So 100% positive now I'm going to be getting a setup of 18x cxm22 Cobs from MrCob to cover a 4x8 area.
I am beside myself with excitement as this really gets my nerd up. But im going to be banging my head against the wall because I'm a measurement-aholic. Ive seen some posts how lux meters are ok to check light coverage but par meter is more important to actually see what light is hitting where. That being said, since I'm sure I'll be adding some supplemental spectrums what would be a decent but not expensive meter?
Is the Hydrofarm LGBQM a good option at only $149?
Might wanna do a bit more real world research on the supplementals, as far as I can tell (growmau5 etc) far red initiators of a few watts may speed flip times but as for IR/UV addition, far as I know no-one has got any meaningful crop benefits if running 'full spectrum' white leds with zero uv/ir. personally I mix 2700K and 4000K in equal numbers and spacings just to hit peak spectrum both ends and as such only need a real basic lux meter to compare penetration and look for hot/dark spots. In my opinion Light Emitting Surface CoBs are such a novel light source there is yet to be a measurement of regular 360/360 spherical emission that does the true growing efficacy of cobs any justice. Lux works for me coz you can go outdoors on a sunny day and measure the sun in the visible spectrum and compare it to a certain wattage rig, if yer beating 100,000lux @ 1M yer blazin, simple! To explain in technicalese...... All incandescent lights give off photons when the hot filament hits a few thousand degrees C in arc discharge or flourescents we are talking a hot plasma which emits photons in accordance to its temperature and shroud gas emission specifics, leds are a whole different ball game, now we are talking about a semiconductor P/N junction and when the forward voltage overcomes the atomic resistance of the PN boundary an electron crosses this boundary and occupies a 'P hole' in the P layer emitting a photon as the P layer is excited above its resting state. If we discount the 3/5 step macadam phosphorus conversion of that light from far blue down to visible broad spectrum white we are talking raw emission of photons on an atomic level rather than as a byproduct of heating a filament or ripping an inert gas to bits with an HV field. My direct side by side comparison showed leds outperforming equivalent hps 3-1 with beater crop weights and far superior crop health, this simply does not stack up if you simply compare spec sheets so something other than total emission is at play.
