well, I probably should have not prefaced my comment that way, and that was immature.
I like to think myself of a scientific nature, I'm up for someone taking the time to actually do the leg work to do a comparison. I am quite on the contrary a big LED fan, I just haven't seen someone do the tests themselves to my satisfaction.
I see a lot of what I perceive to be people jumping on the band wagon with out the science behind the technology to make a valid comparison.
Because the LEDs are 5mm, and roughly putting out 3/4 lumen per LED (which isn't a great comparison)... but to be fair, I think something like a 13watt compact fluorescent bulb would be the closest you're going to get to a fair play. If your LEDs beat out a 13watt compact fluorescent, I would be impressed indeed. Because your package is using roughly 21*20ma = 420mA assuming you have a mix of 3.5vF (forward voltage drop ) blues and 2.0vF (forward voltage drop) reds, let's say half? [I'm just making a watt to watt comparison here] so average of 2.7vF so 2.7*.42Amps = 1.14 watts. now realistically the 1/4w resistor is also taking what's left of that so you're more on the 2watt range, but still, a tiny watt package, and to be fair to you, going up against a 13w fluorescent bulb is a challenge.
I would put out there that I am a moderator of a lighting forum, where I have a great deal of experience with LEDs, and I have made some DIY FAQs on them. So if you would like to do some work with them, I would be happy to help. I would start searching for a little wall charger that does 12v, radio shack will have one, but they might be 10-15$
Maybe I should post my DIYs on High Power LEDs that I have made on HIDPlanet, which is the site where I have made a huge contribution to LEDs. I just want to show that I am not averse to LEDs in general, just skeptical about their over hyped advertising for markets where their benefits have not yet been proven.
Here is an LED project I made for my motorcycle, it took me many hours and quite a few $$s. It turned out pretty well although it's not very pretty, it was blindingly bright... and it ran off of 12v DC. It was running 700mA of current on low and 1200mA on high (i.e. brakes being pulsed)
They don't look very different than your setup, but if you compare the output, each one of these probably are equal to ~20 5mm LEDs, honestly, LEDs are rated by their current, and 5mm LED packages can take up to 20mA and these were taking about 300mA each. hence the necessary heatsink to dissipate the heat. If you wanted to construct a similar project above (maybe not sooo complicated) I'd be happy to send you the parts I have lying around on my makeshift workbench... they're probably not color corrected for plants, but they are very red, and very bright... I have yellow and white also I think... but would have to check. They're yours to play with if you want.
If you think it's fair, I'd be happy to put up some info about High Brightness LEDs that I made on HIDplanet. Here are some pics from my playing around with them:
Ocelaris/Lighting/HBLEDs - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
This one is Hella bright, a K2 star, putting out ~100 lumens, like as bright as a 5w halogen bulb with only 1 watt... something on that scale... it's of course white, which may not be color corrected for plants... but hell I'd put it up for comparison if you're interested... or my Lamina LED ... I probably have spent over 300$ on LEDs... most of which are sitting around. I should be nicknamed LED-FAN!
My first LED array is here...
Linear Mode
