SAFA's Indoor LED Grow Lights Setup

[Sinbad91]

6 week flower update!

Less than 10cm from the grow light and colas super happy

Same strain but check the difference in colour!

And seeing that we’re nearing our launch date...

 

[Sinbad91]

Some trichome closeups..

 

[irie lion]

Hey Sinbad!
Buds are looking great in there!! I'm well impressed with the light - it's doing the job that's for sure!
Flowers are looking amazing - still pushing loads of new pistils so she'll be packing on a lot more weight now! It's a full house in there, it's gonna be a killer harvest!
Love the light man! Future Farms - i saw what you guys are doing with the JHB rooftop farms - that's awesome.
Looking forward to see this beast on the market! Any idea on pricing?

 

[Sinbad91]

Shot Irie!

It’s great to hear that word is getting out about the rooftop farms. So far we’ve created 15 new small scale hydroponics companies across jozi and counting!

We’re still finalizing the price. But I can say that it will retail around R20-21/W. It will be a range of lights, starting at 240W up to 600W.

 

[Sinbad91]

@Scottsquatch @irie lion @Pbass @martin coetzee @Peter Green @Strainyourbrain

Let me know what you guys think of the price! Would love to hear your thoughts

 

[Strainyourbrain]

Lights definitely look like they are doing the job.
Is that R21 per watt? If so could work out expensive but those plants look great bro

 

[Sinbad91]

Lights definitely look like they are doing the job.
Is that R21 per watt? If so could work out expensive but those plants look great bro

Thanks for the feedback strain!
Been looking at the local LED market and seeing what price per watt people getting for the LED’s that we know are good (ie. i’m Excluding the untested Chinese imports as most of these are extremely poor quality)

HLG is coming in at R32/W. The HLG 550 draws 480W and retails for R15 500 (btw, these are selling like hot cakes in SA right now! One store is selling over 30 each month)

Spectrum king comes in at R39/W

Fluence at R54/W

The only other reliable product that comes close is the MARS Hydro 1600. This draws 630W and comes in at R23,50/W.
Having said that, it’s only the MARS 2 1600 at this price. The rest of the MARS range all comes in at above R30/W.

Knowing this, would you still say that it’s expensive? Would you as a grower still consider an untested Chinese light over a tested light coming in at R21/W? (Assuming that I get a 3rd party to test and review my light)

This question goes to all SA growers on the forum! Feel free to chime in here if you have an opinion! I’d love to get some market feedback before launching.

 

[Strainyourbrain]

No. That seems reasonable. look forward to the test results

 

[Teleon]

Hey there I was born in SA, in Edenvale

But I live since I was 5 in Germany, hopefully that would be enough to chat here

I use my own build LED Lamp with LM301B (Samsung and the best LED u can get at the moment, because it has more than 200Lumen/W...more then any LED on the market) and also some hyper-red Osram LED's for flower.

Last, and first yield, was 220g out of 3 Ladies with ~200W Lamp setup...the nice thing is that u can adjust this when u have the correct driver...for my current grow I use less than that, at the beginning I lowered it as much as I can and now i'm at about 160W for the lamp and 215W total

Some pic's of the Lamp:

Teleon

 

[Strainyourbrain]

I also made my own light for a vegging cupboard but for my trial run I used cheap Chinese LED strips. Red, blue and white. They seem to work ok but my main concern is that they won't give me the hours to make it worthwhile. I also could not find any indication on the strips as to there watts. all I know is that it is bright, very bright.
My first one looks like this

Each panel strip has one White, red and blue strip and they are 500mm long.

My cupboard has cleats 100mm apart for height adjusting

And the color Is light purple

Plants seem to like it But it generates a fair amount of heat for an LED./ It's not a pro job and I definitely would not try to market it.
I would still like to see a reasonably priced good light on the SA market. So I think you are on the right track @Sinbad91

 

[Sinbad91]

Flip you okes are handy hey! I’m well impressed! @Teleon you’ve used some really excellent aluminum heat sinks, i’m Sure your light disperses that heat pretty well?

@Strainyourbrain is that light made of wood? That’s flipped incredible! I like the cleat idea.

Ya at the end of the day, the unavoidable fact is that LED’s are very expensive. Having been developing LED’s for over 5 years, I have intimate knowledge of the costs involved. So when I see an LED light that is very cheap on the market, then I know for a fact that there is something about that light that simply won’t work.

The problem is that the general population doesn’t know that. And these Chinese ripoffs catch people all the time.

But you guys have the right idea here! Building your own can end up being much cheaper and you can always find tune the light till it works like a beast!

If you have any questions regarding LED’s to help you on your build, give me a shout. I’m happy to help!

 

[Teleon]

Flip you okes are handy hey! I’m well impressed! @Teleon you’ve used some really excellent aluminum heat sinks, i’m Sure your light disperses that heat pretty well?

Yeah they dont need any extra cooling and dont get over 50°C.. all very nice

I educated applied physics...so I can also help if anybody wants to know something about LED and stuff.

 

[Whosbad]

Howzit. Was hoping to get a thread going around what LED Lighting setups okes have here in SA.

If you're growing indoor and using LED lighting, share some pics and info here?

 

[Whosbad]

My first attempt at a scrog using cheap led lights,they appear to be doing well,I'll know better when I weigh out.

 

[Whosbad]

My leaves are curling because my heat got to 105,my ac exhaust fell off.With my hps I would get around 1.2 lbs in this area.

 

[Sinbad91]

@Whosbad your grow is looking brilliant! What is your grow area?

I have heard that the Bestva is a decent light. My concern with them is the misguided advertising. Those Bestva 2000w units consume 400w’s and are advertised to be equivalent to 1400W HPS. That just could not be further from the truth! The Red/Blue ratio is also a tad too high in the flower stage for my preference. This tends to grow really big heads but holds back in the trichome development.

Having said that, they’re clearly working great for your grow!

 

[Whosbad]

I

@Whosbad your grow is looking brilliant! What is your grow area?

I have heard that the Bestva is a decent light. My concern with them is the misguided advertising. Those Bestva 2000w units consume 400w’s and are advertised to be equivalent to 1400W HPS. That just could not be further from the truth! The Red/Blue ratio is also a tad too high in the flower stage for my preference. This tends to grow really big heads but holds back in the trichome development.

Having said that, they’re clearly working great for your grow!

It's 4×5 ish,I found the foot print to be false,not near what they claimed,but other then that they seem ok,I'm running a closed room with co2.It's about my 4th grow(not counting endless pathetic grows in the seventiesHoping they work I may add 1 more to get away from supplementing lighting.Hoping these form can lean me towards maybe a better led thats proven,inly invested 800.in lights so far.

 

[Strainyourbrain]

I will definitely talk to you about buying in better quality Strips etc. I have a couple of pending grow cabinets for other guys and will need to up my game so better quality lights are a must. Mine seem to be working fine for me but I purposely went for a low cost cabinet setup to see what I could get away with

 

[Sinbad91]

Fantastic! Would be great to have a 3rd party document a grow with our lights on 420!

 

[Sinbad91]

Photo update, 7 weeks

Packing on some serious frost

While these have fattened out nicely.