Waste and Tragedy

[Jewels]

When I shut down my planted aquariums (13 feet) I held onto all my DIY substrate. It was a kitchen sink mix, zeolite, vermiculite, bentonite, ,and two other iron rich Plainsmans clays. I threw everything at it. If it had cec qualities or lowered ph- I tossed in in there. Earthworm castings, spagnuhm, peatmoss, mineralized compost, anything goes. I piled in an interesting inert product from 'aquarium plants .com' that looks like kitty litter. Expanded clay, I believe; like 'floor-dri' or 'turface' cool stuff, it held it's structure for over 10 years underwater ( structure is essential underwater to aviod anaerobic soil )
This is photo shows the storebought aquasoil - unused

If I thought it would help , I put it in the mix. Hell, I even drove out to Onefour to collect what we nerds call "dino dung" . Really school stuff.
It can be found in the Bearspaw basin. It is essentially prehistoric plant and animal matter that didnt quite get squished properly enough to form coal or diamonds. It feels like dirt, and it cleaves like coal.
Fast forward 15 years later and I have a 2 inch layer of decomposing Malaysian trumpet snail corpses to add to the mix.
Grew a nice soiless crop first time around and I also included it in my hydroponic venture.

I did not know about soiless growing back then, pehaps it is time for coco to join the party?

I do not like his angle of repose, but his belly looks full. They should make out just fine.

 

[Jewels]

My sprout is up and ready for a "bigboy" light now.
These bulbs will not veg.
I do not think this bulb has any place in a grow room I could not get intense light from a 14 inch reflector. I did not try it in an 8in reflector , yet regardless of how it performs that would make it inefficient considering the usefull footprint.

This one is just old balls. Puts out more heat that light. I do not recall if it performed better in its younger days but it certainly it's useless now.

I ended up using this pos houseold bulb from a grocery store four pack. Fml.

I light metre pays fot itself. 13 watts gave me equal intensity at half distance.

I have harvested ballasts from cfl lights.
Can an Led bulb like the one in the photo be cannibalised and reconfigured likewise ?
If that bulb was laid out like a panel, it could have some applications.
Can it be done ?
Can an LEDiode be overdriven like a tube bulb can be ?
Will I try it regardless of wiser advice ?
Stay tuned ,,,

 

[TerpyTyrone]

My sprout is up and ready for a "bigboy" light now.
These bulbs will not veg.
I do not think this bulb has any place in a grow room I could not get intense light from a 14 inch reflector. I did not try it in an 8in reflector , yet regardless of how it performs that would make it inefficient considering the usefull footprint.
View attachment 15183
This one is just old balls. Puts out more heat that light. I do not recall if it performed better in its younger days but it certainly it's useless now.
View attachment 15182
I ended up using this pos houseold bulb from a grocery store four pack. Fml.
View attachment 15185
I light metre pays fot itself. 13 watts gave me equal intensity at half distance.

I have harvested ballasts from cfl lights.
Can an Led bulb like the one in the photo be cannibalised and reconfigured likewise ?
If that bulb was laid out like a panel, it could have some applications.
Can it be done ?
Can an LEDiode be overdriven like a tube bulb can be ?
Will I try it regardless of wiser advice ?
Stay tuned ,,,

All good questions. I often walk around job sites in search of drivers or old ballasts or temporary lighting or site lighting. Shit I look in other trades gangboxes looking for cool shit I can scrounge!!
I dont see why u couldnt frankensteim some shit together. @Jesselikes2Grow. Is a crazy mofo like me about LED.
Ive been eyeballing the plumbers worksite light. I know u shouldnt but damn I lopks just lile a cob!!! Hahahaha jk jk or am I????

 

[TerpyTyrone]

I've repurposed so much stuff, lol, look at my kitchen sink light. Hahaha

I've tried one of those led bulbs, the round barrel style, and they didn't really do shit. Lol. The meter shows very little intensity from it. The reg led bulbs with the globe removed does really well though.
View attachment 15210

And thats alot of wire nuts and j boxes to make up phewwwww!!!

 

[Jewels]

Dome removed ????
Whaaaaaat ?

That why I do my thinking out loud.
Thankx for the tip bro !

 

[Jewels]

There is no residual capacitance in the bulb?
- or is there ?
No danger in there ?

 

[NoWaistedSpace]

I've repurposed so much stuff, lol, look at my kitchen sink light. Hahaha

I've tried one of those led bulbs, the round barrel style, and they didn't really do shit. Lol. The meter shows very little intensity from it. The reg led bulbs with the globe removed does really well though.
View attachment 15210

Did you have everything mounted before, or after, you shot the covers off the lights with your trusty "Red Ryder" BB gun? lol
Pretty cool! Fine tune the color spectrum with a simple change of Kelvins.
Nice if you could wire them so as to do away with all your socket bases unless you have them on hand.
Cool build my friend.

