(Part 22) Reddit mentions: The best plant growing lamps

Thanks!

I'm running a Ledgle Led Grow Light 300W Full Spectrum UV IR Plant Grow Lamp for Indoor Greenhouse Garden Plants Veg and Flowering in a couple of small storage containers I got from Home Depot. I have two fans drawing in air and one blowing air out;

AC Infinity MULTIFAN S5, Quiet Dual 80mm USB Fan for Receiver DVR Playstation Xbox Computer Cabinet Cooling

and I used this mylar with spray adhesive;

CoolGrows 2 Mil Mylar Film High Reflective Greenhouse Covering silver Foil Sheets for Grow Tent (4x25 FT)

I'm going 18 hours on/6 hours off.

I have a small CO2 generator I made with a couple of mason jars running a tube to the input fan. I also am running a humidified on low since I live in a very dry area.

The soil is a combo of organic Miracle Grow and some perlite;

8 Quarts xGarden Horticultural Grade Premium Perlite - Coarse and Chunky

Found these on amazon, going to try them out. Not the most powerful but I'll use a few. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DBZICDC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s03?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Nothing special
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q8QZB40/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_SSBSybKW7T9HX

I’m currently just using an extra clip on light that I use for my houseplants. I’m not sure if this will work or if I should invest in something more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MVHP8GY/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_i_ufmSDbZS3WATM

As for co2, no I’m not. Im guessing it would be essential to have?

Sorry I suck at explaining these types of things here ya go

600W LED Grow Light, Missyee 2-Pack Full Spectrum with UV&IR, Veg and Bloom Double Switch Plant Light for Indoor Plants Veg Flowers, Thermometer Humidity Monitor and Adjustable Rope Included, White https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PLXDQF5/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_hngmDbXWTBJFM

The one I have is from a nordic company called Nelson Garden, if you don't live in Finland/Norway/Sweden/Denmark I unfortunately doubt you will be able to find it..
I did a quick search on amazon though and this was the closest I could find

I can't speak for the quality or longevity of the components, but it is one bright motherfucker. I believe this one pulls 3-450W.

Dig the reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Spectrum-10bands-360-870nm-Medical-Vegetative/dp/B00V64PMFW/ref=sr_1_1?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1452103759&sr=1-1&keywords=King+900w#customerReviews

Uh... yeah. So... I broke leaves when repotting. I feel really bad. I was clumsy.

I've got this grow light on it for several hours a day.

I only watered it once a few days after repotting.

I'm using Bonsai Jack's succulent soil. It drained pretty quickly, and I enlarged the drainage hole in the terracotta pot.

Sorry, I was incorrect. You need a signal booster, not power booster. So, assuming you're doing three sides with only one strip (as opposed to several levels of lighting, like a strip under the railing and along the floor), you'd need either 60 or 70 feet (depending on the orientation of your deck). A strip is 16.4ft. Therefore, you'd need four strips. (Which might come up a tad short - buy at least 5 strips, with maybe an extra "fuck up".)

edit: I need to research that a bit more! The controller may only be able to handle three amps total, so you might

That would be a total of 6 amps. So, at the house, you'd have the AC powered controller, with a 6 amp 12 or 24 V inverter power supply. That gets you the first two strings. In the middle you'll have the signal booster, which connects from one set of strips to the next. (that's what I was wrong about.) It's something like this.

By "no nutes" I mean no bottled nutes. I've used homemade soil amendments like grass clipping tea, diluted urine & fish meal flakes. Keep in mind this is a cheap stealth grow in a small space, not bragging about huge yields or anything. Just wanted to see if I could do it au naturale on my first run. Total spent including seeds: $68.

Oh, and I'm also using some [20 watt Chinese LED clamp-on lights] (https://www.amazon.com/RundA-Degree-Flexible-Gooseneck-Greenhouse/dp/B06Y5LHVWV) ($10) for side lighting but they're so weak as to be nearly useless according to most peeps. I don't really count them in my overall lumen/wattage count.

I was initially considering blurple lights for the convenience and 'good' feedback from led lights.

But now from what I heard it's really not that great right? My problem is that I don't know anything about quantum boards, hps and cmh etc..
So I wanted to buy (initially) these (2 lamps) : https://www.amazon.de/Niello%C2%AE-Pflanzenlampe-Spectrum-Schalter-Zimmerpflanzen/dp/B01I3836X8/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1549725274&sr=8-2-spons&keywords=led+lights+600w&psc=1

But this will not be enough I presume?

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These are better and cheaper than Mars hydro

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q8QZB40/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_njE8wbYM4S252

They aren't the best but if it's a small space then go for it.

Edit: Look, neither of these are great lights. This one and the others that are like it I've tried and hated, but it's the cheapest damn shit light you can find anywhere and it grows weed.

here is a link to the lights. It's 2 "300w" LEDs that pull around 100 actual watts but the double lenses on them amplify the fuck out of the light so they're bright as hell and have awesome PAR ratings.

Admittedly I'm not an expert on modern COB-style LED's but I did some research a while back for a project and I'll impart what little knowledge I have:

You could buy a 10-pack of 3W LED's like these for fairly cheap, but consensus seems to be that you get what you pay for with modern LED's. The reviews on that brand are okay, but I'm certainly not recommending them over any other brand. Wire them in parallel (positive to positive to positive... and negative to negative to negative...).

A big concern with these types of high-output LED's is heat - they generate a fair amount of heat in a small package and can easily melt/fail if run for periods of time without a proper heatsink. You could mount them on an aluminum plate with some airspace behind to help with this a bit, but if you are only planning to use the device for a 10-30 seconds at a time then it may not be a huge concern. I get the sense that the real risk is leaving them on for hours without proper heat dispersal.

