A real led discussion

Well, I just tore apart one of the ufo's I bought off of ebay, and realized why they are so weak in comparison to my Stealth Grow light. The leds are all driven at 155 ma which means the each led in the 90 wat ufo is actually only pulling a little over 1/2 of a watt of electricity and converting it to light! the electronics used were of ok, not POOR quality, but NOT GOOD QUALITY EITHER! the biggest surprise was that the heatsinks were tiny! its ok, they arent really getting hot enough to require much bigger ones.....

BUT>>>>>>> they work. not as good as I would like them to work, but they work.

All i was saying when I said 'CRAP' was that they could be made MUCH better in my opinion..... but, then again, so could the higher output lights!

After tearing one down, I finally broke down and called a design firm that specializes in led fixtures and pitched my concept, they seemed interested and I know for sure now that I'm going to go ahead and have a few prototypes made and test them out.

I'll post pics of some designs later when we update our grow.
LUCKY- sorry man, i actually own quite a few china ebay leds too, i wasn't tryin to offend, just voice an opinion

so my two plants are doing ok put them in a little bigger pots with ff soil tomorrow will be one week in ff soil . turned on my 400w mh as well with my 90w ufo yesterday. i want to see if they start groing faster so i can sex them and get my grow really going. so since matrch 26 they were put in soil and on 18/6 with one 90w led ufo tri band red blue orange , they were in 4" pots last week put them in ff soil and six" pots they started looking a little better but not as big as i hoped the would be for three weeks in , so i added my 400 to see if it helps . will keep updates on here since this is a great thread thx B/C

bonnie'n'klyde said:

Well, I just tore apart one of the ufo's I bought off of ebay, and realized why they are so weak in comparison to my Stealth Grow light. The leds are all driven at 155 ma which means the each led in the 90 wat ufo is actually only pulling a little over 1/2 of a watt of electricity and converting it to light! the electronics used were of ok, not POOR quality, but NOT GOOD QUALITY EITHER! the biggest surprise was that the heatsinks were tiny! its ok, they arent really getting hot enough to require much bigger ones.....

BUT>>>>>>> they work. not as good as I would like them to work, but they work.

All i was saying when I said 'CRAP' was that they could be made MUCH better in my opinion..... but, then again, so could the higher output lights!

After tearing one down, I finally broke down and called a design firm that specializes in led fixtures and pitched my concept, they seemed interested and I know for sure now that I'm going to go ahead and have a few prototypes made and test them out.

I'll post pics of some designs later when we update our grow.
LUCKY- sorry man, i actually own quite a few china ebay leds too, i wasn't tryin to offend, just voice an opinion

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No worries. I wasn't offended at all. Just wanted to post that there are varying degrees of the china led sold on ebay to people that are maybe looking to buy one. I also could have just gotten lucky and got a unit that has held up for a while. Have you taken a look at my grow at all Bonnie n Klyde? I would be interested to see what you think of my small grow by comparison to yours

very interesting - I been watching similar threads on other sites - thank you all for your input. would like to know the wight difference achieved with led in comparism with HPS-can anyone oblidge please?

i bought a 600 watt led to use and when lookin everything up about it etc they dont have the light pen that a HPS has or the big footprint. from a grow jurnal iv read that was nearly 50 pages long form a guy whos used all combos of led from 90 watters on up to 600 watts and combos inbetween, his final word on it was a 600 watt led gave him about as good as a 600 watt hps but not quite. 2x 300 watt leds gave better then the 600 watt. HOWEVER he also said that he could see leds being insainly good for scrog or sog since light pen isent as big in those ways of growing. what i plan to do for myself is to use this 600 watt led by itself to flower 4 or 5 plants in a 4x4 tent and possible add a 250 watt hps or somthing if its needed but not if a can help it. i bougt it because i cant have the heat

FINALLY!!! i get the chance to sit and post an led teardown and explain a few differences between cheap and good fixtures and overall how led fixtures run. sit back and relax!!

ok, first here are the pics from my grow room. i am pairing good, and cheap led fixtures of varying sizes with t5 ho fixtures of varying sizes, and i also have some huge cfl's goin on.


now, the next few pics are the deconstruction of a 120 watt rectangular led fixture, bought off of ebay for $150..... the housing is the white metal box, the thin aluminum plate is used as a heat sink, then there are 3 black boxes and a white box... the black boxes each supply dc power to 37/112 leds.... the white box supplies dc power to the 3 onboard fans. i took apart one of the power supplies, so you could see that it is just a basic, tiny inverter/regulator. it takes in ac power and converts it to dc, then regulates it according to how many leds it has to power. (in this and in most cases, the leds are powered in series)

the glass lense that is used to protect the leds, is glued on with hot glue (slopily) and then glue was used to attach pretty much everything else! it's basically just poured all over the inside of the light!!!