 

[NoWaistedSpace]

After of course, practice where and when ya can.
Thanks. How'd you know I was Ralphy?
Lol, for reals my best friends folks called me Ralphy cause I looked just like that kid in the movie. Like literally, his twin. Lmfao.
But my BB gun was a Daisy one pump shot, lever action that was awesome for BB gun wars. Hahaha
The light bases were only like a buck each at the store. Not too bad for cost, even with 40 of them. Lmfao.
Probably could do away with the bases, , too much labor involved though. Spend hrs and hrs disassembling and resoldering the connections, shrink tube, etc. If spending $40 saves me all of that, its money well spent.

I didn't know they called you "Ralphy" Haha! I won't tell. lol
You will have to build you a "Chinese" strip light next. I have a whole 18gal tote full of reels and components just waiting for me to put something together. lol There is 60 to 72 watts a reel. I mix the spectrums up like you did. They even make Quad 4 5630's. Kinda pricey.
I use the 2835's also. I try and stay under 4000K in the mix.

 

[Jewels]

* no danger in the round barrel style disassembly.
Spoiler
I lived.

Opened easy enough.

The plug and play connections were thoughtful.

Top side pcb
Female connection terminal (2) in centre

Business end.
Looks like 2 drivers, running four strips.
Common ground.

In an attempt to produce point source illumination, I am considering running two strips, off two drivers.
Should I wire one driver to one strip ?

Or can I jump it ( as illustrated below ) and just use one plug ?
Enlargement shows centre of last (2) image.

 

[NoWaistedSpace]

Here's those close ups.
This is a 150 watt led, but same process for the 100, and 60 watt versions.
View attachment 15261
Globe gone, see the glue.
View attachment 15262
Cut the white silicone glue. Just barely in the crack.
View attachment 15263
Only insert razor a little bit, a table works great to cut against. Don't use your foot like in my pic. Lol.
View attachment 15264

Yea, but them ain't 301B's. lmao! Gotta have 301B's can't use 561's anymore. I need that .02 % efficiency boost. lol
I bought some blanks that I mounted 3v diodes on off Ebay. Size of a CD disk and would hold 15 - 5 watt/3v leds.

 

[NoWaistedSpace]

Haha, yeah, looked just like him. Not any more, but when that movie came out I sure did. Lmfao.
Haha, can you pick Ralphy out?
View attachment 15265
There's a local company here sells reels of some strips I want to check out. A bit different than either of those. They're 2216's running at 24v. I want to get a 5 meter reel and see how they perform.
Here's a link to them.

24V 5 Meter Self Adhesive Warm White LED Strip

Beautiful, high output LED Strip Lighting from IES Distributors, Denver's premier LED distributor

iesdistributors.com

Tell me what ya think. Some of there data seems to have some typos though.

Yea, they seem as good as the rest of them. I didn't see how many per meter. 240? 1500 lumens is pretty high. Those Quad 4's? I would never buy them. too expensive.
If you want to play around, buy cheap un waterproofed(1.00 cheaper) strips. 600Led 5630's for brightness and the 2214 or 28's for saving energy. I bought a bunch of Ledmo complete kits warm/cool white and I bought 3014's 5630's and 283?'s. 20 meters of strips makes a decent light. 50 or 60 bucks depends on quality of leds.
Now how long will they last? Who knows? lol

Holy shit! You do look like Ralphy! Haha! That's great!
Did you drink Ovaltine? lol

 

[Jewels]

Oh jebus,

Tell me what ya think.

I think I stopped reading @ the 1500 lumen part.

I am not closely versed in the lingo enough to evaluate how you are arriving at what.

I do know this ,
I pried off the dome off the Led globe.
The results are photo'd below.
The nine watt jumped from 40 ppfd ( at one beer bottle distance) up to 90 with the dome removed.
The 16 watt jumped from 70 ppfd up to 200 @ the same distance.

Slightly encouraging.
I began to move the bulb closer to the sensor in a inverse square fashion. Unfortunately, the bulb was this close before I hit 1000ppfd ( see next photo, below). And, damn that Pythagoras, because the reading drops to 850 if I wandered away from the drip line.

If the sensor moves left or right far enough to touch the globes in this photo , the measurements drops to 850.
To get an even canopy of 1000 ppfd, I would need the bulb three inches away from the plants. I would need a dial calipre and a light metre to adjust every bulb - every 20 mins
The bulbs would need to be three inches on centre. In a six by six flower room I would need 24x24 bulbs. Like 576 of them.
Drawing about 7500 watts.
Is my calculator stoned? Or should I stick with Hps ?

 

[spyralout]

Cut the white silicone glue. