Let there be white: mc130p's horticultural adventure continues

mc130p

Well-Known Member
Hey everyone, I hope your week was good! l wasn't going to update till this weekend, but a few things have been happening so I figured I'd get it down now:)

First, the Crockett's Tangie IS a female O_O Awesome! Coming up on the end of week 7 of 13/11 for the Tangerine Dream and the Blue Cheese (back right and left, respectively). Things would probably be a bit further along by now, but things are delayed due to the mistreatment, hah. Still, the Tangerine Dream is frosting up nicely. Here's a pic of a bud (ignore the terrible leaves and the cat hair, lol):
tangerine dream.jpg

Here's a pic of the whole garden. The Bodhi Tree of Life is really becoming a nice little tree:)
todaysview.jpg


The veg tent is coming along as well; I topped the Liberty Haze today. Here's a pic...temps are a little low, only about 70F because.....
vegtent.jpg

I was running both my 3070's in there (5000K and 3000K), but it appears that sometime in the past few days, my 3000K driver died. I don't have a DMM for proper troubleshooting, but it was the first one I bought about a year and a half ago. Seems like the perfect excuse to pick up the Fluke that I've had my eye on.....haha Anyway, I checked all the connections and hooked up a different driver and the COB is good, so yeah. No DMM really needed......still.......
dead_driver.jpg

This was the under-canopy light as well...so there will some new lights coming soon to redo the veg tent and the under-canopy light. I'm sticking with the Thomas Research Products CC drivers from now on, even though they aren't really very cheap. This CREE driver ran pretty hot, and the TRP drivers run nice and cool, with a 150K hour expected lifetime.
 
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mc130p

Well-Known Member
I have new drivers on the way as well.
1.5yr isnt a very long life,I guess Cree makes better cobs than drivers to power them
haha, that's what i was just thinking too, and perhaps why they stopped making drivers in the first place......the other one is kicking along just fine, so maybe bad luck?
 

bassman999

Well-Known Member
haha, that's what i was just thinking too, and perhaps why they stopped making drivers in the first place......the other one is kicking along just fine, so maybe bad luck?
I have enough of the bad luck to say yeah that entirely possible.
I guess Cree doesnt have the 5yr warranty that mean well does, otherwise I might have read that you were sending it for repair/replacement?

I am new to led and drivers, but not so much to growing (6 yrs).
I have never had a ballast go bad, not even the ones that were old when I got them and used for several yrs. and man some of them were HOT.
I actually have all my ballasts and hoods etc for sale now.
Out with the old in with the new.
 

mc130p

Well-Known Member
I have enough of the bad luck to say yeah that entirely possible.
I guess Cree doesnt have the 5yr warranty that mean well does, otherwise I might have read that you were sending it for repair/replacement?
oh hell, i didn't even look at a warranty, haha....didn't even keep the packing slip from digikey. i want a slightly different setup anyway, so a replacement wouldn't really be what I'm looking for.
 

bassman999

Well-Known Member
oh hell, i didn't even look at a warranty, haha....didn't even keep the packing slip from digikey. i want a slightly different setup anyway, so a replacement wouldn't really be what I'm looking for.
Yeah I understand that.
I am cheap, and do it just to sell it
 

bassman999

Well-Known Member
I don't sell anything, it's all personal smoke for me:) But, for the price of a driver, I'm not really too concerned about a warranty. Not that I'm rich or anything, but usually for a thing like that, the hassle of doing the warranty return makes it not really worth my time.
Personal smoke for me as well, so to make myself able to upgrade I sell stuff I dont use, well I do when I cant walk in the garage anymore from all the crap, like right now.
I have an audio obsession that keeps me broke.
Several shelves full of subwoofers I bought and or built and parts and amps etc....
The wife hates my collections, so I gotta draw the line somewhere and recoup some money
 

mc130p

Well-Known Member
Well, since the Tangie is a female and she showed sex so early, I decided to put her in the veg tent until she's topped two more times, and I replaced her with the other Tangie :) Wow, I'm so excited to have some of this growing....I hope I don't fack it up!
 

mc130p

Well-Known Member
Hi RIU people ;) I hope you're all doing well.

The Tree of Life is really looking nice! She's growing very rapidly and she's already starting to build frost...nice and early:)

tree of life.jpg

Here's the whole tent, you can see the ToL is really stealing the show!
todaysview.jpg
I took the female Tangie and the Dr. Grinspoon out of the flower tent to veg for a while. I really think it would be an injustice if I didn't grow them out properly:) I switched them with the Liberty Haze (back right) and the unsexed Crockett's Tangie (middle).

