Have any of you DIY COB Growers finished a crop under 1000W DE HPS? - POLL

Have any of you DIY COB Growers have actually finished a crop under 1000W DE HPS?

  • Yes

    Votes: 33 29.5%

  • No

    Votes: 79 70.5%
  • Total voters
    112
Revolution Micro said:
I think you missed my point. I get quite a lot of "this is the only way" sort of thing on forums. My point is that there's not a single, this-is-best-for-all solution. My point with COB is that it's not a technology per se, but an assembly technique. There seems to be a lot of confusion on this point. I do like the things, they're a helluva lot easier to deal with than individual dice.

I wonder if they're be any interest in doing a Kit-Build LED fixture? The DIY audio guys do that a lot, but I haven't seen too much of that here.

-Greg
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Nah, I got your point I think you missed mine. :bigjoint:
 
Revolution Micro said:
Ah, not so!

DE bulbs are not unique in any way but one -- acoustic resonance. Like a guitar string, everything shakes at some resonant frequency. Single-ended bulbs come apart in the upper audio range since they were designed for core & coil at 60 Hz. Hence, Digital Bulbs are just regular bulbs built a little stiffer (or floppier!) to not resonate in the 35-55 kHz range of common electronic ballasts. That's all there is to it.

A DE bulb DOES resonate in that range, so you can either go up to 100 kHz (welcome to EMI hell, but lower cost) or down to 120-200 Hz (problem solved, but cost goes up). Hortilux did a nice low frequency ballast, but it was Bucks Deluxe. Our Revolution Deva light is priced about middle of the range since it's very different tech and is still ow frequency, square wave. Can light just about anything from HPS to Mercury Vapor.

So -- you can light a DE lamp on an old Quantum if you want. It'll just shake itself to bits fairly quickly because the 55 kHz output of the old ballast is just perfect to blow it up.
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Yep, and since the maximum resonance frequency spec on a Philips 860W CDM Allstart is 174Hz, all these low frequency ballasts can run it, including both the Horti Platinum and yours, correct?

Don't be fooled by the 860W nomenclature, it ran just fine at 1kW on my mag ballast on both 120V and 240V. I believe the 860W designation has to do with its ability to be run on a magnetic ballast at 208V, or 860W.

I think this is a significant development for us vertical growers and I'd like to discuss this option further.
 
ttystikk said:
Yep, and since the maximum resonance frequency spec on a Philips 860W CDM Allstart is 174Hz, all these low frequency ballasts can run it, including both the Horti Platinum and yours, correct?

Don't be fooled by the 860W nomenclature, it ran just fine at 1kW on my mag ballast on both 120V and 240V. I believe the 860W designation has to do with its ability to be run on a magnetic ballast at 208V, or 860W.

I think this is a significant development for us vertical growers and I'd like to discuss this option further.
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Let's try it and see? Email me and let's set something up and try it out!

-Greg
 
Revolution Micro said:
Let's try it and see? Email me and let's set something up and try it out!

-Greg
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Do you guy's plan on offering your ballasts separate from your fixture in the future? Might not be a bad idea if the all starts like it.

Double end CMH anyone? I know someone just starting making double end 315w CMH's.
 
bicit said:
Do you guy's plan on offering your ballasts separate from your fixture in the future? Might not be a bad idea if the all starts like it.

Double end CMH anyone? I know someone just starting making double end 315w CMH's.
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Allstart needs vertical orientation. Gotta cross that hurdle to make it DE viable.
 
ttystikk said:
I asked my local hydro store to look into getting one for me and they said they looked into it and their supplier said they'd been discontinued. If our info is wrong, I'd very much like to know.
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Wonder if they meant the distributor discontinued stocking vs hortilux ?
 
"Nope, it's ALL heat. Horror of horrors, but it is ... Think about it this way -- if you have a black box with cables going into it, and you measure 1000W of electrical power going into the black box, unless the box has some way for that power to do some external work, you've heated the box up 1000W worth."
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(finally figured out the quote, kinda)


...I think you're forgetting about the lights part. Some of that "energy" is converted to light, some wasted off as heat.


Example:

Lamp #1 we feed 100 true watts. We get equivalent of 30% energy conversion to light, we are left with 70% of our energy as "waste" or heat.

Lamp #2 we feed 100 true watts. We get equivalent of 35% energy conversion to light, we are left with 65% of our energy as "waste" or heat.

Lamp #1 =/= Lamp #2

Light emitted Lamp #1 =/= Light emitted Lamp #2

Heat dissipated by Lamp #1 =/= Heat dissipated by Lamp #2


From the same wiki link provided:

"minus the amount of work done by the system on its surroundings"
 
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CannaBruh said:
(finally figured out the quote, kinda)


...I think you're forgetting about the lights part. Some of that "energy" is converted to light, some wasted off as heat.


Example:

Lamp #1 we feed 100 true watts. We get equivalent of 30% energy conversion to light, we are left with 70% of our energy as "waste" or heat.

Lamp #2 we feed 100 true watts. We get equivalent of 35% energy conversion to light, we are left with 65% of our energy as "waste" or heat.

Lamp #1 =/= Lamp #2

Light emitted Lamp #1 =/= Light emitted Lamp #2

Heat dissipated by Lamp #1 =/= Heat dissipated by Lamp #2


From the same wiki link provided:

"minus the amount of work done by the system on its surroundings"
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Except that the work, light, is also heat. It might be taken up in plant transpiration and thus show up as excess water vapor.
 
CannaBruh said:
(finally figured out the quote, kinda)


...I think you're forgetting about the lights part. Some of that "energy" is converted to light, some wasted off as heat.


Example:

Lamp #1 we feed 100 true watts. We get equivalent of 30% energy conversion to light, we are left with 70% of our energy as "waste" or heat.

Lamp #2 we feed 100 true watts. We get equivalent of 35% energy conversion to light, we are left with 65% of our energy as "waste" or heat.

Lamp #1 =/= Lamp #2

Light emitted Lamp #1 =/= Light emitted Lamp #2

Heat dissipated by Lamp #1 =/= Heat dissipated by Lamp #2


From the same wiki link provided:

"minus the amount of work done by the system on its surroundings"
Click to expand...
I tried to explain this to them, they just don't get it, in their world a 100watt heater produces the same amount of heat as a 100 watt light.
 
"It might be taken up in plant transpiration and thus show up as excess water vapor."
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Which might pose its own need for remedy but would not equate the same issues posed with "heat" or rising temperature as a result of a light's inefficiency?

How does heat capacity of the environment play in? Does 100W worth of LED produce the same quantities (at the same rate over time) as compared to HID to cause a rise in temperature? Is this even a valid question?
 
Sine this thread has attracted a lot of knowledgeable people from all sides of the isle - Has anyone heard of a manufacturer that makes a 600W Square Wave ballast?
 
The difference lies in what inside the room is heated up more. Plants vs heat sinks for example. The room is not empty and the heat not uniformly spread. The radiated heat from hid directed towards the plants heats the plants up more than it does the air. Which can be a bad thing for some and a good thing for others. The effects a light source has on the plants in the room is what matters.

First pic in this post illustrates it nicely:
https://www.rollitup.org/t/arduino-...for-the-grow-room.893752/page-2#post-12298689
Unfortunately not a hps pic in the same setup and plants to compare...

Revolution Micro said:
LEDs win where you tune the spectrum to delete parts of the curve you don't want, so you can get away with less power for similar amounts of plant-growing light.
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Which makes the white cobs for grow leds ironic, with specifically added parts (reducing photon output in the process), "optimized for bay lighting", for human eyes, not for plants.
 
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