I know I always thought they were shit, but starting to think maybe things have gotten much much better. Got another buddy who's trying out this same light. Day 25 and looking pretty good so far, especially for more of a bush. Again for 190W true wattage definitely not being blown out of the water by a 400W HPS. At least not yet anyways. Interested to see how that goes too. So far so good.
Idk... I can't say with 100% certainty right now but from what other grow buddies I personally know are seeing and what I've been following of some others I'd put my money on LED with Watt vs watt. I think it's very possible that with a good LED light with a decent spectrum if you were consuming an actual 2000W of LED and compared to 2-1K lights. Again keep in mind a lot of LEDs are advertised as just LED diode max wattage times the number of diodes. So a panel using 3W diodes and has 100 of them would be called a 300 when it typically uses about 50% of that and more like 160 actual watts. Like the California light works 800W solar storm is a little better they use a little over 600 actual watts. blackdog, apache tech, area 51, and hans bonsai hero don't do that. They list either actual draw or a little under. I would put money on an apache tech AT600 beating a 1000W hotrtilux. Here is why. EDIT: One thing I should probably point out, notice those PAR footprints over 4x4. Notice how as you raise the HPS all numbers fall even those at the 4' mark decrease as the light moves up. Now pay attention to the LED As the distance increases the spread becomes more even you get less intensity in the center and gain more at the sides. I would guess at around 36" you would have better penetration at the center over HPS and about the same at the 4' mark around the perimeter. Which reminds me of another falsehood surrounding LEDs about how they are cool and you can get them super close to your plants. Well you are doing two things there, 1. robbing yourself or light and lightspread 2. potentially going to light bleach a plant. LEDs are very focused, well the good ones are, so to get spread you really need to keep them higher than you would think. You definitely wouldn't want to keep one closer to a plant than an HPS regardless of heat and all that back of the hand canopy stuff.
Just found these and thought I would share. The first video is of a guy I've been watching his grow logs, today I found this one post showing this short video he made with 12/12 from seed with TGA or Jordan of the islands fem strains. [YOUTUBE]c-_yHBHupCs[/YOUTUBE] Then here is a guy running a ferro AF600(using a true 600Ws, not like the guy above who is just over 400) vs 2-600s. Not too shabby. [YOUTUBE]iocHhR5stmk[/YOUTUBE] Now I'm starting to search out and find these induction light grows. That has got my attention. Looks pretty interesting.
So if all goes well , a led can compete with a hps ....actual watt vs watt? With the same energy consumption , but 10x the cost? Honest question , I'm getting lost
Yes. Start up would be a hell of a lot more expensive but really more like around 600-700W actual true to the wall consumption should compare with a 1K. That's what my buddies have been seeing with their 800W solarstorms for sure. And an 800W solarstorm in flower mode with the UV-B bulbs on only draws 650W at the wall. Another buddy is using these other ones from HTG that are advertised as 432W but are I believe 270-280W and they are comparing to the 600W digis. He's actually selling all his digis now for like $150 with hoods. LOL So I'm interested to see how this area 51 all white light I have that I'm testing now can perform. Though I will also add that the guys with the solar storms also run lumigrows they run all HPS and LED in the same room and with the addition of the LED they doubled their yields with adding 1/2 the extra electrical consumption they would have made if they filled up with 1ks. The other with the 600 HPS and 432W(advertised) LED did an actual comparison and was happier with the LEDs. Him making the switch entirely after hearing about the others experience is what perked up my ears and drove me to dive in to researching the topic. Which is damn confusing in the beginning. So then after sifting through all the snake oil decided fuck it i can't trust anyone but myself so lets see what these things can do. Tried to get all of the facts straight then made what seemed to be the best price wise purchase from what all I had gathered. If I had the money I would have bought apache techs. After all that's who makes all of Nasa's LEDs for research. But a ~240=250W system from them is ~$1k and for that I could have bought 2 area 51 lights for a little less ~$70-80. Edit: And just some examples of the apache tech stuff. This is all by a guy that goes by greengenes. The video is ehhh but the pictures give a better idea. He's using right at 600Ws in the pics and got 503g dry yield. That's respectable. [YOUTUBE]d76ZF1hMaPg[/YOUTUBE]
this is great and all but how do they do with say 50 plants that are 2ft tall? can they hold the yields with HPS over the course of a 15x15 room? running the exact same setups? all I ever see is smaller grows with them or the 1 plant badass results grow, or super small grows with decent results
There is no way they can be used commercially. They are too expensive to buy and cant penetrate to any great depth. They are definitely getting better but im saving my money. Induction lighting has the same problems.
No way of me giving an accurate statement for that. Though I would think performance wise yes they could hold their own and most likely outperform the HID if going watt for watt or say doing something like AT600s in place of each 1k though that would be more equivalent to about ~65-70% wattage compared to HPS. Penetration with LED is supposed to be better and that's what the numbers say so too. BUT.... the cost to do so retarded. So what in a 15x15 space are you using 16 1k lamps? 16 at600s would be like $32k just on lights. The guys experimental room at rocky mountain high looks interesting. [YOUTUBE]MVNxNVnkBPE[/YOUTUBE] Sure they aren't cheap and you can get a great HID light for less, but LEDs don't seem to be the same bullshit from the past when we all first saw those junk 90W UFOs. Cost effective, maybe not so much but then again that depends on how much saving they can offer you which for people with really high electricity rates if the lamps last their life time they could actually save money in the end without the extra consumption or replacing bulbs all the time. For me it should take about 10 months for the savings of electricity to make up the difference of what it would have cost me for a 400W in an aircooled hood vs the area 51 I bought. I'm ok with that, especially if they produce on a similar level to a 400, which is what I'm hoping. Though for sure like anything new needs to be ran through it's courses so we can see what we think as this little test grow I have going progresses. Would be sweet if they could last their rated light because at 50% life running 12/12 365 days a year would equate to 10 years. Though again that's an in theory type thing. Hell if this light performs as I hope and could last 3-5 years it would be more than worth it. I'll tell you this though it is 100x easier maintaining an environment with the LEDs than HPS, then again that could definitely change for people in much colder areas where battling HPS heat isn't quite as bad.
