Ive not tried the on market variants cause they didnt really convince me, i went with the diy route: uv and far reds on ledstar pcbs, qnd then soldering everything up with a hot point soldering iron. Process was a bit daunting at first but tbh it was very easy, you learn quickly how to do it.
Benefits:
- it fits an of diy routey space, on market uv strips come in set length which wouldnt work well for our space.
- allows for setting up your own uv spectrum: most uv strips use just one uv nm (usually 385 or 365nm) which i dont think is the best approach from reading peoples feedback. We had good and reliable results with 2:1 400/365nm.
- it was a lot cheaper to get it done the way i wanted it than going with a finished solution.
Uv benefits: it changes taste smell and taste in an unmistakeable way if your main spectrum stops at 450nm blue. Its a clear improvement.
Drawback: depending on what you add it to you can get a slight yield loss; most led lights sold today have a high amount of blue in the spectrum which can make yield suffer slightly. Adding uv to already high blue levels can further aggravate this. The theory is that the far red (or adding other types of red or having a proper flower spectrum rather than a fullcycle spectrum) will balance this. I cant properly say it did in our case but we added less far red than uv and the tray we tried out far red on was one of these fullcycle spectrums. On other trays with much more flower centric spectrum the uv worked absolutely great.
If you want to avoid these issues and have the possibility to do custom i would recommend adding uv and reds (rather than far reds) in 1:3- 1:5 proportion.
I realize this may not be the answer youre looking for but it was what worked for our grow.
I know
@driver77 uses some uv /far red bars he may also have some feedback.
