jedisushi06 said:
Grow lights will work but the pods don't form right indoors. Start them under lights and grow them outside.
This is false. You can replicate the exact spectrum of the sun if you so wish in a tent indoors. It's not some magic to it, it's just electromagnetic radiation
fully characterized by intensity at a specific wavelength. How would the plants ever know that they were not outdoors? Unless of course you're speaking of microbiome or pollination, but these you can obviously also solve via compost/AACT and hand pollination/fans.
With this said, many people do use weak lights and many do the mistake of using LED lights focused solely on the photosynthesis (red and blue light) with an unnatural lack of green and IR, which activate signaling pathways in the plants through cytochromes. This is probably why HPS lights (continuous spectrum) are preferred by growers instead of LED panels, even though you can get perfectly good light (cheap) from good LED panels.
OP, I grow my entire summer collection indoors in a tent of 1.2m×1.2m now. ~750W LED lights with a proper spectral distribution. The plants do absolutely not fair worse than during the summer with natural light. In fact, they grow
vastly better. I'm not kidding. My tent beat full Swedish summer without a problem. I had picked 5-6 (!) ripe Bhut Jolokia when autumn arrived here in Sweden. Three weaks in the tent (at 500W at that)? Suddenly >100 pods which were green/white for months outside were suddenly ripe and very tasty and hot.
You can totally grow indoors just as well as you can outdoors. However, if you live in a climate where you have good (free!) natural summer there's maybe not much point in it for you. But if you do not, suddenly you can match the production of those who do. But keep in mind that indoor growing comes with a multitude of new challenges to consider. E.g. light source, power usage, light quality, temperature, ventilation and air flow, pests (no natural predators), microbiome, pollination, etc. To just mention a few. It's definitely a project which swallows a lot of your free time (and your wallet if you let it)!