whytewidow said: Personally I'm intrigued. I've seen 100 bulb cfls. And whatnot. But not those. Two thumbs up man. I love leds. One the best ingenious ideas I've seen on riu since ive joined. Awesome man. And that you took the time to lay them out in line like that. Siskel and Ebert two thumbs up. Click to expand...

They've been popular among the microgrow community for awhile now as a replacement for hot, inefficient CFLs, so I unfortunately can't take credit for the idea. After seeing such great results, I decided to see how well this lighting system could scale up and at what cost. Part of the motivation for it came from the legalization of growing 4 plants in Canada. Not everyone can afford quantum boards with the lastest diodes and drivers who want to exercise their right to grow for noncommercial purposes. Legalization will bring forth a lot of people new to growing, who find the government sanctiond weed too expensive, not properly cured, or dry AF. They might only be looking to produce only 3 kilograms of cured bud each year with our limited plant number in the simplest way they can. This is one way of doing it.There are two major advantages I've seen using regular household LED bulbs .The first advantage is flexibility. While the diodes they put in these bulbs can't be the most efficient on the planet LOL, they do put out around 110 to 120 watts per lumen, rated with covers on I assume. With covers popped off, intensity is much higher. To turn off an individual bulb, all I need to do is unscrew it in the socket - and screw it in to turn it on. I can turn off all the warm white colour temperature bulbs, and only keep the daylight on during seedling and veg. I can start with 2 bulbs on each seedling in their permanent spot in my tent, then 3 bulbs, then 4 per plant, etc. as they grow. This flexibility saves an amazing amount of electricity over the course of your grow while allowing precise control over colour temperature for each stage of growth. I don't care how efficient your lighting is, if you're lighting your tent floor you may as well me sending me money instead rather than just throwing it away!The second advantage is that such a system spreads out the lighting source evenly throughout the tent. Colas and branches don't compete with each other to reach a directional source of light, because the light is everywhere! So everything just grows straight up, and great for organic no-till systems where it's impractical to move around plants. I don't SCROG (anymore) or train much (topped once), yet once you spread your light source equally across the entire canopy, it's almost like it trains itself to flatten it's own canopy to maximize surface area under a flattened light source.I guess there's a third advantage. If a diode or entire bulb burned out, a child can replace it within 1 minute. LOL