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Apr 26, 2011. 10:43 AMarnookie
says:
If you are thinking of building a diy grow light please take note of this.
Each and every led needs to be atleast 1watt each. Anything below that will be useless so don't use old leds out of toys or old boards, they simply will have too little Total lumens versus lumens per watt. You need atleast 10mm LEDs with 1watt per LED to supply enough light to the plant anything lower will not work. A good combination is a pannel made from 75% 1watt red high brightness leds, 20% 1watt blue high brightness leds and 5% 1watt amber high brightness leds. somewhere in the region of 660nm for red and 460nm for blue
There is also no effective difference in penetrative power for horticultural purposes between a 1W LED and a 3W LED. So anything over 1watt is just wasted. This means brightness has very little to do with the benefit you will get once you use 1wat leds. Don't confuse this with a pannel made from say 20 LEDs rated a 10watt as to one with 10 LEDs rated at 10watt. As the 20 watt pannel will use the useless 0.5watt leds verses the 10watt pannel that uses 10x10watt 1watt LEDs that are ideal. This has been tested and proven that 1watt single LEDs have great benefit to plants and anything less is just a waste of time and has no benefit at all to plants. The same applies with going brighter than 1watt has no benefit either.
Hope that may help some of you. Especially if you are growing indoors.
Also LEDs are more efficient than any other form of grow lighting available.
The commercially available LED growlights outperform all other growlamps from HID lamps to including high pressure sodium (HPS) and metal halide (MH) lamps.
So prepare to see other grow lamps become obsolete as LED growlight take over.
Each and every led needs to be atleast 1watt each. Anything below that will be useless so don't use old leds out of toys or old boards, they simply will have too little Total lumens versus lumens per watt. You need atleast 10mm LEDs with 1watt per LED to supply enough light to the plant anything lower will not work. A good combination is a pannel made from 75% 1watt red high brightness leds, 20% 1watt blue high brightness leds and 5% 1watt amber high brightness leds. somewhere in the region of 660nm for red and 460nm for blue
There is also no effective difference in penetrative power for horticultural purposes between a 1W LED and a 3W LED. So anything over 1watt is just wasted. This means brightness has very little to do with the benefit you will get once you use 1wat leds. Don't confuse this with a pannel made from say 20 LEDs rated a 10watt as to one with 10 LEDs rated at 10watt. As the 20 watt pannel will use the useless 0.5watt leds verses the 10watt pannel that uses 10x10watt 1watt LEDs that are ideal. This has been tested and proven that 1watt single LEDs have great benefit to plants and anything less is just a waste of time and has no benefit at all to plants. The same applies with going brighter than 1watt has no benefit either.
Hope that may help some of you. Especially if you are growing indoors.
Also LEDs are more efficient than any other form of grow lighting available.
The commercially available LED growlights outperform all other growlamps from HID lamps to including high pressure sodium (HPS) and metal halide (MH) lamps.
So prepare to see other grow lamps become obsolete as LED growlight take over.
Aug 12, 2010. 8:23 PMrecuat
says:
DID YOU TRY ON YOUR CIRCUIT IT WILL NOT WORKING BECAUSE NO RECHARGE BATTERY BACK UP, THE CONDENSER VALUE FOR RECHARGE ONLY LAST YOU 2 SECOND ONLY. PLEASE CHECK YOUR CIRCUIT.
Feb 6, 2010. 11:18 AMhjxn
says:
Green LED's also generate electricity - perhaps you could give them a try
Jun 14, 2009. 12:03 PMMJamesM
says:
I like the idea of converting sunlight to a wavelength more useful to the plants, but are you sure that wavelength is UV? Common literature indicate that red and blue are more effective. Plus you would definitely need many more than a single LED to double the growth rate as you claimed, and why cover the bottle up at all? Also, what does a capacitor do in your circuit? All it seem to do is block the current to the LED - and stop it working for more than a second. Perhaps there's a mistake in your diagram.
Jun 20, 2009. 11:30 AMMondak
says:
The blue end of the spectrum is good for leaf growth and germination. I read a paper from NASA that said that 470nm is a good peak for the blue and as it turns out is the commonly available blue LED wavelength. The thing is that for fruiting and flowering, the red end of the spectrum is needed. The study said that 660nm is the wavelength that is ideal for promoting the fruiting and flowering. The problem is that most red LEDs that you buy are about 625nm. While I understand these are ok, unlike other light sources that put out light across the visible light spectrum, LEDs are very specific in their output. So a lot less of the light produced is what the plants really like even though they are still red LEDs. I have bought 660nm reds before and they are a lot deeper red when you compare the output. They are also about 1.5x as much money. That being said, I think I paid just over $0.04 each when I bought 500 in a large order of electronics components.
Jun 15, 2009. 1:10 PMralegg
says:
I too am confused about why a UV LED is being used in this application...from my research red and blue light are far more beneficial for plant growth.
Nov 15, 2010. 12:17 PMApplebohn
says:
I would be incredibly surprised if it grew anything close to as well as in natural light let alone "2x" as fast. Solar panels, particularity cheap one "bought on the street" are apt to have very low efficiency rates. The utmost efficiency solar panels in the world ever to be developed, are able to harness a mere 30% of the energy in the from of electricity while your solar panel's will almost certainly reside in the teens or lower. So, what your basically doing is blocking all the light the plants have spent millions of years evolving to by incredibly efficient at absorbing and converting to energy (99% rate), effectively reducing the amount of light reaching the plant by ten fold. Then, the energy that does manage to get harnessed must then go back out through an LED, a process which too has energy loss and then delivering it to the plant in an incredibly energy inefficient spectrum of light for the plant to absorb. I seriously doubt It will grow better in this environment. (Not to mention your circuit won't even work)
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