Led Users Unite!

dunit

Active Member
Hello everybody.
I thought I'd add some pics of my recently redesigned LED grow room for discussion.
I was running 720W in a 4x4 tent, but I've scrapped that plan in favor of a simpler set up.
I'm now running 1080W over an open 8x5 area, eliminating the need for the inline fan I was using with the tent.
As you can see, each Jack Herer clone (made'em myself from Sensi Seed stock) has it's own 180W LED light directly above it.
The plants are about 2 ft. tall right now, my plan is to flower them when they get around 2.5 ft. tall (as this strain is supposed to double in height during flowering).


Still got clean up my electrical cords though.
I'd be inclined to move the plants and lights closer together and take advantage of as much cross lighting as possible. What light were you vegging under? How long they been in the big pots? Not familiar with that strain at all but they seem kinda spindly. Have you run that strain before and is that what they usually look like?
 

dunit

Active Member
dunit -- Any thoughts on the 600W UFO shown on the growperfect/ISIS/357(since they are the same folks) company's website? I was unable to find any spectrum or led wattage info, the site just says red/blue/orange/white. I should've just called and chatted them up earlier but I had just spoken to the guy about the 357(from 357 website, he answered the phone "growperfect" so that's how I found the link i posted earlier to the 600w ufo. I didn't want to call back and say "Hey, I found out you guys are also selling what might be a good one for much cheaper, can you tell me if its worth it to give you less money?" Hehe.
I'd give it a shot :) Just followed the link to that website and every light comes up with a price of $249. Must be some sort of error but maybe you can use that to your advantage. I don't know a thing about UFO's and I thought they were a seperate manufacturer but after doing some googling looks like a bunch of people make them. Probably just a common case design. A 600W UFO, FM how big would that be?

Anyway I don't know squat about their UFO's and after all the trouble I've gotten in with the Blackstar people I'm less apt to pass an opinion....lol
 

meharmon

Member
On a side note, I had the joy of experimenting with liquid nitrogen-dipped leds this week, they get much more intense when cooled!
For computers, I recall a figure loosely remembered as 10C drop in temp will double lifespan. If you have experience in building computers, you may be well are that the STOCK setup is extremely inferior to aftermarket coolers, although with the new high end procs Intel is including a decent cooler. For performance purposes, your heat threshold is directly related to overclocking stability (i.e. a stock cooler will overclock much less than a good cooler with plenty of surface area). The reason for this is price-- Intel switched to a half-sized heatsink a few years back-- roughly half the material will save roughly half the cost. Surely the Blackstar folks had this same thing in mind--- save themselves dough by not including finned heatsinks. Taking that into account, you can buy heatsinks to mount to that aluminum plate and this will greatly improve heat dispersion. To illustrate, imagine applying heat to a metal plate-- if you view it in infrared there will be a circle of heat radiating out from the point the heat is applied. Assuming this is something just barely too hot to hold your hand against, if you were to add a heatsink you could hold your hand against it all day.
Someone plz pass along that infrared temp info too, they're only 20 bucks on Newegg, I use mine everyday! :)
Also, you can buy heat-sinks from newegg and many others.
Thanks for the response dunit, if they weren't closed on weekends I'd just call em saturday, but I noticed that pricing issue too, was hoping for a break haha! I'll try to find out on Monday about that UFO model.
 

Bad Karma

Well-Known Member
I'd be inclined to move the plants and lights closer together and take advantage of as much cross lighting as possible. What light were you vegging under? How long they been in the big pots? Not familiar with that strain at all but they seem kinda spindly. Have you run that strain before and is that what they usually look like?
Each light is 18" apart, cross lighting is not a problem.
They've only been in these pots (with fresh soil) for 2 weeks, but were vegged in 1 gallon pots.
The spindly look is due to budgetary issues, as I had reused some soil that experienced nute problem for their veg cycle.
They held out for the first month fine, but the last 2 weeks in that soil really took a toll on the girls.
As a result lots of leaves took damage, so earlier this week those leaves got the big ugly ax.
So now only healthy, undamaged leaves remain, making it much easier to spot any potential problems down the road.
The resulting trade off is plants that don't quite look filled out enough for their age, but are now completely healthy.
Not a big deal since the lower parts of the plants will be lollipop'd anyways when they start flowering.
 

