This is probably going to be a challenge - I wish I could find a decent fertilizer formula; I'm leaning toward Tomato-Tone because it does not have much soluble nitrate but has 5% calcium and I have had problems with BER. I used it on the tomatoes in the GH and they did great until that fateful day of hellish temps for four hours!

Mike
 
Just got some more LEDs to play with. One of them is a 3.8W Cree 60-LED 6500K 300-Lumen bulb. 300 lumens but get this - I have it hanging about an inch from the top of the plant. My meter read 150,000 lux! That thing is bright!

Mike
 
Distance is something I noticed about LEDs right away.
It's hard at first to remember to put more distance between Leds than the Fluoros I'm used to using.
My thinking is that I try to use bulbs with a 30 degree or less angle.Since I use so many different wavelengths in my panels I figured close up would not get all the wavelengths to cover the plants evenly enough.
I also seem to get better results putting my panels both on top and vertically around my plants.
It seems to promote faster growth of branches earlier.

I still am ammazed when I'm doing something across the room and notice reflextions of red on something thats 14 ft. away from my light panel.
I thaught the article I read about cree making a 200LM Led was old.
300 is a lot of light.
Have you played with much of the white LEDs?
I was thinking about making a board with White , cool White and warm white bulbs in as many temps as I can find, in the highest mcd.
White Leds ,I'd think wouldn't be much different than fluoros but much much brighter.Assuming you could get the right temps. in LEDs.
It seems that the white LEDs come in much brighter bulbs and I've wondered why I haven't read much about them being used for at least sprouting seeds.
Most stuff I've read was speculation by people who sounded like they really had no idea whether they would grow plants.
I've read some old data from NASA about their experiments with LEDs but most of it is old data and now the LEDs come in much brighter bulbs etc.
Whole different arena than even only a couple years ago.
 
Smoke,

All I can tell you is to try different bulbs - sort of be a pioneer. The bulb above - someone posted in a review that it was hot to the touch - 50-60 degrees Celsius. I felt it - next to no heat at all. I hope later this year to build a panel of 8 bulbs (2x4 array) and see how large an area I can cover and still get 30,000 lux.

I did the ol' "use a CD to reflect light so it acts like a prism" test. I got a rainbow of spectra. Each one was defined, it was not like the one you see on other bulbs.

As far as seeing the light - I had a 14-watt, 225 red/blue panel that I wanted to see how it looked. Twenty feet away, looking directly at the light hurt my eyes. Yet I got maybe like 10 lux on my light meter.

You are right, except for maybe some herb growers, no one is looking at LEDs and most of them are looking at the R/B or the R/B with a few other bulbs thrown in.

I'm going to order another one simply so I can do a test. Better Boy vs. Celebrity tomatoes, both grown in hydro under a 125-watt RBO LED supplemented by these bulbs, using Tomato-Tone fertilizer dissolved in water as the nuits. Put the plants on the edge of the coverage area and chart their growth over a four-month period. If they keep producing, then a six, eight, 12 or 24 month period. Tomatoes are listed as an annual, but that plant at Disney has been growing for years.

Results later this year!

Mike
 
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