Answering questions about LED grow light

[Eshine Robin]

Hi everyone, I am Robin, a foreign sales from a factory specializing in LED grow light, I am familiar with the whole manufacturing techniques and general product cost and I know there are many people having a lot of questions for LED grow light, I can answer some of them and glad to talk with you about everything about LED grow light. I just want to collect some information on end market.

I would not exaggerate the quality of the LED grow and just tell you the reality and truth, the actual values, just be objective, you can rest assured that I am not selling goods, just do some market research as a manufacture.

So here we go, give me your question on LED grow, I will answer them one by one on line, thanks.

 

[Heks]

Why don't 'most' LED grow lights on the market bloom well, if at all?

 

[Thawk]

How come most leds out there are garbage, why don't the Chinese lights at least make them partially useful?

 

[jeb55]

Hi Robin,
We are glad to have you here and welcome! I see that your first couple of responses were less than cordial, sorry about that. Some people just seem to get emotional when the word LED is used! The grow journals on this site attest to the fact that LED lights do in fact produce a fine crop! I personally am using LED lights and though I have had some problems with the quality of the lights, there is no question that they are the right choice for growing.

I saw a thread similar to this here on this site some time back but it seemed to fade away. Pit Viper had responded to that thread and he had some really good suggestions on how to improve the lights. He seems to be a major grower here and it appears that he has actually put some serious thought into LED's. It would be best to engage individuals like him to get meaningful suggestions without the emotional baggage that comes with comments from novice growers that bought cheap and then got what they paid for and are now sour on LED's.

Changes need to be made to the quality of the Chinese manufactured lights and the components that go into them. But, just as important, the price needs to come down drastically if the market is to flourish here in the USA! The higher end LED's do indeed work well, but the cost is a very hard pill to swallow and I speak from experience. The lights for my "personal" grow were $3,550.00. That's an awful lot of money for a "personal" grow, and yes I realize that a large part (probably the largest part) of that price was American Capitalist greed. Regardless, that is the current condition of the market and those prices need to come down so that personal growers can afford the equipment. Personal grows by the way, are the future and that is the market that you need to capture.

I suspect that all Chinese LED lights are made at the same factory and some are built to the proprietary specs of an individual vendor, while some are just a standard line that gets the vendors name stamped on them and shipped out. Maybe not, but that is what it looks like to me. My lights were drop shipped from Shenzhen City and I have seen packing slips from the lights of other vendors that also originated from Shenzhen City. All of the components on the different lights appear to be the same and some of the cases are identical and only have a different vendor name stamped on them.

I'm sure that I will have some more questions for you in the future, but right now I only have one. When I purchased my lights, I bought them from a crook (see thread caveat emptor under grow supply review) who is no longer in business. After only four months of use, six light engines went out because I had three power sources fail. These are the kind of quality issues that need to be addressed! Because the vendor was a crook and there was no warranty or replacement parts for me, I became the owner of a useless light that cost $1,150.00. Now the question; can a person order replacement parts for these lights directly from China? If so, how, and where would they do that?

Good luck with this thread, I hope that you get a lot of participation and a lot of good ideas to improve your fledgling LED industry.

JB

 

[freetheweed]

I see no more responses?

 

[Eshine Robin]

Why don't 'most' LED grow lights on the market bloom well, if at all?

Indeed there are many people complaining the actual result of the LED grow light is not as good as the advertising, but there are still many people who get what they want by LED grow light, because there are many variables in the whole lighting process like when to light? how long will last? the hang height? the concrete wavelength? the ratio of the red and blue? when to change the color of light? and so on...

Different people have different measurement in different condition so for manufacturer what we can do is produce the LED grow light according to the requirement of the customers, what we can guarantee is the product we make is comply with the parameters you require but the result of growing because the grow stage is out of our control.

So I suggest people had better listen to some growers who had successful experience in LED lighting or do some more experiments and tests, maybe you will find the answer finally.

 

[Eshine Robin]

I see no more responses?

I will answer every question but I am in China, so there is problem of time difference, hope you understand, thanks.

 

[Eshine Robin]

How come most leds out there are garbage, why don't the Chinese lights at least make them partially useful?

