Smartlamp LED grow test

L

ledgrowtester

Active Member
We aren't insulted, we are just trying to do real LED tests and benefit from people's advice as we try to refine the grow techniques. The proof is in the pudding as they say, and so far we are quite optimistic.

However, we would love to have some help on some of our questions rather than simple bitching especially around the ambient temperature around the plant (ie. 21C vs. 26C) to determine whether it makes a difference at the end or not. And whether other people using LED have any advice on nutrient levels.

If you are sceptical that is your right. You might want to check out the results that they have been getting on greenpinelane.com using the various LED lights. As near as we can see, the Smartlamps are way ahead of all the other systems which makes sense according to all our research because they have the most number of Hi-Power LEDs and the the UV and IR LEDs for flowering response.

LoudBlunts said:
sorry if you feel insulted by my following statements....

but im just not buying it. i plugged in smartlamp led grow test and low and behold spammed on every growing forum!
Click to expand...
 
LoudBlunts

LoudBlunts

Well-Known Member
im glad you didnt flame me for speaking my mind!

i've checked out the site!! i cant lie...looks promising! but 1500 bucks? i gotta wait...i cant ball like you all just yet..lol
 
patman

patman

Active Member
Very interested, Ive had my own questions about led's, thanks for answering some of them! Please keep up the good work!
 
L

ledgrowtester

Active Member
No doubt it is expensive for somebody doing a little home grow who already has their equipment, but if you pay your electricity bill and buy your bulbs, than it is worth it.

That is why it is important for us to test this properly.

We grow medical on a license that gives us a fixed number of plants. Believe me our power bills ain't cheap. If this works out, that money can be put to good use.

According to our calculations, when you factor electricity to run the lights, a/c and no extra bulbs to buy, these units pay for themselves vs. HPS (where we live) in under 2 years. After that we will have something like $600 per year in savings per set-up.

That's really money so rather than wait for the mythical drop in price, we would like to save now.

Cheers and any advice on the ambient temperature question is most welcome (and needed before we start the second run of the test).



LoudBlunts said:
im glad you didnt flame me for speaking my mind!

i've checked out the site!! i cant lie...looks promising! but 1500 bucks? i gotta wait...i cant ball like you all just yet..lol
Click to expand...
 
K

koolhand77

Well-Known Member
What about LED's for vegging? They have blue and red spectrum. I contacted HTG supply probably most people know them from Ebay. What r the diffrences in your lights to thiers? I herd as a suppliment they r great. very intrested.
 
smppro

smppro

Well-Known Member
Good job, i thought about trying them for my first grow but chickened out, i think they are only a handful of journals and experiments away from producing a descent harvest. HTG also has some newer LEDS, i think 1 of them is suppose to replace 5 of their old ones
 
ChaoticMetal

ChaoticMetal

Well-Known Member
ledgrowtester said:
No doubt it is expensive for somebody doing a little home grow who already has their equipment, but if you pay your electricity bill and buy your bulbs, than it is worth it.

That is why it is important for us to test this properly.

We grow medical on a license that gives us a fixed number of plants. Believe me our power bills ain't cheap. If this works out, that money can be put to good use.

According to our calculations, when you factor electricity to run the lights, a/c and no extra bulbs to buy, these units pay for themselves vs. HPS (where we live) in under 2 years. After that we will have something like $600 per year in savings per set-up.

That's really money so rather than wait for the mythical drop in price, we would like to save now.

Cheers and any advice on the ambient temperature question is most welcome (and needed before we start the second run of the test).
Click to expand...

1500$ gets ya a huge LED system though, or it can. I spent 500 for the UFO, one of the first models out with the lowest watt leds and love it. i can't wait to purchase a newer model, they are coming outa the woodwork now. And as for price I agree completely. When you factor in everything it costs to run HPS cool, the LED's pay themselves back in just a few years yet will last 8, with no upkeep..(depending on usage)
 
camaro630hp

camaro630hp

Well-Known Member
very nice do have any more pics


dont worrie bout shit talkers

u doing a good job

so how is the test going ??
 
