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LED Fireball, Very surprised on the power on this light

J

JesterJoker

I got a used 50 Watt LED UFO light. its a 8:1 ratio, RED/BLUE

Its surprisingly bright for what it is, and I think it will be fine for a single plant or a couple smaller plants.

here is a few pics.. I'm still seeing the wrong colors from this thing, o my god is it bright.

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led2.jpg


led3.jpg


led4.jpg
 
I'm looking at my other options I know a lot of people bad mouth LED but my eyes hurt from being around that thing. I'm repositioning it tonight and making a little reflective box around it so I can maximize the reflection and use of it.

I really want to run a split test with it, but I do not have 2 flowering of the same plants going right now.
Soon enough I will get them to that stage and split test it between that and a fluorescent I was using.

I love the spectrum of this light everything green appears pitch black when its on.
I probably will get a HPS/MH light soon because I know nothing really compares for light output, but this LED is looking promising.

I was going to try a 14watt panel but didn't think the less then 2 square foot coverage would do what I Needed. I happened to find this used and for cheap.
 
I got one of these.. (link down below) and they are much more expensive, but it can cover a 3x3' area about, and it is crazy bright.. I'd say brighter than the equivalent 400w MH/HPS light I have, but it's really hard to tell.. .they both kill the eyes looking near them.. but my botanist professor used one to grow other vegetables and said they work great and come out looking natural and about the size they would when under sunlight in the summer (I think he said bean plants and maybe tomato) can't remember the conversion but he said he measured it at 4,000 photons per sec I think it was or something.. but I am getting a little light meter just for kicks with a gift card so I will test it out when it comes, I have read that the bulb shaped LEDs don't really penetrate too much when you use it for more than a 1 plant or when you get into bigger plants and more canopy coverage, and this one comes with 3w flat LEDs (some advertisements say 5w but it's 3w) and it has blue in the middle, about 4-6 white LEDs for broad range, and then a ring of red LED around the outside.. it's great

(this one sells for $450,but I found one for $350 shipped, by searching google market from some company in Long Island, can't find the site now)
http://www.greners.c...grow-light.html
 
i used to own a 90w UFO LED grow light which was dual band (red/blue). i had it in a 2x4 grow tent (i believe i had jalapenos growing at the time) on a top-feed drip system and the vegetative stage was extremely slow. i decided to pick up a 400w lumatek digital ballast witha sunmaster metal halide bulb and my plants grew like a champ. i will never use LED again until the technology has been perfected but i wish you the best of luck with your LED light.
 
chinamon said:
i used to own a 90w UFO LED grow light which was dual band (red/blue). i had it in a 2x4 grow tent (i believe i had jalapenos growing at the time) on a top-feed drip system and the vegetative stage was extremely slow. i decided to pick up a 400w lumatek digital ballast witha sunmaster metal halide bulb and my plants grew like a champ. i will never use LED again until the technology has been perfected but i wish you the best of luck with your LED light.
Click to expand...

Yea that is what I heard about the ufo type LED bulbs, they are just not strong enough when the plants get bigger, and even the one that I have I would supplement with 2 32w 6,500k CFLs when I the plants eventually get big enough.. maybe, but I also have a 400w (might get a 600w dimmable eventually) HID lamp/kit in the grow tent too that would supplement it, but I would use my LED outside the 4x4' grow range
 
Strength of visible light is only one consideration.

1w LED = 1w HID = 1w Fl. The additional spectrum coverage of floro and hid and the heat produced are beneficial to the plant biology. I find that LEDs dont produce enough radiant heat.

The LEDs you will find are made by a couple Chinese companies that while impressive due to the visible output, have no penetration and small variations in the power that can result in the wrong wavelength production. This is why the "professional" level lights have Cree diodes with a coned lense to spread the light. I'm sure they're going to get better (they have) but they're only good for supplimental light. You can grow plenty big tomatoes, basil, peppers into vegitation but it will be slow. I professional light will cost 400 or more. The typical cree puck light 3w costs around $7 last time I checked. Put 50 of those together, power supplies, housing.... the math works out.

The cheap ones seem to have serious hot spots too and hit plants like lasers with too much intensity in areas.

I would DEFINITELY use one in a window to suppliment daylight though. Aside from the fan noise, it is low power and can give enough boost for houseplants and germinating the ones for your garden in the coming season.....but the demographic that tends to use them rarely puts those plants in the window, LOL.

MHz
 
megahurts said:
Strength of visible light is only one consideration.

1w LED = 1w HID = 1w Fl. The additional spectrum coverage of floro and hid and the heat produced are beneficial to the plant biology. I find that LEDs dont produce enough radiant heat.

The LEDs you will find are made by a couple Chinese companies that while impressive due to the visible output, have no penetration and small variations in the power that can result in the wrong wavelength production. This is why the "professional" level lights have Cree diodes with a coned lense to spread the light. I'm sure they're going to get better (they have) but they're only good for supplimental light. You can grow plenty big tomatoes, basil, peppers into vegitation but it will be slow. I professional light will cost 400 or more. The typical cree puck light 3w costs around $7 last time I checked. Put 50 of those together, power supplies, housing.... the math works out.

