Old Reviews Lens-less LED lighting

[Torched]

http://www.liltomatoconcepts.com/

I've never used LEDs but was chatting up with one of the reps from this company. Their lights looked a little different than anything else I've seen in the LED world and I thought you all might want to look as well. Seemed spendy, but he said it uses a "full spectrum" LED and it is lens-less because the lens block a certain amount of light. It gave off a clean white light which he said was great for veg or flower. Looked real nice like something out of star trek, although well out of my price range.

 

[Red eyed c]

I think lenses are needed especially when penetrating light through a 3ft plant,And I'm not sure how well there reflector would work..also there are on 54 LEDs on that unit,for a $1000 thats a hell of a lot of money considering my blackstar has 80 LEDs and cost around $200.To me I can only see white LEDs on there site,no reds or blues.full spectrum means a mix of colours but I only see one on there lights

 

[Torched]

The rep called the LEDs full spectrum, I asked him on it and he said something about phosphorus in the LED making it full spectrum. He was saying the amount of light you loose through the lenses (Usually two lenses) affects the intensity of light enough to make lens not worth it. They were being used as supplemental green house lighting 12-15ft off the ground as well as your standard growing situation.

 

[Red eyed c]

Right I see,I found this in an article which may explain how they achieve different spectrums.im not sure it's still full spectrum tho as uv and infra red seem to be used in a lot of grow panels,but it's an interesting concept

White LEDs are blue LED chips covered with a phosphor that absorbs some of the blue light and fluoresces with a broad spectral output ranging from mid-green to mid-red. The overall luminous efficacy of Nichia's units in 1997 was approx. 7.5 lumens/watt but has since increased to 15-20 lumens per watt by 2002 and with a few models achieving at least 30 lumens/watt in 2006. Lumileds is now producing units achieving 35 lumens/watt and ones based on Cree blue chips may soon achieve 60-plus lumens/watt.

The spectrum of these white LEDs consists of the LED band in the mid-blue plus the phosphor band from mid-green to mid-red. The spectrum runs low in far red and blue-green, high in mid-blue, low in violet-blue and really low in the violet. The color rendering index is 85 according to Nichia and other manufacturers mostly claim a more conservative figure of 70 that I think is easily exceeded.

Most white LEDs have a higher color temperature in the range of 5000 to 8000 Kelvin - icy cold pure white to bluish white.

There are now "warm white" LEDs with color temperature around 3500 K, which have the phosphor converting more of the blue light from the LED chip into yellowish light. Nichia has taken this to an extreme with yellow LEDs that are blue ones with phosphor. The color of those is an only slightly whitish non-orangish yellow with dominant wavelength in the upper 570's nm.

Here's the full article http://donklipstein.com/ledc.html
Heres the site,very usefull for anyone wanting to know about LEDs,http://donklipstein.com/index.html

 

[Torched]

Sweet thanks for the links, he did mention that there was no UV or IR. It's hard to know what's 'sales' talk and what's science.

 

[Red eyed c]

That's true mate,iv found researching is the best way to check out a product, the article iv linked is very interesting and the guy has a deep knowledge of led and other lighting iv spent a good couple of hours on and off reading through the led section,it's very technical and I don't understand a lot of it lol but I like to learn :smokebuds:

 

[Red eyed c]

Sounds like its broken and it also seems Like it would be useless for growing running on battery's mate

 

[mattinuk3]

I thought the efficiency advantage from LED is because they only use blues and reds, and DON'T use any yellow or green, which the plant can't use (thats why it looks those colors)

70% of the wavelength HPS emits isn't usable by the plant, so why are these guys trying to make a full spectrum led with a lot of unusable light? Unusable light = heat.

 

[Red eyed c]

Blues and reds are the primary colours needed but other colours also help.the sun doesn't emit only red and blue,it has a spectrum and with led your able to tailor it as close to that spectrum as is possible.

 

[mattinuk3]

True, but the same thing exists for the sun - only the reds and blues are used out of the full spectrum hitting the plant. (with minor effects from IR and UV)


The difference is that with the sun, your electricity bill isn't paying for all the unused rays that are bouncing off and radiating as heat. This is why Blackstar can grow 10 square feet (max 12) while drawing 333 watts on their 500 watt flowering model.

Also, lack of IR and UV is cause for concern. IR causes shorter internode spacing, and UV causes resin to be produced in more places along leaves and stems.