Light opinion sf-2000

Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Go Santa!

No firm position on lenses, i admit that i dont know them well.
Pro: may protect the leds from grow environment increasing their life time.
Con: a lense may also trap heat underneath it and thus lower their life time. This would only increase as you go higher in wattage.

Lenses might have optical characteristics which concentrate light underneath but any lense will also decrease total ligh output.

My best bet would be trying for a cycle yourself with no lenses and see how you go. Also try measuring how hot the leds become at your operating wattage.

Some around here says a covered led will be very much less likely to cause light burn, i cant say i really believe this but ill happily admit i havent seen proof one way or another.
 
Fordprefect42

Fordprefect42

Well-Known Member
Rocket Soul said:
Go Santa!

No firm position on lenses, i admit that i dont know them well.
Pro: may protect the leds from grow environment increasing their life time.
Con: a lense may also trap heat underneath it and thus lower their life time. This would only increase as you go higher in wattage.

Lenses might have optical characteristics which concentrate light underneath but any lense will also decrease total ligh output.

My best bet would be trying for a cycle yourself with no lenses and see how you go. Also try measuring how hot the leds become at your operating wattage.

Some around here says a covered led will be very much less likely to cause light burn, i cant say i really believe this but ill happily admit i havent seen proof one way or another.
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Thanks. Appreciate the thoughts. Guess I’ll save myself 50 bucks and see how lensless goes. I will say I agree on hlg service. They sent me a shipping confirmation and ups tracking said it hadn’t been shipped and the label had only been printed for a couple days. I inquired about that and got a response back in hours.
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Fordprefect42 said:
Thanks. Appreciate the thoughts. Guess I’ll save myself 50 bucks and see how lensless goes. I will say I agree on hlg service. They sent me a shipping confirmation and ups tracking said it hadn’t been shipped and the label had only been printed for a couple days. I inquired about that and got a response back in hours.
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Ive never went wrong with china but hlg is here and now on the forum, they allways take care of what they project here cause this forum is their best marketing. I hope you enjoy your xmas
 
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Federucci

Well-Known Member
Fordprefect42 said:
Thanks. Appreciate the thoughts. Guess I’ll save myself 50 bucks and see how lensless goes. I will say I agree on hlg service. They sent me a shipping confirmation and ups tracking said it hadn’t been shipped and the label had only been printed for a couple days. I inquired about that and got a response back in hours.
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I had not had any issues running lensless, but I make sure to raise the lights as high as possible and turn off the fans before any foliar feeding or watering because I am a safety nancy. Those little boards are rad man, you can run them HARD, on another forum, a member name Tbone Shuffle swears by using a 320H-C2800A for each set of 2 with TIM and active cooling and blasts them. He says that the flowers turn out better than r specs and that they perform best when ran hard for him, and you can get much better coverage than you think and keep them a little further away. I can't wait to see what you have in store!

HLG is also rad, I can literally dial their number and talk to Steve in the technical assistance part, he's been really crucial in driver selection and tech questions, it's like having an engineer on speed dial lol.
 
Fordprefect42

Fordprefect42

Well-Known Member
Federucci said:
I had not had any issues running lensless, but I make sure to raise the lights as high as possible and turn off the fans before any foliar feeding or watering because I am a safety nancy. Those little boards are rad man, you can run them HARD, on another forum, a member name Tbone Shuffle swears by using a 320H-C2800A for each set of 2 with TIM and active cooling and blasts them. He says that the flowers turn out better than r specs and that they perform best when ran hard for him, and you can get much better coverage than you think and keep them a little further away. I can't wait to see what you have in store!

HLG is also rad, I can literally dial their number and talk to Steve in the technical assistance part, he's been really crucial in driver selection and tech questions, it's like having an engineer on speed dial lol.
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I’m pretty excited myself. It’s like playing with legos. Ups says I should have the drivers and boards tomorrow. Plus my wife and I have a bet on whether I’m competent. I’m getting 5-1 odds. Not unfair.
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Fordprefect42 said:
I’m pretty excited myself. It’s like playing with legos. Ups says I should have the drivers and boards tomorrow. Plus my wife and I have a bet on whether I’m competent. I’m getting 5-1 odds. Not unfair.
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Beat that spread ;) its real easy though, red to plus on the qb etc. What driver are you getting?

Edit: ii was a real lego fan as young. Built my own toys like Transformers.
 
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Federucci

Well-Known Member
I was just about to ask too, lol. What I like about HLG boards is that you can use the same driver for many of their boards, I have a 320H-C2800AB that I will use for a bank of 2 648s in series, but you can use it for 2 288s or 96s as well. Their new "spectrum snob' boards in the future should also be compatible and it's nice not having to buy new drivers if you decide to upgrade.
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Federucci said:
I was just about to ask too, lol. What I like about HLG boards is that you can use the same driver for many of their boards, I have a 320H-C2800AB that I will use for a bank of 2 648s in series, but you can use it for 2 288s or 96s as well. Their new "spectrum snob' boards in the future should also be compatible and it's nice not having to buy new drivers if you decide to upgrade.
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Yeah but you can generally do that with a 54A driver aswell and then you can fit 3 boards on it. The c2800 fits 2 at 160 or 4 at 80w iirc.
 
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Federucci

Well-Known Member
Rocket Soul said:
Yeah but you can generally do that with a 54A driver aswell and then you can fit 3 boards on it. The c2800 fits 2 at 160 or 4 at 80w iirc.
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Exactly, in OPs case, it would probably be more cost effective to wire in parallel with a 54A driver. Since OP got six 96s, it might be a good idea to wire 2 banks of 3 in parallel under one 480h-54a driver per bank of 3 and adjust as needed. Or they could do a single 600h-54A for all six in parallel if you never want to go over 110-115 watts per board, but it is 25 square feet. It just depends on what the desired watts/ft^2 is. Probably cost about $250 for two 480s, which would give about 35-40 watts per square foot in flower, so that's what I would do.
 
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Federucci

Well-Known Member
Rocket Soul said:
Xlg240h will work nicely as well.
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Yeah, forgot about those, it just depends on what the wattage goals for the area buddy, and those are pretty nice, you could get three of those for about $150 and have some backups, all good for about 750 watts, also a good option for less money.
 
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Federucci

Well-Known Member
Very interesting, I watched the whole show and the automated stuff that Steven was talking about is awesome. I guess I am glad I got a last bunch of the 648s because the rack lights wouldn't be ideal for my situation, much less many others, from what I understand.
 
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