Icemud's Grow 8.0 - New Intelligent-Gro LED - 2 x IGRO-228 LED - Testing & Review

Re: Icemud's Grow 8.0 - New Intelligent-Gro LED - 2 x IGRO-228 LED - Testing And Revi

Hiker said:
grats on the harvest Ice! Those are nice #s.

I hear ya about wishing we could run all the experiments we want :blalol:

So now that you did a crop with your igro, what do you think the actual effective coverage is? Is it the 2' x 3'+ they say?

Thanks again for sharing your experience with all of us. :Namaste:
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Hey Hiker!!!

Thank you so much for your kind remarks :)

I am fully enjoying the fruits of my labor now :) and I must say, very tasty and potent :)

Yeah I wish I could have a whole "testing lab" designed for putting all these LED's to the test and offering a full scientific review...eventally I will gather enough cash to get a spectroradiometer too, but thats definitely far from soon, as they are thousands of dollars :)

So with the Intelligent Gro lights, I find that the coverage isn't really as advertised, (as most LED's are, not exclusive to Igro). Pretty much to stay in the acceptable or optimal flowering range of 500-800 umol requires the lights to be within 1 1/2' of the top of the canopy to brush 500 Umol, and at a height of 1 1/2', the coverage of these lights isn't very large... I would say at 1 1/2 feet, hitting 500 umol or more you are looking at maybe a coverage area of 1' x 2' for optimal lighting for flowering and at max maybe 1 1/2'x 2'. Obviously the lights could be raised higher than 2' for a larger coverage area, but for cannabis's umol requirements, I don't believe it would be strong enough to really give for a good yield or dense buds. For veg I would say the advertised footprints are accurate though.

Someone else said it on a different thread but a good general rule is to reduce the advertised coverage by 1' on each side and its more accurate and this seems to be true with both brands of LED I have...
 
Re: Icemud's Grow 8.0 - New Intelligent-Gro LED - 2 x IGRO-228 LED - Testing And Revi

hmmm so if I get the 810W model, it will cover 3' x 4' and their big one will do 4' x 6'...

/runs off to do more measuring and math
 
Re: Icemud's Grow 8.0 - New Intelligent-Gro LED - 2 x IGRO-228 LED - Testing And Revi

Hiker said:
hmmm so if I get the 810W model, it will cover 3' x 4' and their big one will do 4' x 6'...

/runs off to do more measuring and math
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Well its hard to accurately say since I only have the smaller panels, and there are no PAR vs footprint charts available but I think your estimate would be accurate. I know that on the 2 largest panels, the modules were spread apart more than the Generation 1 lights, to increase coverage area, but since there are no actual par readings by footprint, I cant really say.

I would say though your estimates are probably pretty accurate... except the width of 3' or 4', I don't know if there is a different distance between modules between the 2 light sizes, therefore if they are the same distance, I think the width coverage would be relatively the same. I think the length would only change and maybe a slight width increase near the middle where the most light beams are intersecting.

Maybe Intelligent Gro will post some PAR charts showing the actual PAR measurements at given heights as well as throughout the footprint.. ??
 
Re: Icemud's Grow 8.0 - New Intelligent-Gro LED - 2 x IGRO-228 LED - Testing And Revi

Not today what is your opinion about these intelligent lights Vs. the 80x5s you have?
 
Re: Icemud's Grow 8.0 - New Intelligent-Gro LED - 2 x IGRO-228 LED - Testing And Revi

DeadeyeSystem said:
Not today what is your opinion about these intelligent lights Vs. the 80x5s you have?
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The intelligent Gro's gave me a higher gram per watt than any other light source I have used.
 
Re: Icemud's Grow 8.0 - New Intelligent-Gro LED - 2 x IGRO-228 LED - Testing And Revi

Thanks for sharing your grow with us.

Please head over to the 420 Strain Reviews forum and post your smoke report there too.

I’m moving this to Completed Journals now.

In the future, whenever you complete a journal, please use the Report Post feature found at the bottom left of every post, so we can be alerted to move it for you.

Hope all is well in your world.

Love and respect from all of us here at 420 Magazine.

:Namaste:
 
blownvaliant said:
Icemud

Was wondering if heat has been an issue with you in your grows with the intelligent led? If so what have you done to keep a cool room?

Thanks in advance
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The case temp of the Intelligent Gro's gets very warm, much warmer than other panels that I have used. Now what I learned after this grow is no matter what electrical device... same wattage devices generate the same amount of heat transfer into an enclosed area... so I don't believe after reading this that the Intelligent Gro's heated up my grow area any more than any device would using the same wattage. The very warm case temp though was a concern to me because LED's seem to have less lifetime under hot conditions according to research I have done, so the better thermal management, the longer (theoretically) they will last.

In any case, to reduce heat in my grow area when needed, I turn up my fan speeds and minimize room temp outside of my grow tents as well as a few days had to run my AC.
 
Cheers for the reply

Ive got myself couple of the 415w , so far only running one light in room ( room only a cupboard around 2f x 3f x 4-5f )

Noticed straight away on first day the amount of heat being produced and was kinda shocked , but after reading your comment re same wattage devices generate the same amount of heat transfer into an enclosed area. I can come to terms with that. Have you tried or know of any "cool tubes" for these lights?

Also is it possible to give the plants "to much" light? As in if I hooked up the 2nd light in the room.


Thanks again
 
Icemud said:
Now what I learned after this grow is no matter what electrical device... same wattage devices generate the same amount of heat transfer into an enclosed area.
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That's not true. The heat is a byproduct of converting electrical energy into light energy. It's not a 100% efficient process, so some of the energy is 'lost' to heat. It's 'lost' because we didn't get light from that energy. Different devices will have different levels of efficiency. If I put 1000W of electricity into a lamp that is 75% efficient (at converting electricity to light), I will have a 250W heater. If the lamp was only 50% efficient, I would be adding 500W of heat energy to the room.

This is how LEDs are able to provide more light for less energy. :)

blownvaliant said:
Cheers for the reply

Ive got myself couple of the 415w , so far only running one light in room ( room only a cupboard around 2f x 3f x 4-5f )

Noticed straight away on first day the amount of heat being produced and was kinda shocked , but after reading your comment re same wattage devices generate the same amount of heat transfer into an enclosed area. I can come to terms with that. Have you tried or know of any "cool tubes" for these lights?

Also is it possible to give the plants "to much" light? As in if I hooked up the 2nd light in the room.


Thanks again
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In theory you can have too much light, but you could just raise them a little. For LEDs, any light probably, there is an optimal distance to the plants though. Unlike light from the Sun, artificial light weakens with distance from the source. I think it's more harmful to have the lights too far away. The symptoms I've seen resulting from 'too much light' are bleaching and/or hash tips (I've only seen LEDs do this). The bleaching is certainly less aesthetically pleasing, but I'm not sure what else it affects. As to the hash tips... I've been intentionally keeping my LEDs pretty close to the tallest branch on my plants in hopes of producing one. So far I haven't gotten one, so I guess it's pretty hard to have 'too much light' :blalol:
 
Hiker said:
That's not true. The heat is a byproduct of converting electrical energy into light energy. It's not a 100% efficient process, so some of the energy is 'lost' to heat. It's 'lost' because we didn't get light from that energy. Different devices will have different levels of efficiency. If I put 1000W of electricity into a lamp that is 75% efficient (at converting electricity to light), I will have a 250W heater. If the lamp was only 50% efficient, I would be adding 500W of heat energy to the room.

This is how LEDs are able to provide more light for less energy. :)
Click to expand...

Now I'm not going to say I'm an engineer or physicist, but I have done a lot of research on this and even though its a very confusing topic, I do seem to be correct., but I may be understanding something wrong as well. If you do have something that says differently, please share it with me in a PM or something because I would rather be admittedly wrong and correct myself than be relating incorrect info, but I do think I am right about this :) I have to say its a very advanced topic when getting into the details.

There are 3 ways that we can look at the transfer of heat energy: convection, conduction and radiant. When you see LED websites say Less heat, typically they are talking about less IR radiation, because of the nature of led lights being narrow bandwith, they do not generate much IR radiation (unless IR diodes are used), however all Light radiation when absorbed creates heat. However they do generate a ton of heat from the vibrations of the atoms, which is transferred to heat sinks through conduction, and then to the surrounding air as convection. Also all the components that drive LED's such as resisters also convert electrical energy and produce waste heat. Most led's generate about 20-40% of this energy as light, and the rest is transferred through the heat sinks and then into the surrounding air. But what happens to the light photons when they strike a surface, they reflect and absorb...and when photons are absorbed, they create heat. This is why when you turn off a lightbulb in a room, the room gets dark, and does not stay illuminated, because the photon energy is being absorbed into the surroundings, generating heat in the process.

So when you look at the full picture, you will see total heat in a room is not only produced by the device, but the absorption of light.

This is why its correct to say that a 100w heater, 100w LED and a 100w Incandescent all will heat a sealed room the same, because you are considering all forms of the heat transfer to the room, not just radiant energy, not just convection or conduction, but the sum of all of them.

Part of the laws of thermodynamics is that energy is neither created nor destroyed, so in other words if you introduce a device using 100 joules per second (100w) into a closed room, no matter the device, eventually this energy will be converted to heat.

In other words, even though by different approaches, all 3 of the 100W devices are all 100% efficient in converting energy to heat in a sealed room.
 
This was my understanding too, Ice. But I had the opposite experience.

I have a 4x4 room that I was lighting with a 600 watt hps, which is particularly efficient. The digital ballast was in the room also. When I switched to the 540 watt Intelligent-Gro LED panel, my high temps dropped dramatically. I went from an 8 degree rise to a 2 degree rise.

So ... I think there must be some efficiencies we're not accounting for.
 
DISCLAIMER:

I feel the need that I should update on this thread as a word of caution to anyone considering these lights.

Even though my end results and harvest were good.... I want to notate that I did have issues with my COB's going out on 2 of the 3 LED panels I ran. I was sent a replacement driver quickly and replaced the driver on one of them and it worked fine afterwords. A 2nd of the LED panels had a COB go out but then it somehow fixed itself and ran normally for the duration of my grow. I figured it may have to do with the controller regulating the voltages but this was just a suspicion and not confirmed and after I unplugged the controller I had no problems for the rest of my grow and had a successful harvest.

with that being said...

After seeing this problem happening to many growers with this brand of lights...my opinion of reliability has changed and I can not recommend them to anyone at this time due to their inconsistent problems.

I feel bad for "vouching" for these lights and for anyone who spend their money on them because of me or my journals... . For this reason I can no longer feel good about recommending them to anyone at this time, and I really feel bad for anyone that I helped to make a purchase decision on these lights.

At the time that I finished this journal, I was unaware of any other existing issues and thought my issue was exclusive to my LED's alone...but now months later after seeing handfuls of people are having issues, I just can not feel good about recommending them due to reliability issues viewed on other threads and also forums. Therefore my sincere apology to anyone who purchased these lights because of me, and a word of caution to anyone who is considering them.
 
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