Anyone try using hydroponic LED lights?
 

I'm preparing to set up an indoor growing rack and am thinking about going with LEDs. There seems to be a number of LED fixtures for hydroponic gardening. Has anyone had any experience with those? Seems much more efficient and space saving compared to fluorescent.

I have LED kitchen garden. It is quite small and meant for growing seedlings of leafy veggies, herbs, and sproutings of various plants for healthy organic diet.

Well, I use it for a group of small orchids. I have tried paphs (with mottled leaves) and mini phals under it and they seem to do well.

Thing is I cannot use LED for anything too tall as the instruction says the light panel has be to be no further than 6 inches away from the leaf surface.
hence small (I mean really really small) orchids and orchids that grow rather flat like phals and paphs.
I do move them out of the light setup when they spike.

I'm not on expert on LED and there might be other setup where you could grow taller plants under LED?
not sure, but I thought I would share my little success story.

Interesting, as I was looking at an LED panel. Is the one you're using available online you can share a link to?

FooGoo, are you talking about Red+Blue type LED grow light? I've been using them for my low light plants about 1.5 years, and they work well. I have 2 x 28W panels, 90W UFO (actual consumption is around 70W), and one fixture that I assembled with T8-style R+B LED bulbs from ebay, Cree (9.5/9W) Household bulbs from HomeDepot, and plywood. I'm using around 13W per square foot for Phal and Paphs.

There are a couple ways to go. You can think that the technology improves quickly, so you can get cheap ones now, and hope that they will last a year or so. Or you can go with a company which will back you up with warranty (but expensive). If you want to take the later route, the following companies are the examples:
Area 51 LED, Professional LED Grow Lights
Apache Tech
California Lightworks
Hans Panel LED growlight
There are other higher-end ones (for professional horticulture), but expensive.

Cheaper ones (e.g. from ebay) could be sketchy, but this Chinese maker is trying to backup their products with decent customer service and there seem to be quite a few happy customers:
Top LED Growlight

Oh wow, thanks for the info. The ones I was considering were the cheap, Chinese panels, which don't appear to be a great solo option. I did not know better quality fixtures were that pricey! Maybe I'll reconsider fluorescent...

Here is the link to the product I have:

LED kitchen garden unit by Sonnylight offers LED grow lights and indoor kitchen garden for growing herbs

As you can see, there is an initial investment to put down for such a small set-up, but it fits perfectly in my spare space on my countertop, and as with all LED light, it nearly adds nothing extra to my electricity bill. :)

Thank you Noaki for the info!
I will go check them out as well.

Do you have a link? The cheap ones probably work, but there is a risk that it will break quickly. For example, my 28 W panels are cheaply made, and I had to replace 5% of diodes by myself within a year. The shady company (Sunshine Systems) didn't honor the warranty.

For example:
https://dx.com/p/17-14w-165-red-led-...-90-240v-93170

Literally straight from China, so I'm not expecting much. That's why I was thinking of saving myself the hassle and going straight to fluorescent.

That 14W panel doesn't have a good reputation (weak output, doesn't last etc). My cheap ebay T8-style LED uses the similar diodes, and I think it's not worth the price. With that price range, I've been wondering how well a cheap 20-30W LED flood light performs. Something like this:
50W 30W 20W 10W Day Warm White LED Wall Pack Wash Flood Light Lamp Garden Light | eBay
I think they are using something called COB (chip-on-board) LEDs, which are supposed to be more efficient, newer technology. Just for fun, I actually ordered DIY equivalent of the flood light (30W LED emitter + driver) for $15 from ebay.

Alternatively, did you consider using household LED bulbs? I'm not completely sure if they are more efficient (for plants) than florescent lights, but the price of LED bulbs is getting pretty cheap. I posted in another thread (see anon y mouse's thread) that HomeDepot was having a sale on Philips 10.5W bulbs (around 55cents/W).

I'm attaching the photos of a fixture which I made with 2 Cree (1x 9.5W warm white + 1x 9W daylight white) + 3 crappy ebay tubes (not worth getting these). I attached 2 more Cree bulbs, and it covers 2x2' growth area. Phals and Paphs are showing decent growth/flower.

NYCorchidman, that light is quite expensive, but it does look really nice and spiffy!

That's a beautifully made fixture! A big portion of the cost is for the design and workmanship, and it's worth it.