surge protection

PlutonicChronic

Well-Known Member
Is any kind of protection needed for these LEDs? I seem to remember reading a glh spectra grow several years back where he used something like an uninterrupted power supply.
 
I have an old 90 diode ufo. It was a day like any other, some time ago when in the evening I decided to get my self a nice cold beer which are always plentiful in my fridge. I´ve had that fridge for a year and a half. Well, my surprise was big when I noticed to my dismay that the beer I was longing for wasn´t cold. I was a little pissed too because I had just bought food that day and I wasn´t sure how the bulky cheese I had in there was gonna respond to being unproperly stored.

Later that evening after I had unplugged and plugged the fridge a few times and got it working again, I went to my grow capinet to check on my banana tree. After admiring the plant for a while as many of us often do without a practical reason to do some caretaking of plants. It occurred to me that something was a miss! Light was less as it should be! Half the diodes weren´t working. Bullcrap!! What an unlucky day to say the least I thought.

I´m not certain what had happened that day but it seems odd to have had two separate instances of failure in pretty trustworthy appliances within such a short period of time. Both appliances were connected to basic sockets although the UFO was set on a timer I think. I also remembered a peculiar high pitch scream that had ended abruptly, muffling into the more familiar sounds I am accustomed to in my two room apartment:Neighbours listening to crappy music or just plain, recognizable sounds of walking in the corridor. I never found out the reason behind the cry.

So either it was a rare,rare incident, while ignoring any kind of paranormal activity that I was unaware of, or there had been somekind of an abnormal spike in electrical circuits which the simultaneity of the events suggests as the culprit in a mind of a socalled 21st century civilized man.


I later managed to fix the led by soldering a small cord through one of the led connections and it works as good as new.Only with 89 diodes though. But a strange gloomy presence seemed to whisper in the air in the day of the repair, although I shrugged it off to imagination. But to this day I feel a slight chill when I reminescense the day when electrical appliances went beyond? :)
 

PlutonicChronic

Well-Known Member
lmao holy shit i did not expect a response to that extent. Any led users here use protection? not irish boy, but the other guy who got spectras donated to him ( what was his name i cant find his posts! ) this guy was pretty set on using a device ( i want to say a special surge protector, kind of like a UPS...)
 

westom1

Member
Any led users here use protection?
Read the spec numbers for each suggestion. That power strip only claims to protect from surges that are typically so tiny as to not do damage. Typical numbers for a UPS are even smaller - only hundreds of joules - near zero protection.

Power output from a UPS in battery backup mode can be so 'dirty' as to even degrade a power strip protector. That same UPS power is irrelevant to LEDs that already contain superior protection.

A completely different and third device is used. It is also called a surge protector. Any building that needs surge protection earths one 'whole house' protector. Even a UPS and power strip protector needs that protection. The superior solution may also cost less money.
 

Xoshua

Well-Known Member
Not sure what the guy above me said but it sounds good. I use a powerstrip/ powerbar with circuit breaker in it. I would use it for any grow. Go to home depot or a similar store and check the heavy duty stuff. I bought a heavy duty timer (2 outlets) and a 4/5 star rating powerbar.
 

westom1

Member
I use a powerstrip/ powerbar with circuit breaker in it.
How does a millimeter gap in a circuit breaker stop what could not be stopped by kilometers of sky? How does a circuit breaker that takes milliseconds or minutes to trip stop a destructive transient that is done in microseconds? Hundreds of consecutive transients could pass through that circuit breaker before it even thought about opening.

Circuit breaker is to prevent a house fire after damage has happened. That powerbar does not even claim to do what the OP wants.
 
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