the suggested manufacturer's height for the SE3000 from spiderfarmer for veg is only 8" and 6" for veg, that is way too close, I burned the crap out of my last grow (i got the light before i flipped my last grow) and started at 14", now Trying to find the sweet spot on my own. no idea why they would have the light height that far off? I do have the driver outside of the tent.
No two ways about it — 6 - 8" at 100% = extra crispy. That's shitty advice and sorry to hear about your plants.
I just checked their web site and, much to my surprise, I could not find info on hang height. Googled for a manual and no luck. But there is discussion about it on another cannabis forum. Spider really needs to up their game on this. It's too bad because the light itself is nice. I checked out the PPFD map and this light would be absolutely primo in a 2' x 2' tent.
I ended up running my bar light at 14", too, and changed PPFD via the dimmer.
Good on you for moving the driver - even if it's not cranked up, it's one less thing to have to mess with.
If you haven't dialed in your light, a lux meter will work pretty well to get you in the ballpark. I bought an Apogee when I started growing and thought it was sort of hinky to use a light meter instead of a PAR meter. I gather up some info from a couple of different light manufacturers and put together the info below.
My flower light is the Growcraft X3 full cycle light which is why I use that as a baseline. If I were to use a light meter and multiply the reading by 0.016, the values would be within 1% of the values on the Apogee. The X3 is a flower light so it's red-heavy so it's different than most light but the "QB" lights are HLG's which are much closer to a white LED.
Per the table, you could get really close to those values by matching the spectrum of your light against a light in the list. It's not going to be 100% accurate but, when it comes to PPFD, all we need to do is get in the ballpark and then it's up to the grower to "adjust fire" from there.
Food for thought.
