can I grow plants with led traffic lights?

[philadendrum]

i've been using metal halide, Ive got a 1000 watt and a 400 watt. they gobble a lot of power.
I found a cheap source of red LED's they are traffic lights, big stop lights about a foot diameter. i got 20 of them. 2 bucks each.
so for 40 bucks i\ got lots of red LEDS cheap !

each is full of red LED's and they are 110 volts and seal up if they have the red covers on , the LEDS are all red ones. they seem quite cool if left on. If the red covers are on then they have a rubber o-ring so they seal up quite well. behind the red cobver is a lens to focus the light to the roadway. that might be ok as there are so many I could scatter them at different angles.

I have been looking at various commercially made LED lamps and the main difference seems to be that the commercial ones use mostly red, some blue and maybe some white LED's the blue being mostly for the vegetative spectrum I assume.

I thought of unsoldering some of the red LEDS and replacing them with blue LED's but the voltage drop and current limiting resistor may have to replaced as sets. also they are sort of double sided PCB boards so maybe the soldering would be a challenge. I don't think swapping the LED's themselves is practical , better to assist them with some blue LEDS

the blue LED's don't seem to be common by themselves in most of the lamps i can find. I can see some screw in LED blue lights but they are mostly for decor and may not be that bright.

I might get by with a 400 watt halide plus some of the stop lights , that would increase the red spectrum for flowering.

or , I could use some of the LED T8 tubes it seems easy to rewire old fixtures and I can then get full spectrum grow tubes.

I thought I'd post here because some others may have more insight into how I may complete the spectrum without incurring a lot of extra cost. It seems like I may just need to add soem blue LEDs tot he mix, It seems like the commercial ones use about 4 or 5 red to each blue one so I may ot deed as many blue LEDS to get the right spectrum. maybe a few more for the veg and less for flowering. or can I just use the red for flowering?

any good suggestions from those more experienced would be appreciated. I can experiment but I;d prefer not to be off in a completely wrong direction.

phil

[MJTECH]

i've been using metal halide, Ive got a 1000 watt and a 400 watt. they gobble a lot of power.
I found a cheap source of red LED's they are traffic lights, big stop lights about a foot diameter. i got 20 of them. 2 bucks each.
so for 40 bucks i\ got lots of red LEDS cheap !

each is full of red LED's and they are 110 volts and seal up if they have the red covers on , the LEDS are all red ones. they seem quite cool if left on. If the red covers are on then they have a rubber o-ring so they seal up quite well. behind the red cobver is a lens to focus the light to the roadway. that might be ok as there are so many I could scatter them at different angles.

I have been looking at various commercially made LED lamps and the main difference seems to be that the commercial ones use mostly red, some blue and maybe some white LED's the blue being mostly for the vegetative spectrum I assume.

I thought of unsoldering some of the red LEDS and replacing them with blue LED's but the voltage drop and current limiting resistor may have to replaced as sets. also they are sort of double sided PCB boards so maybe the soldering would be a challenge. I don't think swapping the LED's themselves is practical , better to assist them with some blue LEDS

the blue LED's don't seem to be common by themselves in most of the lamps i can find. I can see some screw in LED blue lights but they are mostly for decor and may not be that bright.

I might get by with a 400 watt halide plus some of the stop lights , that would increase the red spectrum for flowering.

or , I could use some of the LED T8 tubes it seems easy to rewire old fixtures and I can then get full spectrum grow tubes.

I thought I'd post here because some others may have more insight into how I may complete the spectrum without incurring a lot of extra cost. It seems like I may just need to add soem blue LEDs tot he mix, It seems like the commercial ones use about 4 or 5 red to each blue one so I may ot deed as many blue LEDS to get the right spectrum. maybe a few more for the veg and less for flowering. or can I just use the red for flowering?

any good suggestions from those more experienced would be appreciated. I can experiment but I;d prefer not to be off in a completely wrong direction.

phil

Your traffic lights will not have enough illumination nor spectrum to be useful for growing.

[philadendrum]

the specs are here
https://products.currentbyge.com/sit...-datasheet.pdf

this is the one DR6-RTFB-77A
vegetative and
it says 10W on the label , spec sheet says 6.7W nominal power
the wavelength is 625 nm

maximum light intensity is 365 Cd

so with 20 that would be 200 W as compared to the label or 134W nominal.

Im not familiar with the Cd rating but 365 x 20 is 7300

my intnetion isnt' to provide the full spectrum this way but to asssist with the red spectrum , maybe with a 400 watt halide or some other type of lighting.

I think the wavelength is quite close to what is most needed by the plants. at least that'\s what Ive gathered from other websites.
asa an example here
https://www.royalqueenseeds.com/blog...hc-levels-n269

it shows 400 - 500 nm for vegetative and 620 to 780 nm for flowering.

it says: 2. Flowering Period – “Red” light for giant buds (range: 620-780nm; ideal: 660nm)

625 nm doesn''t seem too far off to me to be useful to the plants.Is it?


Now obviously I need to add more of some other lamp type to complete the spectrum. I wasn't planning to to use them alone.

I'm having a bit of difficulty relating the intensity rating with LED's to that of traditional bulbs.

If I plug in one of them and think of 20 times that it seems like it would be pretty bright . Id like to gather a few opinions before abandoning the idea.

my gut says If I used a 400 W MH in combination I wouldn't go far wrong as that has the intensity for a couple of plants. Ive never used LED before though.

1400 watts with two halides is a bit much for me. Im not growing to supply others so I want somethign appropriate . My max is 4 plants that's our legal limit here.

for intensity am I way too weak to bother with? or would this be helpful to supplement the red spectrum?

do others have an educated opinion on this data?

I appreciate Mjtech's opinion, Thank you MJtech,

I just wanted to gather a few other opinions as well, before completely abandoning the idea.