take a look, and ask away.... i feel like i'm rambling

Here is the LED all torn apart.

luckyskindaguy said:

No worries. I wasn't offended at all. Just wanted to post that there are varying degrees of the china led sold on ebay to people that are maybe looking to buy one. I also could have just gotten lucky and got a unit that has held up for a while. Have you taken a look at my grow at all Bonnie n Klyde? I would be interested to see what you think of my small grow by comparison to yours

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yes, lucky.... i have! it's VERY clean... a perfect little grow with nice looking plants. as I said before, i wanna know what the flowering time is this time around, now that you've added full spectrum lighting to fill in the gaps in spectrum that the led fixture lacks. when you get done with this round, give us the info.... and keep that grow updated, you gotta get people interested in your nifty little cab grow!!

Thanks for looking Bonnie/Klyde! I just updated the grow for week 2! Please everyone take a look, I would like some feedback. I'm trying to stay patient, but no posts at all is hard to swallow

Keep the info rolling in! Always good to learn from people that may not be doing things the same as you. The experience of many helps all!

it has been a WHILE since anyone has added their 2 cents.... i feel alone in my battle to expose this new tek to everyone, for what it is really capable of!!!........ someone lend an additional hand explaining your thoughts, give me an update..... FUCKING SOMETHING!!!!

well ever since they changed the site i lost all my info and pages i was following. i need to get some pics up but ive been running my two 90w leds and my 400 mh at the same time just got two wapos that started from seed that were feminized seeds so i have two females forsure and my two bag seed ive now called mystery witch are much more bushy and green and fatter leaves than the others . the mysterys have been under the leds the whole time and the wapos just over a week put them all in 3 gal pots yesterday they were in 6" pots for a few weeks the roots were amaing!! when should i clone these babys to find out the sex of my bag seed? they are only about six-eight inches tall as well on all four plants , they all are 30 days old from cracking out of the seed.

Hey there just checking in I dont have much too add, I am waiting to move so I can start growing again. Good news I ordered some seeds on 4/20 from attitude and got a killer free deal. I ordered Nirvana PPP, and Northern Lights and I got 5 Female seeds for free and a mug and T-Shirt. The Female seeds were Barneys Farm Red Diesel, Blue Cheese Greenhouse White Widow, reserve Privada Cole Train, and Dna Genetics Sharks Breath. That is like 60 bucks worth of free seeds for a 50 dollar purchase.

wtfbigbud said:

well ever since they changed the site i lost all my info and pages i was following. i need to get some pics up but ive been running my two 90w leds and my 400 mh at the same time just got two wapos that started from seed that were feminized seeds so i have two females forsure and my two bag seed ive now called mystery witch are much more bushy and green and fatter leaves than the others . the mysterys have been under the leds the whole time and the wapos just over a week put them all in 3 gal pots yesterday they were in 6" pots for a few weeks the roots were amaing!! when should i clone these babys to find out the sex of my bag seed? they are only about six-eight inches tall as well on all four plants , they all are 30 days old from cracking out of the seed.

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If you click on Quick Links up at the top and then on subscribed threads u can see the threads u have subscribed too. Took me a bit to find it.

hey guys! im really interested in growing with leds also, but i was wondering how many watts with a led is needed to grow just one plant?

also where can i buy led lights at a good price? im looking for 90 or 120 watt leds

Would LEDs do good in a stealth cab grow? They seem very intersting to me. Does any1 have experince of how they compare to cfls?

0scar mayer said:

Would LEDs do good in a stealth cab grow? They seem very intersting to me. Does any1 have experince of how they compare to cfls?

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I have a grow going now using both LED and CFL. Not sure what space you are going to use, but check out my grow in my sig!

if your using a hps and add a couple led panels would it help any? if it would what colours would you use for veg and flower?

BcKuSh99 said:

if your using a hps and add a couple led panels would it help any? if it would what colours would you use for veg and flower?

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Veg you wanna use blue led's. Flowering you wanna have red. There are many fixtures that have mixed and matched light colors, so lean to whichever you plan on doing as your dominant color.

purplecream said:

also where can i buy led lights at a good price? im looking for 90 or 120 watt leds

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Ebay has a lot of lights for sale at all kinds of prices and light coloration.