Yes, that's true, most LED lights made in China have awful quality, however, people should not blame on one side, as the trader and wholesaler all over the world want to buy cheap goods to make more money and there are so many factories in China that they will do anything they can to get the order, but most of the buyers only focus on price then cutting price is the only choice. But no one is fool, factories will try everything to cut the cost so they have to buy bad LED lamps with bad LED chips, so are the power supply, PCB, aluminum alloy and other accessories.

So I have to say that is matter of supply and demand and the worst is consumers have to pay for that.

Good news is any product on globe which can be made in China for large scales means the price of this products will get into the drastically cutting stage in short future and people all over the world will benefit from that.

Furthermore, I want to clear not all the LED grow light made in China are bad in quality, I know some companies who can produce fabulous LED grow light including us

 

[Eshine Robin]

Hi Robin,
We are glad to have you here and welcome! I see that your first couple of responses were less than cordial, sorry about that. Some people just seem to get emotional when the word LED is used! The grow journals on this site attest to the fact that LED lights do in fact produce a fine crop! I personally am using LED lights and though I have had some problems with the quality of the lights, there is no question that they are the right choice for growing.

I saw a thread similar to this here on this site some time back but it seemed to fade away. Pit Viper had responded to that thread and he had some really good suggestions on how to improve the lights. He seems to be a major grower here and it appears that he has actually put some serious thought into LED’s. It would be best to engage individuals like him to get meaningful suggestions without the emotional baggage that comes with comments from novice growers that bought cheap and then got what they paid for and are now sour on LED’s.

Changes need to be made to the quality of the Chinese manufactured lights and the components that go into them. But, just as important, the price needs to come down drastically if the market is to flourish here in the USA! The higher end LED’s do indeed work well, but the cost is a very hard pill to swallow and I speak from experience. The lights for my “personal” grow were $3,550.00. That’s an awful lot of money for a “personal” grow, and yes I realize that a large part (probably the largest part) of that price was American Capitalist greed. Regardless, that is the current condition of the market and those prices need to come down so that personal growers can afford the equipment. Personal grows by the way, are the future and that is the market that you need to capture.

I suspect that all Chinese LED lights are made at the same factory and some are built to the proprietary specs of an individual vendor, while some are just a standard line that gets the vendors name stamped on them and shipped out. Maybe not, but that is what it looks like to me. My lights were drop shipped from Shenzhen City and I have seen packing slips from the lights of other vendors that also originated from Shenzhen City. All of the components on the different lights appear to be the same and some of the cases are identical and only have a different vendor name stamped on them.

I’m sure that I will have some more questions for you in the future, but right now I only have one. When I purchased my lights, I bought them from a crook (see thread caveat emptor under grow supply review) who is no longer in business. After only four months of use, six light engines went out because I had three power sources fail. These are the kind of quality issues that need to be addressed! Because the vendor was a crook and there was no warranty or replacement parts for me, I became the owner of a useless light that cost $1,150.00. Now the question; can a person order replacement parts for these lights directly from China? If so, how, and where would they do that?

Good luck with this thread, I hope that you get a lot of participation and a lot of good ideas to improve your fledgling LED industry.

JB

Hi buddy, thanks for your reply, here are my answers:

1. We all know that nowadays the LED lighting products are very expensive but believe me that Chinese manufacturers are exactly people who want to cut down the price with the best desire. Because there are many LED product assembly factories in China suffering from danger of bankruptcy if they can't get enough orders to sustain. The reason is most of the consumers all the world can't afford pricey LED lights. But as the monopoly of multinational corporations like CREE, Osram, Nichia on the LED chips, it will take several years before the Chinese manufacturer produce them all by ourselves. So we are really helpless sometimes.

2. Most factories in China don't have export right so they have to export by means of the trade company who have the export right, that's why you can see two companies names on the pack.

As for the similar shape of the products, I have to say that's Chinese character and also why the Chinese products are very cheap because most manufacturers would not spend money on designing and R&D, they prefer to copy foreign existing designs and make the popular shapes in short time.

Shenzhen is the LED lighting products manufacturing base in China, so most of the LED lighting products all over the world are made here and our company is also here, so when you're free to come to Shenzhen, I like to treat you for Chinese food and also welcome you to visit our factory.

3. Yes, you can contact the initial manufacturer to order replacement parts for your broken lights or send the whole light back to the vendor to let them fix it , if you can't find the vendor, maybe you can find some supplier who sell similar products on Alibaba for help. thanks.