L

ledgrowtester

Active Member
I don,t know the supplier you are referring to. Do they manufacture or just sell?

What light would you be talking about since we did look at most of them.


koolhand77 said:
What about LED's for vegging? They have blue and red spectrum. I contacted HTG supply probably most people know them from Ebay. What r the diffrences in your lights to thiers? I herd as a suppliment they r great. very intrested.
Click to expand...
 
MyGTO2007

MyGTO2007

Well-Known Member
hell yeah go for it , i know for a fact they work,if you have good ones and alot of them,one day in walmart was checking out the bulbs and ran across this litttle led flood lite, says it replaces 43 watts .so i got one ......had a little sick clone from friend, took a 6 inch tube about 5 inches long lined it with mylar ,and just used a wired socket and put inside the tube, put a little window on side of tube.....long story short wow that plant came alive,but one wasnt enough after about 8in tall so i finished it off with cfls....if i had the money, i would go all led's,and in the long run they will smoke all yer guys Hps mh systems !!!!!bongsmilieso good for you Ledgrowtesterbongsmiliebongsmilie:bigjoint::bigjoint:
 
the green lantern

the green lantern

Active Member
I like the end result! What was the final dry weight difference between the two test subjects? As for the nutrition side of things start low (I've heard as low as 1 third reccomended) and watch the plant they will tell you when to slow down. I would like to see what would happen if you did different feed scales with different ppm peaks! Advanced has a "nutrient calculator" on their web cite that makes this a no guess work things. This is amazing if you use their products! Can't wait to see the next test!
 
the green lantern

the green lantern

Active Member
I love the idea! I have been looking at the various LED lights on the market, This however seems to be the best!! Do you have a "dry weight comparison" for the same amount of plants under a 1000w hps?? As for feeding I have heard to cut back the food to 1-3rd of company recommended. This would be a good start then the plants will show you the way. I would love to see what you could do with different ppm peaks! Thanks for the pic's and tests! Love to see more...
 
L

ledgrowtester

Active Member
Hey everyone. Sorry for the delay in getting back with the final results and the start for test 2. We were enjoying a bit of a holiday.

As you may remember Test 1 suffered a few screw-ups on our part :

- 60 hours less light for the LED test than the HPS test due to technical problems. One thing that wasn’t clear was that the 60 hours (5 days) was at the switchover to flowering so the impact may have been greater than just the 10% difference in amount of light between HPS and LED – we will see in this 2nd test.

- a month long dropping water level in the basin which raised the temperature of the water and according to Theoreme Innovation can reduce the amount of light output from the lights.

-placing the plants more spread out than we should have.

Plus, we may have had a difference due to a difference in the ambient temperature around the plants comparing the HPS to the LED. One of you found some info that indicated that this might affect final yield results. Thanks a lot for the info.

So as you will see below, we hope to correct these errors in test 2.

So the final dry weight result from the LED was 0.75 lbs. For us this is a great first result. Our best guess (and hope) for test 2 will be one pound and we will work on improving that in test 3.

According to our calculations this yield works out like this :

HPS LED LED
Test 1 Test 1 Test 2
Power (12¢kWh) (goal)

Yield 1.4 lb 0.75 lb 1.0 lb
Electricity $94.75 $34.68 $34.68
AirCon $38.77 $13.80 $13.80
Bulb Cost $19.26 $0.00 $0.00
Ballast Cost $11.42 $25.47 $25.47
Total cost to run light $164.20 $73.95 $73.95

Cost per lb : $117.29 $98.60 $73.95

Savings to HPS : 15.9% 37.0%

So this is a cool result so far with more refining to go especially since we had one extra plant running under the HPS (6 plants vs. 7) this time.

