LED Bulb to Growlight

Decided to do something like @Mr.Sparkle’s bucket/comp case/small cabinet grow with the 14w boards.

Saw something today and thought I would get some input from y’all. Has anyone ever done anything with these (or similar)?

https://www.amazon.com/LOHAS-White-Power-Energy-Saving/dp/B00CZ75TWA/ref=pd_sim_21_11?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00D1GT772&pd_rd_r=da352b83-7b14-11e8-b27c-e96328b0e298&pd_rd_w=x0hGa&pd_rd_wg=Fv3Lu&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=7967298517161621930&pf_rd_r=SMA0GQE7H1AD8X25NA73&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&refRID=SMA0GQE7H1AD8X25NA73&th=1

I get Amazon gift cards, that I usually use for supplies, but was intrigued with these. Are these something usable, say around 4 of them? Would a Mean Well (or similar) work for these?

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You’d be better going with citizen cobs like CLU038 or 048 for higher power. They are proven in actual grows and quite cheap. You can use a cheap Chinese led driver to keep the cost down. For heatsinks the cheapest is a CPU sink and fan for each chip. You can rip them out of old towers to save cash.

Have a look at a site called LED gardener pal. You will find loads of info on diy led rigs there.

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those ebay/chineseum 100w/50w chips are junk straight up. Just wasting money on them, bigclive on youtube i believe has a decent breakdown of the construction of them.

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Trust me, those chinese cobs probably suck just as bad as the chinese “Driverless” cobs. (4 pictured, only one installed to test)

White Widow Auto grown with one of those 50w driverless cobs. FLUFFY BUDS. Looks impressive but I wasn’t pleased with the results. (1x1x2 cab for reference) Got MAYBE 1oz?

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i found with my plants, when headroom as an issue, i simply started flipping to bloom when smaller. i have not missed any weight, and if anything i get more at harvest time. my cabinet is 5 foot 10 inches, once my cool tube is hung, i have about 5 feet. i noticed my plants just had long legs, and the buds still only grow at the top, once i flipped a foot shorter, nothing on top changed, bud wise. jsut shorter plants.

i use those led bulbs in my mini fridge grow space.

Looks like the more experienced guys here got the lighting covered, figured I’d throw this at you.

Make your own plant food with plant material or fruit and add sugar. Trying it out myself but lots of people on here seem to be using it. Much better than chemical nutes. And it’s the cheapest you can get.

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Here is another ponder for the group. Which is better, the white lights which go by the temperature or the “grow” lights that use the “nm” scale and are usually purply?

I know that from the beginning of time, there was nothing but the “vapor” lights and while they may have been a little blue or a little yellow, they were just “levels of white”. But now with LEDs coming into common use, which is more effective? I know that more and more hydro vegetable and floral growers are switching to the grow lights.

The question is. if you had a choice in LEDs of the traditional white ones or the led full spectrum grow lights, which would everyone choose?

Most of us would say white light now-a-days. I like 3500K because imo it’s got a good blend of what you’d get out of running MH for veg, and HPS for flowering. Dense sticky short noded bushes for me!

Just my .02 tho :smiley:

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Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that white light is a “fuller spectrum” for the plants, but varying levels of blue and red determine if they want to stretch or bush out. Can’t remember which cor does what though.

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Red promotes stretch, blue promotes short compact growth.

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Exactly what I was looking for!

I’m trying a mix of 2700K and 3500K solstrips with a red/blue strip in each rack (fixture), there will be 3 racks in total when i finally get hers built.

Got some nice lush bushes under them so far :thumbsup:

I was told that if I didn’t want to switch veg lights to flower lights that the best thing to do was stay around 4000k for both. So would a combination of both (white and red/blue) like @Albannach is talking about the best overall option?

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It really comes down to personal preference and your grow needs.

You’ve got multiple opinions, and only one of them is going to matter, YOURS.

Some folks want all that red in their lighting, for frosty stretchy plants. Red will have the most distance between internodes and some say it helps finish flowering faster. (No proof imo)

On the other hand, some folks want as much blue as they can get, to keep their plants short little bushes. Tight internode spacing, frost production is still great as well.

Personally, I like a middle of the road. 3500-4000k is where I like to be, I’ve got a bunch of 2700k screw in LEDS that I may try out in my 2x2 but my strip array (I call it the “JellySol”) is 4000k strips and i’m loving my results.

At the end of the day, Ya just gotta try something and see if you like it. Best of luck friend :smiley:

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As other have said it comes down to choice, there are advantages and disadvantages depending on the color temp. To me anything in that 3500-4500k range is a nice sweet spot as utlimately it the middle ground and we are the ones viewing the plants in the end ;).

Bluer light (4500k+ when talking white) reduces stretch and cause the the plant to produce hormones that will keep it a bit more dense and compact, energy wise for the plants photo receptors a bluer light is actually less efficient than a warmer light (1.9umol vs 2.1 or something like that) because the wavelengths need to be down converted slightly to be used more so by our plants.

Redder light (less than 3500k when talking white) causes stretch and the plants to produce those hormones that trigger flowering functions, and energy wise as stated above its more efficient than the bluer light.

So its really choice as can you flower under bluer light, or veg under redder light forsure, is it ideal no, but use what you have as the difference isn’t really a huge amount or say you may have height restrictions and want to keep things a bit more squat (typically my case).

Key point just for info sake, all white leds are actually just blue leds with a phosphor coating, so thats why when looking at spectrum graphs they always have that spike in the blue region of your nanometer range. Saying that the more blue the led is typically the more efficient it is as far as light production vs energy use standpoint goes, as the when you start going redder some of that energy is lost when the phospor is down grading it to a longer wavelength aka redder. So for us its a weird situation where redder light is more efficient for the plant from an energy perspective, but bluer leds are more efficient from an energy consumption perspective.

Again why the middle ground works.

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@Jellypowered and @Mr.Sparkle - It seems that you both fall in the “white light” category. Would you recommend mixing a little “purple(ish)” light with the 'White" like adding 1 "purple(ish)? cob with 4 or 5 “white” cobs?

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I see no added benefit to adding “purple(ish)” light to an already complete solution like “white” light. If you start with a light that has quality diodes, it’s gonna have plenty of the spectrums the plant uses… No supplementing needed.

Just my .02 pennies. :slight_smile:

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I’m leaning toward a blend that produces around 3500K and my experiment with red/blue solstrips is still ongoing. I’m wondering if i overdid it with the red cos i got a poor male/female ratio. Maybe 1 red/blue strip in a rack of 10 would be a better mix :thinking:

No real need, but there is current research out there about adding far red right at the end of the daytime scheduled, like last 15-30min before lights off and continuing them on for another 15mins into lights off, as the far red supposedly kicks the plant into going into sleep functions and activities quicker. Something to look into if you would like.

That’s interesting. So would the new red light need to be that high in wattage, in other words, if you were running 600W normally, would you need to run 600W of red? Would want to be in the high 700’s to low 800’s, in the IR range or in the 600’s in what I believe they call “deep red”?

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