Regarding a power source: LED's like this are designed to run on a constant-voltage power supply, commonly called a "driver". They convert wall current to between 3V and 24V DC depending on the model. If you used a battery, it would need to be a high-drain battery and preferably rechargeable since running 10 3W LED's is going to blow through batteries if not. My suggestion would be between two and four rechargeable high-drain 18650 batteries wired in PARALLEL if the LED's call for 3V-3.5V like the ones I linked. This is the same type of battery used in many flashlights and e-cigarettes. If you wire them in series by accident then the voltage will add up with each additional battery, i.e. four 18650 batteries wired in series will be outputting roughly 14-15 volts.

One word on 18650 batteries though - they are arguably dangerous if the circuit is not wired properly. Shorting an 18650 can cause it to violently fail, and the videos you may have seen of e-cigs "blowing up" in people's pockets are caused by the batteries shorting and failing. You can buy 18650's classified as "IMR" which use a different (perceived safer) chemistry than "ICR" batteries, and they also make them with a "protection circuit". I recommend seeking out batteries with a protection circuit. These batteries have a built-in tiny circuit that will permanently kill the battery if it shorts or becomes dangerous during use. This prevents them from violently failing, and also prevents you from re-using a battery that may have been damaged by over-charge or over-drain. Please see pending edit for battery calculations.

That's about all I can contribute on the subject, hope it at least helps a bit.

Edit: BTW, the circuit on something like this should be simple if you didn't pick up on that. Essentially you'd just wire all the LED's in parallel so you had a single positive and a single negative lead. Connect negative lead right to the negative lead from the battery bank, and then connect the positive LED lead to a switch. Put the positive battery lead to the other side of that switch.

Battery edit: I did some research and assuming those LED's and an 18650 battery, you don't want to exceed 1C, meaning whatever mAh rating your battery is, you shouldn't attempt to draw more than that at a time. So let's say your battery is 5000mAh, that means you would want one of those batteries (wired in parellel) for every 5000mA that the LED's will draw. Assuming you use the LED's I linked, they claim to draw 600-700mA. Let's use 700 to be safe:

5000/700= 7.1

This means we can run about seven of those LED's on one 5000mAh battery safely. Assuming you are using all 24 LED's and they all draw about 700mA, that means (700 x 24) we need 16,800mAh worth of battery to be safe. That would mean that just three batteries would be pushing it (only 15,000mAh) and four batteries (20,000mAh) would be safe. You would expect to get just over an hour of run time per charge with the example LED's, although again you would not want to run those LED's anywhere near that long without a proper heatsink.

I have this one

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0778Z8M5H/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And this one

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KMW7RYM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The LED light is a much more attractive spectrum, the HPS is quite yellow. No way the LED is actually producing 1800 watts but i suspected that going in. Growing banana, avocado, jackfruit, mandevilla, succulents, lemon, pitaya and some others in a dedicated room. Room had been set up for over 2 weeks, new growth on everything. 18 on, all lights on single timer. You can buy the ratcheting carabiner cords for very cheap. One caveat about any light that is going to actually produce healthy growth is that if it is above your eye level you will not like it. Mine is not set up for aesthetics but to keep my plants thriving through the winter in zone 6. Last year I really struggled along with shitty cheap lights and lost a few plants. We have some huge windows but deep eaves and they just aren't adequate. Entering the plant room is like walking into a blast furnace for the eyes because my plants are so tall.

There are some really shit lights so make sure you're reading the reviews. If people are growing weed with them you're generally good to go. Last year I bought a cheap purple panel led and some spot lights and they were shit. They are also hideously ugly, they make the foliage appear brown. Edit- this is the one I bought last year. I would not buy any this weak again

https://www.amazon.com/UNIFUN-Growing-Hydroponic-Aquatic-Indoor/dp/B01F53LP46/ref=mp_s_a_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1538295568&sr=8-11&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=led+plant+grow+lights&dpPl=1&dpID=41-UTvLz0CL&ref=plSrch

They may be good for starting seedlings or for lower light houseplants but to keep outdoor full sun plants thriving indoors they were total failure.

I don't see any current limiting on the board. Ist there some kind of controller board this is hooked up to? And just to confirm, the green LEDs on both circuits on there died? Because to me that sounds suspiciously like an overcurrent problem on the green channel. And with half the lights experiencing it that might be due to a design or manufacturing error in the controller. Good news then, with the LEDs in series, the failure of 2 has protected the other three.

Just bridging 2 with a wire is not a permanent solution. It raises the current experienced by the remaining LEDs and will shorten their lifetime.

Incidentally, those RGB LEDs look very close to these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/300mA-350mA-Multicolor-Intensity-Components-Lighting/dp/B01DBZIW8W

So replacing LED2 might be a feasible stopgap until you can find someone with a bit more experience to take a look athe the complete circuit to figure out what's killing your lights.

I use them for my succulents and my houseplants too. I have a pothos plant and prayer plant on the side of my growlight fixture since the succulents take up the most space + need more light. I also have a Petra Croton that is directly under the lights and its kicking butt too!

The pothos and prayer plant are growing like weeds!

I'm on mobile and don't know how to make the links pretty but this is the one I'm using

LED Grow Light for Indoor Plant, Winjoy Upgraded Full Spectrum Plant Light with Replaceable Bulb,Dual Head 45W Plant Grow Lamp with Flexible Gooseneck, Professional for Seedling Blooming Fruit ... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L7L82R3/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_0XrQDb78TS0KQ


I personally find grow lights are a pain in the ass to research, I hate reading about all the watts and volts and you name it, but my only complaint with this one is that it has no timer. I would start by googling the plants that you have and what their recommended light settings are and then shop around that.