The cheap ones seem to have serious hot spots too and hit plants like lasers with too much intensity in areas.

I would DEFINITELY use one in a window to suppliment daylight though. Aside from the fan noise, it is low power and can give enough boost for houseplants and germinating the ones for your garden in the coming season.....but the demographic that tends to use them rarely puts those plants in the window, LOL.

MHz
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you sure that the 1w LED=1w HID=1w flouro?(I might just be misunderstanding it)... some are more efficient than others.. like a 600w MH HID comes out to about 100lumens per watt (or more if you get a more efficient bulb.. like the Digilux, MH you get about 150lumens per watt, and where like a common 23w CFL you get about 72 lumens per watt with a 5000k bulb.. or less if you get a 6500k bulb.. and LED I'm not sure but I will let you know once I get my light meter this week, I'm curious to see what my XtremeLED 130w system pumps out compared to my 400w HID bulb at the same distances. since they are suppose to be comparable, but only using 130w... but then again, like you said they use different types of LEDs and they are expensive.. found mine for $350, but most places were selling them for $400-500, and it's almost competely silent.. and made in CA (competely made, not shipped over from China and assembled in the US kind of made, which is nice, and it shows too compared to the other LED kits)

and I would definitely agree with you about using a little supplemental light like 2 cfl bulbs or window light in addition to the LED to make it go a lot faster
 
Yes, well there is no replacement for quality. I would be curious what your light meter is able to do. They need to produce another round of real world tests against that light, some of the cheaper ones, and the agromax professional series. Its silent? Can you post a video or perhaps youtube a video?. All the ones I've seen demo'd have computer fans that sound like you're running a pair of high end graphics cards at full speed. That sucker is on the expensive end, but it looks nice and with 5w diodes, thats very strong.
 
yea it's pretty quiet, I had it in the shelves in the kitchen/dining area in the southern facing windows, and the shelves are wrapped up in reflective bubblewrap insulation stuff, but I can't hear it unless I go to check on the peppers, but I will get a video of it tomorrow if I can, and hopefully my light meter will be in by the end of the week, but the diodes on that are only 3w they say 5w on most of the adversiting but on the box and in the little sheet that comes in the box it says 3w.. which is fine, they are still crazy strong.. the whole unit is smaller than I would have liked it for the money.. would like something a little bigger that would cover a little larger area with more diodes.. but the ones they have that are larger.. are some crazy money..

I just got this to kind of test it out and have fun with it and before I really got into what I would need to really grow the amount of peppers that I want to grow, at first starting out this year for growing inside for the first time, I thought the LED would be all I needed, but then I expanded my grow list by a lot.. so I got a grow tent and HID light as well as a few other fun things hah.. I had actually gotten 2x 50w 12"x12" LED panels at first, but after reading about the fact that they are not strong enough for full grown peppers, I returned them by the time they arrived at my door and had already ordered the XtremeLED kit

but yeah I will get that video if I can remember, I'll set a reminder on the phone for it.
 
well, you gents may not agree with me but I love my 90 Watt 5 Band UFO LEDs...and here is why...

this is Bhut Jolokia 35 days from seed...they have been under this light for about 3 weeks now (last year of course)

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I also got a 50W led, looks just like yours and the light is intense. Really like it :) Got a 600w led growlight too. Used it to glow up my neighbors house and the forest around haha There were not home though :)
For me they have been preforming really well, still a starter at growing peppers so next season is my second time.
 
I set it a little to close and single pepper in eye shot of it is ripening to its mature color. I will see if the pepper continues to grow or dwarfs that peppper.

I know for sure my plant is a Chocolate Bhut though. All the other peppers were still green and very small, this one was 3/4 inch around and an inch long but has a single brown spot on it from where that led light has been pushing down on it hard.

Its more a test to see what this can produce and what differences it makes.

I was looking right now at some 180 watt panels, used for most closet grows for stickier plants.
Good old test time, ill get that and then split test with a 400 watt hps, once I get my Yellow brainstrains tall enough under my floros.
 
yea I like the LEDs, and I just can't wait till the prices go down and I will be willing to bet one of the large ones, or a string of the smaller watt ones to cover a huge area, and I'm sure the lower watt ones work for the most part.. A.Js look very nice, (which btw, how far away did you have the LED light, to be able to cover the space you needed? (which was how much space per light?)

but for me personally the 50w panel wasn't enough and I had already ordered my 130w one and I was short on cash.. I may eventually get one of those 90w ones maybe to fill out the rest of the area in my grow tent (the little corner I don't have primary grow light in) and it saves a ton of money on power, just can't wait to see the technology improve
 
Maxsack331 said:
A.Js look very nice, (which btw, how far away did you have the LED light, to be able to cover the space you needed? (which was how much space per light?)
Click to expand...

about 3 1/2 ft...covered a 4' X 4' area...
 
cool, I hear most people putting them crazy close, which is good if you only have 1 or 2 plants, but I wasn't sure how it would work when you needed the LEDs to cover a larger area from further away
 
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