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LED advice

HotandHeavy

HotandHeavy

Hi All,
 
I'm looking to take my plants indoors this fall, with hopes of keeping them producing pods throughtout the winter. To that end I'm thinking of building a homemade LED strip grow-light. There are a few places nearby that sell LED strips. I'm wondering about light ratios. I can get red, blue, cold white and warm white.  (price of LED strips is $45 for 5m [16ft.])
 
The basic idea is a 2' x 2' fixture with about 18-24 2' strips. I figure if i make 2 or 3 of these I should get good top and side coverage for 6 plants or so? Is there anything I should know about brightness etc.?
 
I appreciate any help.
 
Cheers,
Brian
 
HotandHeavy said:
Hi All,
 
I'm looking to take my plants indoors this fall, with hopes of keeping them producing pods throughtout the winter. To that end I'm thinking of building a homemade LED strip grow-light. There are a few places nearby that sell LED strips. I'm wondering about light ratios. I can get red, blue, cold white and warm white.  (price of LED strips is $45 for 5m [16ft.])
 
The basic idea is a 2' x 2' fixture with about 18-24 2' strips. I figure if i make 2 or 3 of these I should get good top and side coverage for 6 plants or so? Is there anything I should know about brightness etc.?
 
I appreciate any help.
 
Cheers,
Brian
Click to expand...
 
Do you plan on them being in a heated room?
 
Heckle said:
 
Do you plan on them being in a heated room?
Click to expand...
Yes. The room has electric baseboard heating which I control. If I don't have heat on at all in that room in the winter, the temperature is normally in the mid 60's or so I'd say.
 
Most common is 7:1:1:1 red (630nm), blue (450nm), blue (460nm), white (6500k).  This is sort of the bare minimum though.  You really need like 9-12 bands to cover the entire spectrum needed for proper growth.
 
For example using 100 LEDS:
Red 630nm 28
Red 660nm 28
Blue 410nm 3
Blue 430nm 5
Blue 460nm 6
Green 510nm 2
Orange 610~615nm 2
UV 380nm 2
IR 740nm 8
White 2700k 8
White 6500k 4
White 10000k 4
 
The green and orange are the less needed ones and you can get away with using only two types of white.
 
Heckle said:
you know anything else about these strips?
Click to expand...
I have to go back tomorrow and try to get more info (number of LEDs per foot, type). They had the strips in generic bags with no brand or model information on them. I also found these locally. http://active-surplus.highwire.com/product/red-led-strip
The_DoGMaN said:
Most common is 7:1:1:1 red (630nm), blue (450nm), blue (460nm), white (6500k).  This is sort of the bare minimum though.  You really need like 9-12 bands to cover the entire spectrum needed for proper growth.
 
For example using 100 LEDS:
Red 630nm 28
Red 660nm 28
Blue 410nm 3
Blue 430nm 5
Blue 460nm 6
Green 510nm 2
Orange 610~615nm 2
UV 380nm 2
IR 740nm 8
White 2700k 8
White 6500k 4
White 10000k 4
 
The green and orange are the less needed ones and you can get away with using only two types of white.
Click to expand...
Thank you very much for this.
 
i agree, you need more canopy penetration than the little led strips will provide.
lots of people recommend the mars hydro fixtures(ebay)

also the 5m strips are 11$ on ebay direct from china.. much cheaper than your local place
 
hps lighting much better, how much depends on how many plants, how tall they are, were they trained, and if not then i'd say bare minimum 600 watts! you could get better yields with LED's if you had planned from the beginning, training, keeping them smaller with a lot of reflection of light. using led's, at this point, you have to build a growbox with adjustable walls, so, you could get maximum light penetration, and that's for one plant.

build a hoop house to extend your season if you want fruit!
 
Heckle said:
I dont know where he got that but here...
 
http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/49/4/448.abstract
 
I'd recommend against the LED strip lighting for production. Unless you are happy with very little production.
Click to expand...
http://www.life.illinois.edu/govindjee/photosynBook/Chapter9.pdf
http://photobiology.info/Gorton.html
 
My plants do exceptionally well using LED lighting.
 
uDmhMva.jpg
 
juanitos said:
 
he's advising against using led strip lighting, aka small smd leds. looks like you are running fixtures with 3 or 5w bigger leds that are more intense / better penetration. Heckle supports using leds and knows about wavelength absorbtion / leds but good reading nonetheless.
Click to expand...
My mistake.  I agree that 1W strip lights will not do the job well.  You can get 3W SMD strips but I would imagine the price would rise quite a bit to the point where buying a fixture would be more cost effective.  
 
Except as far as I can tell they never made more than a 400w bulb.
 
They're nice. I was one of the first to use them for growing. I think theyre a lot less hot because they put out far less light. I gave up on them a while ago for more wattage.
 
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