 

[Thawk]

I didn't mean to be unfriendly, I am a led grower and ant to invest in some more LEDs, but it is so hard to find a legitimate led without paying ridiculous prices. Which company are you? Can you tell me why there isn't a happy medium in quality, because we have really cheap, and terrible, lights being made; and we have really awesome, horrendously expensive lights. Where are the lights that will easily get the job done, but isn't gonna amaze you, that you can afford, you know the led for the average joe. Why cant this be accomplished?

 

[Eshine Robin]

I didn't mean to be unfriendly, I am a led grower and ant to invest in some more LEDs, but it is so hard to find a legitimate led without paying ridiculous prices. Which company are you? Can you tell me why there isn't a happy medium in quality, because we have really cheap, and terrible, lights being made; and we have really awesome, horrendously expensive lights. Where are the lights that will easily get the job done, but isn't gonna amaze you, that you can afford, you know the led for the average joe. Why cant this be accomplished?

Thanks for your question and I really understand your annoyance but it really need a long time to perfect LED lighting. I know LED has developed for more than ten years but it's still a new industry in lighting field. Just like computer which develops very fast but still need to perfect.

So far as the price of the LED chips which is the most expensive part of the LED grow light drop slowly so that the whole LED grow light keep on high price, meanwhile the factories try whatever they could do to cut cost in order to attract international buyers so they would not spend time on product test and R&D which lead to a lot of horrible products spring out in the market.

As for manufacturer, what we can do is customize the products as the customers require and make sure light have long lifespan or perfect our after-service, even if there is something wrong with light, the clients will get it fixed in short time. We can't promise the crop yield.

 

[bobajim]

Hi Robin,
In your opinion and from what you've heard from end users, what is the ideal light specs a LED needs to grow mmj well?

 

[PetFlora]

I believe your purpose here was to glean information to help you manufacture better lights. I am aware that Asia can create any product to the specs of the designer. GIGO.

First, people transitioning to LEDs from HPS/HID have to get a feel for the reduced canopy heat that LEDs radiate. That could take 1-2 grows.

***Create a booklet or web page that provides light specs and grower tips. I can help with this.

One problem I have is the actual life expectancy of red vs blue LEDs. I forget which, but one degrades much faster. Since they are all interlaced on the board they are not easy to replace. This problem means the end user will be literally throwing them away in a few years.

Most personal use growers cannot afford to throw away $1,000 every couple years. Within this problem is not knowing when the LEDs have gone into decline. Knowing this would at least prevent wasting ever more expensive seeds and nutes because the light had degraded beyond usefulness prior to or during a grow.

My LED Wish List

1. An LCD incorporated into the case that monitors r/b bulb intensity. either a percent or a simple color system green good orange 25-30% decline- red time to replace
2. Stateside repair facilities east coast/west coast.
3. Idea floated in a blog I was reading - remote ballast/drivers.
4. Ability to 'adjust' amount of r/b during veg or bloom. Something like a simple toggle for each to decrease/increase the number of the appropriate color LEDs at the appropriate intervals.
5. An on/off switch into the top of case would make it easier to take color corrected pictures.
6. Modular strips. These already exist, but at absurd price. The power cords need to be daisy chained
6a. 4 low powered satellite fixtures for the corners below the canopy that run off the main light power source.
7. For higher powered LEDs 300 and up, an optional light mover that would cover twice the width of the fixture. This would make a 300 equal ~ 2 X 300, which should cover a 2 X 6 canopy.

Check out my journal. I also have a completed one on another mj site with over 40K visits. I would like to beta test as well as help with marketing material development

HTH

 

[Eshine Robin]

Hi Robin,
In your opinion and from what you've heard from end users, what is the ideal light specs a LED needs to grow mmj well?

According to the feedbacks from most of our clients, I want to mention some points as follows:
1. 1w LED is better than 2w or 3w for now because 1w technique is maturer relatively.
2. The best beam angle is 90 degree which is just perfect for lighting.
3. As for the wavelength of red light, 660nm is better than 630 in most time.

 

[Eshine Robin]

I believe your purpose here was to glean information to help you manufacture better lights. I am aware that Asia can create any product to the specs of the designer. GIGO.

First, people transitioning to LEDs from HPS/HID have to get a feel for the reduced canopy heat that LEDs radiate. That could take 1-2 grows.