I tried to get a pic of the Blue Cheese and the Tangerine Dream, since the ToL really blocks the view...the TD is sort of a bud shrub, lol and the Blue Cheese would have been perfect in my old minifridge since she's so short and very even on top. The few buds actually look to be a decent size, so maybe I can smoke Blue Cheese for a couple days:) Perhaps the TD should be nicknamed the 'burning bush,' haha.... i know my jokes aren't funny ;)
tdandbc.jpg
 

mc130p

Well-Known Member
Hey everyone, it's another Saturday:)

The Tree of Life is getting taller and frostier:) I'm excited about trying that one out! The Blue Cheese and the Tangerine Dream in the flower tent are coming into the home stretch. Hopefully we'll chop em down a little before Christmas. Today, I put another Tangie x Ghost Train Haze seed in the wet paper towel to germinate. The Tangie and the Dr. Grinspoon are still hanging out in the veg tent with the Tangerine Dream seedling.

seems like the veg tent needs more light, so I decided that I would upgrade the lighting with the addition of 72V 4000K CXA3590(already had it), so I bought a driver to push it at 1.4A and a decent heat sink-though not a CPU cooler this time....they take up more vertical space than I want for the veg tent, with its limited 3ft height.

Here's a pic of the garden:

todaysview.jpg
 
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puffenuff

Well-Known Member
Really? Mine still says December, but I'm thinking it'll be delayed....all I know is if the Grinspoon is finished before the Grasshopper ships, I'll be pretty disappointed!
Mine says DEC too. Think we ordered around the same time (April '15). Not holding my breath I'll get mine before the end of the year. Should be a new update on reddit tomorrow.
 

mc130p

Well-Known Member
Mine says DEC too. Think we ordered around the same time (April '15). Not holding my breath I'll get mine before the end of the year. Should be a new update on reddit tomorrow.
Even after the update, it still says December....they're running out of time though, haha!

Here's an update on the garden:)

The veg tent is too cold. The Tangie is suffering:
vegtent.jpg
I got a temperature controller...I was going to use it in the mini-fridge, but this will work...the power out is supposed to be for a DC fan, but I'm going to use it to close a relay with a 5V DC coil, and it will turn the exhaust on and off for the veg tent:
tempcontroller.jpg

I lifted this from the site:
tempcontroller3.jpg
The back is just a simple USB hookup...I've got tons of USB power cords laying around :)
tempcontroller2.jpg

Here's the flower tent; the Tree of Life looks pretty happy to me:) And the Tangerine Dream and Blue Cheese keep coming along.....
todaysview.jpg
 

mc130p

Well-Known Member
Hey everyone, we made it through another week:) Will I survive a visit with the family next week? Stay tuned.......

Here's an update on the garden:

The relay for the veg tent temperature controller still hasn't arrived...turns out it's shipping from China and won't be here till next year! I should have paid better attention when I ordered it from Amazon....my bad! So, since DigiKey has the quick shipping down to a science, I ordered a new one from them....should be here early next week. Until then, the veg tent is still a bit chilly, but doing better since I put in a new veg lamp:)

I took the AC Infinity fan that came with the temperature controller, and mounted it directly to the heat sink. It is a really good fit, and I was able to cobble job it in a manner that actually doesn't look too bad, imho ;) So, at least none of the minifridge parts were wasted after all! Here she is...made with zero soldering, no measurement tools, a marker, a drill, 6-32 thumb screws, some strange hardware from the CPU coolers, and wire I take from trashed equipment in the lab :) Right now the light is from a 72V CXA3590 4000K chip I had, running at 1.4A, but I'm waffling between switching it out for a CXB3590, or two CXB3070's in series. Really all I care about is that relay! You can see it's 73F in the tent....too cold...growth is too slow...........

newveglamp.jpg newveglamp3.jpg newveglamp2.jpg newveglamp4.jpg

Here's the flower tent. I took the Dr. Grinspoon out of veg and put her into the flower tent today. I decided to try out the multi dripper blumat things on this bigger pot. I hope she takes to the flowering tent with some good growth!
todaysview.jpg
Looks like I'm letting the Blue Cheese and the Tangerine Dream go until after Christmas:
todaysview2.jpg
 
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