What's been interesting is that LEDS are actually becoming viable in select applications. That's a far sight better than even a few years ago. Gotta admit, if I had $1000-$1500 to set up a personal supply closet LEDS would be something to strongly consider. Still have no faith whatsoever on the huge life expectancy though. Most HPS are rated at what, 24,000 hours? Does anybody actually run them that long? Anything that produces heat or light output degrades over time well before failure. For building out more than 100 sq/ft I'd still opt for the tried and true HID because of up front costs alone.
I dunno man, I think I have the holy grail of 600s then.....I got it from a buddy, it was my first big light, has a sticker on it from 1989 and looks to be from then too, makes a nice buzzing sound but still rocks it!!! oh ya...and its HUGE!
Think he's referring to bulb life. Not the other components. But out of curiosity how big is that ballast? Res for sure, definitely not cheap. For the little setup I have I paid $500 for the light. So was close to a grand once I bought all new fans, filters, bots, media, nutes, built a veg box and got all the other odds and ends. But yeah no telling what the actual life on these will be. Guess I'll just have to see, but good thing is my light has a limited lifetime warranty so first 3 years no cost on parts or replacement or shipping, 3 years on just have to pay wholesale on the parts then if I want to upgrade the light A51 has an upgrade program depending on what it is, but the owner stats that even if you had to change out everything other than the frame case it would be around $250 which isn't bad seeing as that would include diodes, heatsinks, fans, lenses, drivers and all the actually guts. So far the guy has been good to his word offers multi unit discounts and such. I emailed him because one of the fans on the light would make an intermittent click, no really biggie. Kind like it was slightly out of balance, not uncommon for 120mm fans. But he said he'd just go ahead and ship me out a new one just incase. I'm fine with that. So far light is kicking ass. Shit I've been so impressed with these things I actually went through the house and replaced everything with CREE LEDs from homedepot. So much better and brighter than all the crap CFLs I had throughout the house. That and none of that annoying warm up time BS. Even went ahead and bought two extra 9.5W 2700k bulbs incase I feel I need some more reds in with my all white light later in flower. But hell I've been looking at these COB style LEDs from CREE and man I bet some 3000K bulbs would make for an awesome setup. At 47W driven at 2A they will put out ~10,000 lumens each. The spectrum on the 93 series CXA3050s looks very nice, though lumen output per watt is lower than the 80 series. Check it out. Page 7 Either way 130 lumens/watt for a 47W bulb while driven at 1.4A. Get closer to 200 around 2A drive range. That's pretty nuts. www.cree.com/xlamp_data_sheets/cxa3050 Oh and should probably mention those style lights are actually designed and used to replace CMH bulbs for commercial use in high bay and low bay fixtures.
its a hydrofarm 600hps.....its huge, lol and loud.....its about the size of a shoebox, everything is hardwired, you cant plug anything into it anywhere, no 240v either....strait 120v......fucker has to be 20lbs!
Think I actually used 2 of those 600s in the past. Big white ones like the sun systems cases just a little bigger. I think to this day the heaviest most retarded ballast I ever used was one of those old school 400W ballasts. Big square/cube thing pretty sure the whole case was just solid steel. Damn thing was heavier not sure what weighted more that 400 or the 600. The hydrofarm one I'm thinking of had no cooling fins or anything, just some slits on the sides. That 400 was solid, no vent holes nothing. Both survived me and atleast one other grower that I know of afterwards. They just kept getting pasted along, not sure where the ended up by now. But.... I bet them heavier fuckers still work. :roffl:
My 1993 1000W MH ballast weighs a cool 22 lbs :roffl: it looks like a part for a large tractor. I can roast marshmallows off the top of the fucker. Ya know I would go led in a heartbeat if I could swallow the up front cost AND I knew I wasn't loosing weight per pull vis a vis HID. I mean the cost savings in electricity and lack of heat to deal with is huge. I'm super stoked Skunky is sharing his experiment :redbong:
Hey CC, you might find this interesting. I asked the guy growing that bush under the same light as mine how tall that plant was and it's a 3'er. Here's how she's doing at day 31 under the 190. Purddy nice!
that's definitely a photogenic plant that's for sure, dude got skills, looks like a half# girl too.. my only wonder is about having 20-30 of those same size girls in a given space.....Ive began to drink some of the LED potion, im sure they have their place in this field, just not in my world I guess. If I were to go that route, itd take 40k in lights for what im guna do....that's a WTF number:roffl:
And a big WTF number on a whim too. Even more so since it is soo hard to discern between what is BS and fact on the good 'ole interwebs. THough with those area 51s if you needed 20-30 you'd be spending 9-14K. Still not a small number though. What's crazy though, you see the lights next to it with the purple tint and you can see there are a decent looking buds under it. Those are 2-65W HANS lights from the guy who makes the Bonsai hero trimmers. http://www.bonsaihero.com/ I'm very interested to see how that 3'er does in the end.
ya with those prices, id rather fuck the slutty chick thats garunteed to give it up and not the new chick in school:roffl:
Hey, why wine and dine if you don't have to? Wait... I guess I am kind of the wine and dine type. I guess I like a new challenge. :roffl:
