Think this has a chance to work?

[WillyBudz]

A good freind of mine just called me and we had a chat about LED's. He is an electrician and is going to try and make a LED grow light for himself. He does not have a Size for the fixture yet but is going to use white painted sheet metal / framed and commercial grade Christmas lights similiar to these.

1 string of 70 white total 70 white 5500k 80 lumens per bulb
2 strings of 70 blue total 140 blue ?????k 50 lumens per bulb
3 strings of 70 red total 210 red (warm white) 2100k 50 lumens per bulb
So 420 leds......... similiar to these. The red has a red led not just a red plastic case, same with the blue.

Says he wants to pack them as close together as possible drilling holes in sheetmetal to mount them in..... approx 1" between lights.

I know nothing about LEDs, does this even have a chance to work??? lol
The ones he is looking at are $15.00 a string, said he could build it for $100 or less including everything but his labour. I will keep track of it and post some pics when he gets it started.


WillyB

 

[billmoe93]

When I first discovered LEDs, it took me about 2 hours from looking at overpriced grow lights to thinking of ways of building my own. The problems I ran into had to do with size of each LED and wattage of each rope.

I found it hard to find big LEDs and make it more cost effective then using CFLs. If you google LED rope lights there is a site that sells rope by the foot and at a very reasonable price. They also have orange LEDs that are in a good range for growing.

Keep us updated because this idea has crossed my mind but I never pulled the trigger.

 

[NCDude]

Intresting...

 

[3ss3xboy]

hey
it may work depending on how bright the l.e.d's are, i did try using some ultra bright blue l.e.d's which was a failure (too much excessive cable from the lights)
I had some premoulded xenon style l.e.d's i bought for my car in the past so thought id try them today

Thier 12 volt and total 14 watts for 96 l.e.d's they've been facing the plant for 5-6 hours and the fan leaves on the side where thier facing seem to be heading towards them rather then the hps i have.
Im going to leave them like this for 2-3 days and see what happens, if they make the plant do any better then im planning on purchasing atleast 15-20 strands and gluing them to a offcut of 3/4 inch ply,total cost £35 so not too much really for an experiment