dunit

Active Member
Each light is 18" apart, cross lighting is not a problem.
They've only been in these pots (with fresh soil) for 2 weeks, but were vegged in 1 gallon pots.
The spindly look is due to budgetary issues, as I had reused some soil that experienced nute problem for their veg cycle.
They held out for the first month fine, but the last 2 weeks in that soil really took a toll on the girls.
As a result lots of leaves took damage, so earlier this week those leaves got the big ugly ax.
So now only healthy, undamaged leaves remain, making it much easier to spot any potential problems down the road.
The resulting trade off is plants that don't quite look filled out enough for their age, but are now completely healthy.
Not a big deal since the lower parts of the plants will be lollipop'd anyways when they start flowering.
That was exactly it, look like large but immature plants. I didn't really want to say anything but was curious as hell what would do that. I vegged in 1 gallons and my plants didn't fill out like I hoped either but I didn't have medium problems so I'm doing okay. Well sucks that they had such a rough start and lost so much foliage but a good veg for a bit and you should be back on top.

As for the crosslighting....I've always been under the impression that as long as the plants weren't so close as to block each others light...get em as close as you can. You certainly have lots of light in that room!
 

surgedup

Active Member
Hey long how cool does the 240w blackstar run ..... I ordered the flowering model today.... plus I have a 300w chinese man that thing kicks out some heat lol but i guess i should vent a little better ..
Commenting on heatsinks and all the positive press the blackstars are getting here it is all about results and value. So what if they only last half as long as claimed? It is still a hell of a value. Besides in 2 or 3 years the LED lights will be a lot better and probably cheaper. Finally it is hard to believe there is a heat issue with the blackstars since they run so cool and have ample fans.
 

dunit

Active Member
On a side note, I had the joy of experimenting with liquid nitrogen-dipped leds this week, they get much more intense when cooled!
For computers, I recall a figure loosely remembered as 10C drop in temp will double lifespan. If you have experience in building computers, you may be well are that the STOCK setup is extremely inferior to aftermarket coolers, although with the new high end procs Intel is including a decent cooler. For performance purposes, your heat threshold is directly related to overclocking stability (i.e. a stock cooler will overclock much less than a good cooler with plenty of surface area). The reason for this is price-- Intel switched to a half-sized heatsink a few years back-- roughly half the material will save roughly half the cost. Surely the Blackstar folks had this same thing in mind--- save themselves dough by not including finned heatsinks. Taking that into account, you can buy heatsinks to mount to that aluminum plate and this will greatly improve heat dispersion. To illustrate, imagine applying heat to a metal plate-- if you view it in infrared there will be a circle of heat radiating out from the point the heat is applied. Assuming this is something just barely too hot to hold your hand against, if you were to add a heatsink you could hold your hand against it all day.
Someone plz pass along that infrared temp info too, they're only 20 bucks on Newegg, I use mine everyday! :)
Also, you can buy heat-sinks from newegg and many others.
Thanks for the response dunit, if they weren't closed on weekends I'd just call em saturday, but I noticed that pricing issue too, was hoping for a break haha! I'll try to find out on Monday about that UFO model.
Liquid Nitrogen.....great for pool bombs :-)

My comp is first gen dual core and the processor runs hotter than hell. Have cooked two mother board but after 4+ years it's still faster than my new laptop. I actually took the side panel off and have a fan from my growroom blowing right at the processor. My IT friends think I'm retarded because of the potential for contamination and my daughters Gerbil got loose one day and found it hiding under the video card so they may have a point.

