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LED lights?


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As I posted here by accident I may as well make use.

The lumens / w figures are a surprise.

From the figures I've seen from the manufacturers , corncob LED lights give out about the same as a fluorescent tube of the same wattage.

Your differences must be due to the focused light of a flat array.

It's all very encouraging :D

Edited by FredG
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I also think think it has to be largely due to the focused light.

There are other losses though with both flourescent and HPS, an 18W flourescent bulb is losing 5 watts in the ballast for example so actually consumes 23W, same with HPS.

Even with red/blue UFO's the lux seemed high but its not easy to compare flourescents with red/blue light so i didnt think about it much.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

mobile, are you using "royal blue" as your blue led in your setup? And for the red amber?. I've been planning to try a mix of royal blue and amber or "red orange". Not sure at the moment which one is better suited for plants. I'll maybe use these leds: (pdf link) http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1498098.pdf. These are 3 W power leds by Avago. I'm sure there are other types but I don't think there are much bigger single leds for royal blue or red/amber.

Edited by mobile
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Av8tor1, over on Terraforums, had a custom 3 chip Tristar made up: http://www.luxeonsta...r-03-000129.htm. They can make custom assemblies, for which you pay a custom mounting fee, but then they are added to the pre-defined list for repeat orders.

mobile, what type/model of leds do you use?

Mine was a pre-assembled lamp, so I don't know the type of LEDs.

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  • 8 months later...

Hello,

I'm also looking for someone with an experience on led strips. From what I suspect those Wistuba's leds are just typical 5050 led strips and the only difference that they're customised so there's mix of blue and red on it. Would 2 strips where one is blue and second one red make things work as well as with Wistuba's leds? And to go one step further - what wattage of led strip is needed to cover for example an area of 100x40cm where the distance between light source and plants is about 30cm? I'm talking about an adult plants, not production which probably needs not as much light. Any answers would be greatly appreciated!

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Thanks Gringo, but you're not very specific when it comes to led colors you use and type of strips. I assume you also have white leds which are of no interest for me therefore both blue and red would probably use around 100W in your case. Basing on Wistuba's words where he states that 1m of led strip is an equivalent of a fluorescent bulb of same lenght (which eats twice as much power) i'd say that 200W bulb is far more than enough for such an area, maybe even unnecessary. As I'm rookie when it comes to artificial lighting I might be terribly wrong on that.

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Big thanks mobile, btw your H. minor is a stunner! Beautiful colors. Could you please give me a hint on a wattage of your leds and area they cover? I'm using 5050 strips which consume 15W per meter. From what you say in the post mentioned above (and from my own research) there should be at least 3 times as much red than blue leds which I'm aware of. Knowing (basing on information found on the internet) that red encourages flowering and blue stimulates growth it still makes me wonder why red is so important and not blue instead. I guess there are no simple answers to that.

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Big thanks mobile, btw your H. minor is a stunner! Beautiful colors. Could you please give me a hint on a wattage of your leds and area they cover?

My LED lamp is 15W (15 x 1W LED). The area I cover with it is that one H. minor, though I'm sure it is capable of covering more.

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I've just completed a test setup with ebay leds. I got 5 pcs 5 W red 660 nm and 5 pcs 5 W royal blue leds. Here I have 4 reds and 2 blues and one white (came with a DX spotlight). The leds are driven with 3 drivers (white currently not connected): 2 red leds have one driver (in series), 2 blue and again 2 red (in series). The heatsink is for a stock AMD cpu. The red leds are on the corners, 2 blues top and bottom middle and white (3-led) on the center. With default settings for the drivers (DX constant current ones) for a 12 V input the current is 1,3 A so about 16 W input power for all the leds except white. The heatsink gets quite warm after a while so I'm probably not going to drive them at full power (no fan). Maybe about 10 W for all the leds for now as this is for a cephalotus pot.

The led drivers have a dimming pin so I could easily add a PWM dimming option for each led or in pairs depending on the connection. I hope the picture works...

https://dl-web.dropb.../Led-light1.jpg

Edited by pmatil
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I use only white LEDs, warm white cool white, ratio 1:1.

Under my ceiling were born 100% Roridula gorgonias, flowering sundew chrysolepis, I grow about 20 nepenthes highland / intermediate, drosera ascendens a diameter of 8 cm, all in good health.

In the next periodic AIPC there will be an article written by me on testing the white LEDs on carnivorous plants.

The eye wants its part and the plants they want their lights !

Prompt

Edited by Prompt
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Hello Prompt,

That's very interesting that you're one of very few (I suppose) people using white leds for their plants. Everyone are recommending a mix of blue/reds while you've abandoned those light spectrums completely. I wonder what type of leds are you using (are those strips? 5050 etc.), what area do they cover and what's the distance between light and leaves. But the most important thing is if your plants are well colored - especially D. chrysolepis?

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There's no reason why white LEDs would not work, in the same was as white fluorescent lights do - in fact they share similar characteristics in that they both use phosphors to produce white light. There are of course efficiency losses when using any white light for plants, as plants cannot use the whole spectrum, so there is some wasted energy. White LEDs are however much easier to focus the light onto the subject than fluorescents, so there is an efficiency gain there. Plants looks at lot more pleasing to the human eye under white light than they do under red/blue, so that is something to take into consideration.

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5050 LEDs are good for terrariums under to 50 cm high, while the 5630 can use them under to 60 cm, height exceeded this must orient on power led, if the terrarium is higher than 80-90 cm must be added to additional optical for power LEDs .

I just wanted to point out that the phosphor white LEDs have applied to cover more shade than the classic fluorescent lamp 6500k - 4200k etc.., However are very close to fluorescent phytostimulants, especially warm-white LEDs.

you can find my accomplishments in this section of the forum, both with power LED and also with SMD 5050.

Lately I have also created a ceiling light with led cob and one with rigid led streep 5050.

As I have time I'll show you.

I put later, the photos, D. chrysolepis.

Prompt

Edited by Prompt
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