HPS KILLER Grow Journal

Getgrowingson said:

Yea basically. Less then hps for sure but not as compact as if I vegged under mh. But still very happy with it

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hey dude, I'm actually trying to build a set up just like yours.

Which the exception that ill be running 3 vero29s off each HLG-185h-1400. so ill have a total of 800w. I'm impressed with your results.

Spectrum does count and the Cree and vero cobs make a high quality of light that spans the full spectrum of visible light. There is enough blue light to keep the plants from stretching to seek light. Our plants stretch because the growing tips are seeking best light and maybe where up is. Blue is the color they seek. With plenty of blue present, the plants are happy and will put energy toward bulk since there is no need to seek light.
Many green plants do this, just trying to find a place in the sun.

I originally planned to use it in a 4x4 but decided to see how it would do in a 5x5. If I added another 100-200w so around 800w. It would be insane in the 5x5.

Update: Im now on week 6, These pictures were from week 5, no special colas just some pics i took while working in the garden. The temps have really been my downfall this run. Yesterday with outside temps being so low i tripped the heater breaker and lost the heat. Temps were down into the low 50's for most of the day. I cant get them any higher then 72 right now with the rediculous cold we have had the past two weeks. I beleive the cold has locked out some of the Phosphorus as i have quite a few purple leaves now at week 6 which i never usually have. Sometime soon im going to put a natural gas furnace to keep the temps perfect but wont be until i can dig a hole and that wont be until spring. This is the first run at the new place and considering with what im working with im far from pissed at the results, it looks dank as HELL but small and tight compared to other runs. I wouldnt doubt if i dont reach my goal due to temperatures alone. I think ill still be around 1.2 gpw but i was shooting for 2 ish. And lets be real no gsc cross ive had yields very well at all. So now that im done making excuses here are the pics from week 5. A couple with lighting corrections and a couple without. Either way ive never reached 1gpw with this cut of gsc and thats running sog 4x4 tables 35 plants per table pulling 500-550 per table. So im ahead either way. quality is off the charts. The purple from the cold temps make the bag appeal off the wall.. Hard to see in the pics

Nice even and full canopy! I hope the temps dont hold them back

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Couple shots from the garden today. Looking dank week 6. Happy just the cold temps holding them back a little. Finish is 9.5 weeks on her where i like it so we have 3 weeks left. She usually slams on the weight late in flower so im still holding out for it. Getting some purp everywhere now.

Looking good, I'm also running a gsc cross and flipped to flower on Dec 10th using 4x cxa3070's @ 1500ma in a 2x2 cabinet. Your buds are a bit bigger than mine but I've had 8-10 days in the lower 40's that stunted growth. I also have some serious bleaching on two plants from the cobs being too close at that intensity. Great job, I'll be watching as you finish up, hope you crush your goals!

that's wassup man. keeping my eyes on this one!

in all honesty, how do you feel the lower buds are coming along? just as developed as those in the canopy? Im asking about penetration to learn, becuase things look a little packed. I do not try to be a bother. Thanks for sharing.

benbud89 said:

in all honesty, how do you feel the lower buds are coming along? just as developed as those in the canopy? Im asking about penetration to learn, becuase things look a little packed. I do not try to be a bother. Thanks for sharing.

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Hey man, penetration isn't really a thing. Cannabis leaves absorb 90% of visible light that contact them, the way you get penetration with cobs is diffusion. Run your chips bare, have a lot of them, and use light baffles like reflective walls to keep photons in. What you're going for in cob builds is a lot of overlap with the beam-angles in an enclosed space. Lowers receive plenty of light if you have lots of light to give. I love tents for this reason, you can basically think about your light like filling the space up with a liquid with higher pressure on top and lower on the bottom.

What really matters is how much energy (in the form of photons) is being encapsulated. I was just up at my buddy's new facility in Michigan and he's got cooltubes running along the perimeter walls of a 13x20 and some shitty 300W spiderman leds in the middle of the room. I've used the exact same lights without having 10,000 watts in the same room and got shitty larf everywhere. These looked like they were under 1000W lights, but they weren't even close to the hoods. The massive amount of energy being ambivalently pumped from all sides of the room, even with low energy diffraction, is enough to excite huge growth.

What you have to realize, with cobs or anything else, is that you can't cheat thermodynamics. What is most important isn't optics, spectrum, or chip, it's wattage. There is a ceiling though for what a plant can use, if you stay right at that ceiling, regardless of what you're using, you will get a very similar result: hps, cob, plasma, induction, doesn't really matter. It's all energy, cobs are just the most efficacious way of delivering it without heat complications.