When I was first ordering panels I thought I'd be a genius and set up my A/C to feed directly into the LED vents. Great for the LED's but unfortunately there is so little heat compared to two 600wHPS that the grow room temp would be so low that the plants would almost be in hibernation. I had an idea to build a grow chamber with just the face of the panel poking through and a seperate cooled chamber that the panels basically sat it. In the end I realized that even at 25C they will be outdated before they ever die on me so I scrapped that design.
 

meharmon

Member
My comp is first gen dual core and the processor runs hotter than hell. Have cooked two mother board but after 4+ years it's still faster than my new laptop. I actually took the side panel off and have a fan from my growroom blowing right at the processor.
Nice, I assume thats the pentium d, or the amd ~3800+. Pentiums D were basically 2 P4's slapped together, so monstrous heat output for sure. As comparison, a 1.6 ghz celeron from a couple years later is equiv. to a 3.0 ghz P4. If they still counted that way though, we'd be up to like Pentium 8, hehe. If you have a Conroe or later dual core in desktop or laptop life is good, but my computer experience changed forever when I went with an SSD. Laptop with about 1/2 the proc is much "faster" than desktop with a regular 5400-7200 rpm drive. Now there's a great waste of money. LEDs pay for themselves with electricity, SSDs don't pay for themselves but are worth every penny (wishful thinking). /geekrantoff

Longranger and dunit have both answered the question though... the technology is improving so rapidly that next few years will be better and better. I may as well bite on the cheap one with good rep and MacGyver an active cooling solution that doesn't void warranty.

Any thoughts on how many to replace 11x 600W HPS? (9 are 12/12, 2 are 24/0) Power bill is astronomical. I'm thinking maybe 1.25 blackstars per replacement, or 1 per if the 600W UFO uses quality 3w bulbs in the right spectra, or like .75 for the 357.
14 X blackstars*~$240= $3360@ ~$1/watt for 240W(although I think I read they limit power draw so pull <200, which is a tad concerning, and something about their advertised as using 3W CREEs which are only for the white LEDs) <--- 1 year warranty
11 X UFO * ~$250 = $2750@ ~$0.42/watt for 600W(assuming this is accurate draw, this would have a smaller impact on power bill :( It says it replaces 1000W HPS-- maybe I can get by with fewer)<--- 3 year warranty
9 X 357 * $700 = $6300@ ~$2.00/watt (also says it was designed to replace 1000W, but their dry weight comparisons don't add up to that) <-- 3 year warranty

edit-Just tried to order the UFO and it sent me to a third party processor which didn't work, so I can't order it, but will call them Monday to find out WTF that is about.
 

kush groove

Active Member
@dunit grams per watt is a very misleading and hard to prove topic.... theres just way too many factors involved to argue grams per watt outside of a controlled environment.....you need more than just good lighting to get 1 gram per watt......and besides we all arent commercial growers who grow bud for weight purposes only. I got 3 ounces of off two plants for my first grow...that should be more than enough until I finish my next grow.....so basically being as the majority of ppl on this forum are rookies very few ppl get one gram per watt even in perfect conditions
 

Bad Karma

Well-Known Member
As for the crosslighting....I've always been under the impression that as long as the plants weren't so close as to block each others light...get em as close as you can. You certainly have lots of light in that room!
I wanted to leave plenty of room in between each container so I can access and work on my plants easily.
In my last grow cycle, I had them much closer together and found myself with little room to work once they were in bloom.
This was one of many reasons for remodeling my grow room.
 

TshirtNinja

Well-Known Member
@dunit grams per watt is a very misleading and hard to prove topic.... theres just way too many factors involved to argue grams per watt outside of a controlled environment.....you need more than just good lighting to get 1 gram per watt......and besides we all arent commercial growers who grow bud for weight purposes only. I got 3 ounces of off two plants for my first grow...that should be more than enough until I finish my next grow.....so basically being as the majority of ppl on this forum are rookies very few ppl get one gram per watt even in perfect conditions
took the words right out of my mouth. boasting around gram/watt ratios is misleading that everyone could do this with any strain. I have seen side by side grows showing things off and the only ones that impressed me were people that had been growing for quite a while and i dont remember them getting that full 1g/w ratio. My current set of ladies isnt going to crop out at 1g/w otherwise im going to have some huge ass autoflowers considering i only have 3 in 3 gallon pots and this is at 100w. I will say though that I'm very impressed with the growth i got from my blackstar led as it vegged very nicely and is in the second week of flowering tomorrow and i am still seeing more and more new bud sites popping up EVERYWHERE. I will report my finding on using the blackstars on a g/w ratio but i think most will laugh at the results but not the smoke it produces. I'm seriously tired of people getting into a dick measuring contest around here about lights of all things. I honestly believe that if i pulled even 2.5 oz off my 3 lovelies then ima boss nigga considering this is the first grow ive even attempted when it comes to MJ. I have a green thumb from growing up on a farm but this is a little new to me to grow indoors. I have a much better understanding already though and i think i will be outperforming my first ratio by leaps and bounds on my second grow once i know my setup better and dial in on the genetics of what i grow. Remember that most people will be too scared to do things like Scrog or Fim or better yet HST on the crop to really maximize the yields. But thats just my .02
 

