TaiHudman Posted July 14, 2012 Share Posted July 14, 2012 (edited) What is the cheapest way to make a led light panel ? i konw you have to have a 660nm wavelength of the red spectrum, but where do you get the right leds to make that. every outdoor led spotlight i find is about 300 and the cheap ones i see have bad reviews. i want a LED Tube Lighting but i dont want to have high wattage or spend a dick ton of money. and dont ask me what im growing. Edited July 14, 2012 by TaiHudman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Keith Walters Posted July 14, 2012 Premium Member Share Posted July 14, 2012 Do you mean you want to make a LED light source to grow plants under? Commercial units use a mixture of red and blue LEDs. There's no green used because chlorophyll doesn't absorb green, it just reflects it, which is why most leaves look green. Fluorescent Grow-lights have a mixture of red and blue phosphors, which is why they have a vivid purple appearance. If you use white lights to grow plants you'll be wasting power generating a green component that plants don't use. Good LED spotlights and studio lights are expensive mainly because it's hard to make natural-looking white light with LEDs. Same with fluorescent lights. Plants don't care overmuch about the exact wavelength, so any sort of efficient RED and Blue LEDs will do. However, plants still need a lot of illumination, because they're used to photosynthesizing in daylight, which can be hundreds to thousands as times as bright as normal interior lighting. Commercial "closed" hydroponic operations use thousands of high-efficiency red and blue LEDs, and they're so bright that the operators have to wear safety goggles in case they look directly into the LEDs. Even then, the overall illumination is still fairly weak compared to midday daylight, but it makes up for it by being on 24/7. Anyway, why do you want to use LEDs? For a large installation, they're worthwhile because of the power saving, but for a small-scale operation you're likely to find that fluorescent grow-lights are more cost-effective. It doesn't matter what you use though; the power consumption is still going to be significant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomas-english Posted July 14, 2012 Share Posted July 14, 2012 Use tungsten balanced for growing and daylight balanced for flowering. LED s are gonna be expensive for sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xiaoshatongxue Posted July 18, 2012 Share Posted July 18, 2012 Good led strip and studio lights are expensive mainly because it's hard to make natural-looking white light with LEDs. Same with fluorescent lights. Plants don't care overmuch about the exact wavelength, so any sort of efficient RED and Blue cheap light bulbs will do. However, plants still need a lot of illumination, because they're used to photosynthesizing in daylight, which can be hundreds to thousands as times as bright as normal interior Flexible LED Strip Lights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oliver Hadlow Martin Posted July 21, 2012 Share Posted July 21, 2012 haha, I'll give you credit for trying to source out cheap LED lights, coming here was a funny call. You probably would have better efforts on other forums that deal with whatever plant material you are trying to grow indoors ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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