***Create a booklet or web page that provides light specs and grower tips. I can help with this.

One problem I have is the actual life expectancy of red vs blue LEDs. I forget which, but one degrades much faster. Since they are all interlaced on the board they are not easy to replace. This problem means the end user will be literally throwing them away in a few years.

Most personal use growers cannot afford to throw away $1,000 every couple years. Within this problem is not knowing when the LEDs have gone into decline. Knowing this would at least prevent wasting ever more expensive seeds and nutes because the light had degraded beyond usefulness prior to or during a grow.

My LED Wish List

1. An LCD incorporated into the case that monitors r/b bulb intensity. either a percent or a simple color system green good orange 25-30% decline- red time to replace
2. Stateside repair facilities east coast/west coast.
3. Idea floated in a blog I was reading - remote ballast/drivers.
4. Ability to 'adjust' amount of r/b during veg or bloom. Something like a simple toggle for each to decrease/increase the number of the appropriate color LEDs at the appropriate intervals.
5. An on/off switch into the top of case would make it easier to take color corrected pictures.
6. Modular strips. These already exist, but at absurd price. The power cords need to be daisy chained
6a. 4 low powered satellite fixtures for the corners below the canopy that run off the main light power source.
7. For higher powered LEDs 300 and up, an optional light mover that would cover twice the width of the fixture. This would make a 300 equal ~ 2 X 300, which should cover a 2 X 6 canopy.

Check out my journal. I also have a completed one on another mj site with over 40K visits. I would like to beta test as well as help with marketing material development

HTH

Yes I really need end market information to perfect our product.

As for the degrading problem of led lamps, I don't think all of the grow lights have that problem and maybe it used some cheap led lamps, most manufacturers would use Epistar led chips for red and Bridgelux led chips for blue, the two companies master very mature technique for red and blue, but that's not the most important to the quality of the LED lamps, the led packing technique is affecting the quality of the light best. LED packing factories purchase led chips from international companies like CREE, OSRAM, EPISTAR, BRIDGELUX to pack leds and sell the packed leds to grow light assembly factories, so people can see which led chips are used by the light they bought from the spec sheet but they don't know who packed the led lamps in their light, is their technique any good? Manufacturers won't tell you truth and it's really to judge.

Besides, we are considering of the updating of the led lamps in the light for consumers. You're right, if people just throw away the broken light in couple years, that's really waste of money, and we are thinking to provide updating service for clients because the LED industry develop rather fast, that would be better if seller could update their lights for consumers.

I saw your led wish list, they're all easy to finish after the price of led are really decline. Some of our clients would ask for timer, dimmer, controler to make the light intelligent and work automatickly but the final price is hard to accept for market.

 

[willoby]

I'm confused now for sure...I was reading a forum from someone who tested both 660 and 630nm led lights and they claimed the 630nm was better. I have also read alot of testimonials that also claim the same.....I give up!!!!!

 

[crunkyeah]

I have a simple legitimate question for anyone thinking about designing LED lights.

Why not use white LEDs for growing/flowering? Currently the most technology is being put into WHITE light from LEDs(200lm/w being the best so far).

The Cree Xlamp family, particularly, XP-E:
Red: ~ 60lm/w
Blue: ~ 35lm/w
Not that you'd use it... Green: ~100lm/w

Now for the assorted array of white LEDs:
Cool white(10000-5000k): ~130lm/w
Outdoor(5300-2600k): ~110lm/w
Neutral(5000-3700k): ~110lm/w
80CRI(4300-2600k): ~100lm/w
Warm(3700-2600k): ~100lm/w
85CRI(3200-2600k): ~85lm/w
90CRI(3200-2600k): ~85lm/w

As you can see, the whites are MUCH more efficient. So why not use white vs red/blue?
After looking at the data charts for the XPE CREE, it appears the outdoor white LEDs have nearly perfect spectrum for flowering, at 120lm/w for the best bin, that would be a very very efficient light.
10w panel = 1,200 lumens
100w panel = 12,000 lumens
500w panel = 60,000 lumens. Need I say more?
Why has all of this money been spent in color LEDs if the white ones are way better?

*EDIT* @willoby - 660nm is better because it almost matches one of the peak wavelengths for chlorophyll. The problem with 630nm is that the wavelength isn't as long as the 660nm one is. For the same reasoning 450nm blue is better than 475nm that most of units I've seen have. From what I understand, our plant enjoys the longer wavelengths as opposed to the shorter ones. Hope I've answered your question.