Cereall

Well-Known Member
Does anyone really have switchable lights?
Mine are and I have been only using the white blue spectrum on both my leds. I have ben debating if I should use the full led spectrum to veg and If it will help really. Before I would veg only with my t5 fixture and I'm pretty new to the leds. My lights now are vegging better than 424w of t5 (about 300w of led white and blue and ir spectrum)

Just looking for opinions. Thanks
 

Cereall

Well-Known Member
thanks, i topped a few plants and currently have 810w of multi spectrum leds cranking on my plants... hopefully they like their new found light

On a side note, does anyone foliar feed during normal lighting hours of LED? with my HPS i only foiliar feed right when lights on/off so they dont burn or spot from too much heat on the freshly sprayed leaves. I have been doing the same routing with my LED plants but just wondering if i can do it right during the mid day light, which would make things much easier.... if this makes sense to anyone
 

dunit

Active Member
I would use full spectrum. On mine I can control the red and blue and the only practical application I see for that is turning off the reds if I'm trying to control plant height in veg but definately gonna see more vigorous growth running full.
 

dunit

Active Member
@dunit grams per watt is a very misleading and hard to prove topic.... theres just way too many factors involved to argue grams per watt outside of a controlled environment.....you need more than just good lighting to get 1 gram per watt......and besides we all arent commercial growers who grow bud for weight purposes only. I got 3 ounces of off two plants for my first grow...that should be more than enough until I finish my next grow.....so basically being as the majority of ppl on this forum are rookies very few ppl get one gram per watt even in perfect conditions
No argument with that. Best I ever pulled was 7 lb and a couple grams off 4000watts (4x600HPS and one 400MH). That's like .8g per watt and other than adding co2 I don't think I could have done better and I was happy as hell with those numbers. It took a lot of years and a lot of runs to get to that. I went back to flood and drain tables after that and never got past .65 g/watt but was a way lower maintenance system and was happy as hell with that too.

I have no illusions that the lights I bought are the best and baddest but I think they are gonna be a solid performer, especially for the money, and hopefully time proves me right. I get messages asking me why I bought them and wasted my money when I could have bought Blackstar, that Blackstar is a better light, that Blackstar will blow my 357's away, Blackstar contains CREE's and all kinds of claims that no one can back up and it's gets tiring. I'm pretty sure that Blackstar's marketing strategy consists of using social networks like this to push their products and it's obviously working becaue every second person seems to be buying them. I should probably not take it personal when I get those messages and comments and realize that it's just advertizing shills and ignore that crap.

When ur the guy actually doing it (running a grow journal) it gets old hearing how you should have done it.

If I had a buddy say he had $250 bucks to spend I'd probably tell him to buy a Blackstar. I would also suggest he save a couple more bucks and buy an ISIS or maybe Spectra if possible. Its my opinion that those are better lights and will produce better results and whether you're commercial or hobby.....who doesn't want more bud :-)

Peace brother and happy smoking.
 

Cereall

Well-Known Member
Im with ya Dunit..

1 GPW is a very hard task... my best was .7 with multiple 600w HPS and i tried hard and that was after 3 harvests and my best

Blackstar seem great lights for the money, but they only have a 1 year warranty and the owner of gotham offered the 600w flowering model at 550$ shipped... but didnt even know what manufacturers the LEDs were from... anyways, i am curious to see how these blackstars are doing in 18 months... i hope they are good and everyone is happy and has excellent harvests yields. I spent a little more money and got a little longer or a warranty and know what leds were used and all their spectrums and lense angles were made available from the source i bought my light. which gave me reassurance.

I am happy and received messages also saying i spent too much money and bought the wrong light... lmao to each his own and this is why there are so many different lights and manufacturers
 
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