Graytail Goes LED - 810W Intelligent-Gro II w/ High Brix

After much study and observation over the past year, I've decided that LED grow lights have finally gotten to the point where they are clearly superior to HID. I've watched several of the growers that I admire and follow, who are using or have tried LEDs in the past several months and they're all pretty happy with the results. In the 70s I grew under T-12 shop lights, in the 80s I ran Metal Halides, for the past year I've done CFLs and HPS - now it's time for the latest and greatest!

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INTELLIGENT GRO STORE: Best LED Grow Lights Product With The Biggest Yields for your Indoor Garden


These are so cool! :cheesygrinsmiley: A 10-band, 3-channel, fully programmable LED panel, with big honkin' COBs, truly bleeding edge LED tech. :slide: I got the 810W model, 540W draw, recommended coverage 5x4 feet - absolutely perfect for my bloom room. :cheesygrinsmiley: With a 2 year warranty and an expected life of 50,000 hours, I'm all set for quite some time.

So, here are the particulars:

What strain is it? Utopia Haze, Carnival, Destroyer, Nepalese Jam, Buddha Haze, Grapefruit
Is it Indica, Sativa or Hybrid? What percentages? Mostly sativas
Is it in Veg or Flower stage? Both
If in Veg... For how long? Typically 60 days
If in Flower stage... For how long? Typically 9-11 weeks
Indoor or outdoor? Indoor
Soil or Hydro? Organic Soil
If soil... what is in your mix? Doc Bud's High Brix Kit
If soil... What size pot? 6 gallons
Size of light? 540W LED
Is it aircooled? No
Temp of Room/cab? Typically 69 - 85
RH of Room/cab? Typically 30-70
PH of media or res? Dunno
Any Pests ? Pet whiteflies :cheesygrinsmiley:
How often are you watering? Typically 5 days
Type and strength of ferts used? Doc Bud's High Brix Kit

And here's my new whiz-bang light. It came in a nice plain white box with David's name on the label instead of some LED lighting company- nice. It was double boxed and fully packed in foam.

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Three channels - blue for veg, full for grow, and red for bloom.
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But the thing about this company is the programmable controller. You can set the timing and intensity of each separate channel, so the light will slowly brighten in the morning just like the sun and will radiate a spectrum just like the sun. At noon, it will run at full intensity with the same spectrum as a noonday sun. In the evening, it will slowly dim and run more red, just like a setting sun. Groovy! :yahoo: And because of the morning and evening dimming, it uses less power over the course of a day - roughly 25% less.

Icemud was one of the first to use Intelligent-Gro and he has some really great info in his journals.

Icemud's Grow 8.0 - New Intelligent-Gro LED - 2 x IGRO-228 LED - Testing & Review
Icemud's Intelligent Gro 2 LED Grow With V-Scrog - Going for 1lb & Beyond!

So, anyway, those of you who've read my first journal know that I grow in organic soil with Doc Bud's High Brix Kit. I'm still using the same soil I started with, after roughly three runs, and I think I probably have some buildup of salts, so in the next few weeks, I'm going to flush the crap out of everything I have in bins, and then add about 50% more straight Pro-Mix w/EWC. I think I have enough amendment in the soil, since I've been re-amending after ever use, and I've been recycling all my dead plant material like Curso, so the soil is getting richer. In the fall I'll probably pop for a soil test to see where I'm at after the fresh Pro-Mix.

I'll journal the Utopia Hazes and the other youngsters here while I let the older ones finish in the old journal. That's it for this first post. I'll get some more pics up in a day or two.

I'm jazzed!!! :yahoo: :rocker:
 
Really interested in this grow, GT.

Doc's kit and these lights are definitely in my plans once I move in late Summer and restart my grows. You're even growing some of the strains I plan on introducing to my room. Best of luck with the switch to LED's. Hardly think you need it, but I like saying it. :thumb:
 
Wow! How much fun is this? I can't wait to see what kind of GPD you get with the new light. You do such a great job of record keeping, Gray, this is going to be enlightening to say the least. Have you done any ciphering to figure out how much more light that unit throws out than the 600w HPS?
 
awesome. I'm with it.

:high-five:

Really interested in this grow, GT.

Doc's kit and these lights are definitely in my plans once I move in late Summer and restart my grows. You're even growing some of the strains I plan on introducing to my room. Best of luck with the switch to LED's. Hardly think you need it, but I like saying it. :thumb:

Cool! Which ones are you planning?

:party::theband::party:

wouldn't miss this!

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I been fascinated with LED grows very recently so most eager to see how you go bro!

exciting bro... release the photons

Wow! How much fun is this? I can't wait to see what kind of GPD you get with the new light. You do such a great job of record keeping, Gray, this is going to be enlightening to say the least. Have you done any ciphering to figure out how much more light that unit throws out than the 600w HPS?

Can't miss this! ;)

Thanks, guys! Welcome aboard.

I looked up umols for a 600W hps and it runs about 1100. Sunlight runs about 1600. This LED panel produces 1300 at one foot, and the penetration is much better because of the overlap from the 6 modules. At 2 feet, it's still 800 and at three feet it's 500. At triple the distance it should drop to one ninth - 150. The hps is more of a point source (well, line source), so umols drop off more dramatically as distance increases. I'm hoping to get another foot or so of penetration with this panel.
 
So Sweet Graytail!!! I definitely will be following along for this grow :)
 
I got the controller hooked up and programmed. Heheh, this is so cool ...

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It's just after 5:00 PM and it's dimming slightly. From here, the blue will fall off fastest and leave a higher concentration of red in the dim sunset lighting. In the morning, it'll come up slowly with a high concentration of blue until it reaches 100% on all channels by late morning.

:cheesygrinsmiley:
 
It's 6:00 PM and you can feel the air cooling, can't you? Intensity is down to about 60% across the spectrum.

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Gray, this is amazing! Sunset programming!! :cheer:

Heheh, it's fun to watch at first, allright. Here we are at 8:48. The COBs and broad spectrum are reduced to 22% and the red and blue remain at 42% for now.

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it does look like fun but i wonder if the programming matters much to the plants. Do we know that there is a benefit to mimicking sunlight in this way? it seems like it might be less stressful but i have not seen any academic papers. the lamp is new to the market so not many grows.

super interested to see what GT does here. looking forward to observations on the effects of the programming as well.
 
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