Oh.

From what I've seen, there's a lot of intellectual fashion and gear-sluts in the cob game right now. What I've taken, from my builds (6 full size units now), you really shouldn't overthink your design. Just put cxb3070s on cpu-coolers, run them at 1400 mA with no optic and trap the light. Here's my veg lights, for an example of what I mean. I literally just superglued cpu coolers to shelving board, and bodged on some solder. It doesn't look pretty, but you start losing efficiency with every tweak you make. These lights have been on 18 hours a day for two years now (they both use cxa 2540s @ 3500k). And then the last one is my personal 1000W cxb3070 with 20 chips cobbled together with cheap angled aluminum from Lowes.

Queece said:

Hey man, penetration isn't really a thing.

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Light density at Depth??

Also, if you are looking for higher light levels in the lower canopy, there is no substitute for good pruning. Regardless of the light source.

I would also recommend optics to focus the light into tighter beams, thus creating higher light density at depth.

cdgmoney250 said:

Light density at Depth??

Also, if you are looking for higher light levels in the lower canopy, there is no substitute for good pruning. Regardless of the light source.

I would also recommend optics to focus the light into tighter beams, thus creating higher light density at depth.

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Now, you see man, I tried the lidel reflectors, and I didn't see any difference whatsoever. These things at 1400mA will put out more light than your plant will use if you are using 12 chips per 4*4. Lenses actually reduce efficiency and heat dissipation by acting as a band-pass filter if the light is travelling through a medium. Focusing that much light will likely result in bleaching of your colas, unless you have really high ceilings but that isn't what cobs are for (best for). Most of the aftermarket odds and ends are just for dudes like Greengene or Mau5 that are trying to make a commercially viable unit that will sell out of a box and not look like a rat's nest. The rat's nest works best, it just isn't going to be certified by UL. I'm absolutely crushing anything on the market right now, that I can assure you.

That being said, I'm not some kind of luddite. I'm sure advances in cobs will come along with some of the multiple spectrum chips rolling out now, but I really don't need them until biology can catch up to them. I like to mess around with high efficiency designs, but using even CXB3590s right now is really impractical as far as price point (best driver will only push them at 1020mA right now). If you going for purity of design in terms of building the most efficient light, go with 3590s, but anyone wanting something that just works, bare 3070s are best. It's like sweating over trading in your BMW i8 for a Tesla S because it doesn't need $10 of gas a month.

There is no light that's going to act like some kind of laser space weapon and send light through an opaque leaf. Greater density at depth doesn't really make sense when you are talking about that much light. It's like, "I have a full bucket, but how much water is in the bottom inch?" Sure, you can do some complex rotation and actually find out what the volume is, but it doesn't change the fact that the bucket is full and contains more than the fractional volume.

For some reason LEDs are very intimidating to me, but I feel like I may start looking into them more. I have no idea what you guys are talking about, but it sounds like it could be useful someday..

NebulousPLM said:

For some reason LEDs are very intimidating to me, but I feel like I may start looking into them more. I have no idea what you guys are talking about, but it sounds like it could be useful someday..

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Dude, modern components are so robust, it's really hard to mess up with cobs. If you look up a three minute video on youtube about soldering and use some basic knowledge (think positive/negative car battery hookup), you are well equipped. Pretty much as easy as sticking a little tile to a metal thing, and putting a wire between the positive and negative terminals of other tiles on pieces of metal, and then connecting those to a driver (just look up what one to buy if you don't want to do any math or know much about electronics). Boom, you're schlonging hps.

I think it's actually harder to replace a headlight in a car than to build one of these rigs, not to boast, there is just really nothing mentally taxing that needs to be done. Far easier than lego, slightly more dangerous but not much.

"Boom, you're schlonging hps" lmfao, that's epic!! I need to use that as my signature, if you don't mind. Love it, thanks for posting! What cobs/drivers are you using on the 1000w?

HLG-185H-C1400B on each string of 4 CXB3070s in series with no dimmer on the 10v line. So 5 drivers with 20 chips in a 4x8 tent. The drivers are outside. So what was a 2000-3000W tent is now 1000 with no air conditioning and zero need for one (do have a 6inch outtake vortex fan and a can filter venting into the intake room). Never broken 77 degrees. 4 Lbs dry per cycle every time with Jack's and calcium nitrate and coco smartpots, no CO2. Simple. It actually makes growing really boring, just a heads up. The best thing you can do is just leave everything alone, maybe a trellis.