Hey Guys
Just to weigh in on the spectrum,
I think I all manufacturers are making product that is trying to hit the blue peaks required for all the major chlorophylls so it’s not surprising we’re seeing similar results. Testing White LED’s is also a little fruitless because a White LED is actually a BLUE diode with a phosphor coating so you still get a massive blue peak - again attributing to the common blue peak we all see. A good example is the BRS biology band test where all lights are filling part or all of that.
To add (edit) If you buy a 420nm LED.. there will be a level of tolerance across the batch so the actual peak will vary by several nm across the batch. Most quality LED manufacturers will supply that spec.
I recently did this with a cheap Amazon black light to see what PARwise was VS an Ocean Optics Spectrometer that’s factory calibrated for the UV range and it was bang on! Not going to say this will happen on every one but near enough!
Furthermore, please don’t forget that PARwise is not a full spectrometer. It doesn’t have single nanometer precision such as an Ocean Optics Spectrometer (very good, we have one) - and they’re around $5k depending on spec! That said, we do the exact test above against our spectrometer when we calibrate each PARwise’s spectrum - it’s a fun experiment!
PARwise is going to give you a solid indication of the spectrum.. and
How it can change with settings but it’s never going to be a fully fledged spectrometer - don’t forget corals won’t care if your LED is a few nm out on peak… because it’s not just one wavelength the diode emits
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Loving all the input!
