Opinions on Digital Ballasts

purrrrple said:
NextGen's are not UL listed (if i'm not mistaken) so if they cause a fire your insurance WILL NOT COVER IT.
Click to expand...
:wall:
you get a fire in your grow room and i'm pretty sure your homeowners aint gonna cover it...regardless of the source.
 
Anybody ever look at the spectrum of the digilux? All this talk about how it puts out more lumens, but not in the right spectrums.
Ill put my Sunmaster MH with only 80,000 lumens up against it anytime. Look at the spectrum, running the cool deluxe 1000w in the middle and 2 600w hps on both sides of it will give me a better spectrum that the plants will see over the digilux. Lumens mean nothing if the plant cant see them. I took my hortilux super blue out and put the cool deluxe in plants seem to like it better
 
It's all about PAR baby.

But to be perfectly honest, you can grow banger buds with any higher quality bulb. You can also grow schwag buds with any high quality bulb. Point being, your time spent researching bulbs is probably better spent retaining absolute control of your room's climate and figuring out which hood is best for your set up. Of all the expensive bulbs, there is not one out there that is going to magically create the dream grow
 
i have a lumatek 600w and love it. quiet, not too hot, and dims to 400 or 250 which is nice if you want to veg with a halide. i dont use the "super lumen" because it came with a standard hps bulb (and i agree with the guy who said it probably dies quicker, plus to my eye there was no difference), but when i replace i plan on shelling out for a digital hps and taking advantage of this feature as well. very pleased with the lumatek
 
Hey diesel, the super lumen setting is indeed brighter. I can remember the lux readings I took but it was noticeably brighter. Yeah they
Likely burn out faster but most people replace bulbs every 6 months anyways soooo. I think I'll right my initial and 6 month lux readings down. I bet at 6 months that the 6 month old super lumen setting is just as bright as a 6 month old bulb on the standard wattage.
 
I have a Nextgen 600/400 watt ballast with a digilux 600 HPS and I really like the combo.I bought the ballast with a plantmax bulb and for some reason it never worked it just cycled. It would come on and almost get to its brightest and then shut off and it just repeated this. At first I thought it was the ballast but I put in the digilux and it was fine. Anyways I tried the plantmax 600 HPS on the 400 watt setting on the ballast to see if it would fire the 600 bulb on the lower setting and it did. That's really wierd is it not? But so far I like my nextgen it stays very cool to the touch and the fan noise is very very quiet, almost non existant. Peace
 
yah i was having problems with my nextgen 600/400 watt switchable with a 600 watt hps digilux and mine was doing the same thing it would turn on and shut off but the guy at my hydro store said to switch it to a different outlet in my house and its working perfect ever since
 
That is wierd. I am hoping that the plantmax bulb that came with the ballast on mine is just messed up.The ballast has been on almost constantly now for about a month and its been doing fine as far I can tell. When it did mess up the light was green with red flashes and it was some kind of code it was firing off that wasn't listed on the back of the ballast. I contacted CAP and they were completely fine with replacing it for me no questions. So that makes me feel a lot better about my purchase.
 
yeah i was getting the same exact code on mine it was green with red flashing.. mine says that that code is to check your bulb or check your input voltage yah mine has a five year warranty on the ballast and a one year warranty on my digilux...and i dont know but i wasnt blowing fuses im not an electrician so i dont exactly know what was going on but as long as it works now im happy
 
I have been using 4 1000w Phantom's (in my opinion they're the best). They run at 3 power levels; 60%, 75%, or 100%. I think if you spend extra $ on anything in you setup, use it to buy good ballasts! I veg. with 60% power, turn it to 75% in week 2 of 12/12, 100% week 3 through week 8ish, and back to 75% to finish.
 
yah i originally asked for a phantom but they didnt have them in stock at my local hydro store so i just got the nextgen because i was impatient...do those settings save you on energy costs??
 
the code that was shooting off on my ballast was green with a medium red blink, long blink, medium blink, long blink, and the two short quick red flashes..I thought at first it was input voltage too until I saw the red lights shooting of in weird sequences instead of a constant red blink.
 
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