How did we figure this out :

-we pay 12¢kWh. HPS total to light 789.6 kWH. LED to power 288.96 kWh. You can calculate with your own power rate to see how your figure would be different. Obviously the higher your electricity rate, the higher the savings.
-AirCon : at the time of this test we had air con running. Whether we would need air con at all with a full LED set-up is unclear, but these lamps run really cool so probably not but too early to say. The cost of air con was calculated by a friend who knows about air conditioning. Basically my aircon guy says about 33% of the cost to light would be used in aircon here. Down south I guess this would be a lot higher.
-Bulb costs : ours cost us $129 per year and we change them every year to get the most from them, so every 4500 hours to pick a round figure.
-Ballast cost for the Smartbar is $1895 divided by 50 000 lifespan x 672 hours for this test. HPS is $850 for a full set-up of reflector, ballast etc lasting the same time as the Smartbar of 50 000. Maybe using 50 000 for the ballast is not realistic as that would be about 11 years. Does anyone have any feedback on this part?

Test 2 Set-up
You can see the new set-up for test 2 in the photos.

What is different?

- We put a fan on the water basin like on www.greenpinelane.com. Our basin water is running about 44oC more or less which is what the manufacturer says is what it should be at most. The fan should take it down a fair bit according to what is on greenpinelane. Hopefully that will give a good kick of extra light.

- To eliminate any light contamination cross-over effect for sure, we build a little cabinet around the Led which you can see. We don’t grow this way normally so a little concerned about CO2 penetration into the cabinet. We will raise the bottom of the cabinet walls below the pot level. Ideas or thoughts on this one?

- Now I am proud of this one : for the heat around the plant, we have run a coil system from the water coming out of the light around the plants. The idea being to raise up the plant temperature to the same as the HPS so we can eliminate this as a potential difference.

What isn’t changing :

We aren’t changing our nutrient levels. They stay the same as for the HPS for now. Provided we master the changes above to give us a good baseline test, we will start playing with nutrients in test 3. We have had lots of good suggestions for test 3 nutrient changes. Thanks everyone and looking forward to your feedback.

We’ll post some photos once the plants are in the set-up this week.
 

Attachments

B

bigkolas420

Active Member
Wow! This is such a neat thread! I hope the best of luck on the next test! LED's have come a far way since those low power nipple type!

At GreenPineLane they seem to be getting some nice results from the TI Lamp and Bars!

I think people that don't think LED's are worth it are completely wrong, who needs to waste more $ on electricity when all plants need are specific bandwidths to grow?

How is the penetration level of these lights? I've heard that some are very powerful and even cause the plant to move away if they are too close (like 12 inches is a good distance).

Good Luck!
 
L

ledgrowtester

Active Member
We haven't had any problems with penetration. We did notice at the beginning that we could (should) move the plants closer together to maximize light at the height we are using. We are going very conservative at this stage on distance from the plants -- later we will play with rising a bit to increase coverage area more. That may be one area where we will catch-up rapidly to our HPS results as we had one less plant than the HPS.

I saw on greenpinelane that Steve moved his Smartbar up more than he had it initially used on his peppers because he was getting a "crinkling' effect on the leaves. Apparently the problem was solved immediately. I think if I remember his new height is 18 inches from the canopy which should mean that his coverage area will expand a fair bit from the 3 x 3 he is using now.


bigkolas420 said:
Wow! This is such a neat thread! I hope the best of luck on the next test! LED's have come a far way since those low power nipple type!

At GreenPineLane they seem to be getting some nice results from the TI Lamp and Bars!

I think people that don't think LED's are worth it are completely wrong, who needs to waste more $ on electricity when all plants need are specific bandwidths to grow?

How is the penetration level of these lights? I've heard that some are very powerful and even cause the plant to move away if they are too close (like 12 inches is a good distance).

Good Luck!
Click to expand...
 
L

ledgrowtester

Active Member
Just a quick update to let you know we aren't dead ; we are waiting for our new medical grow permit so we can start test 2. We'll post an update as soon as we are able to start the new grow.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top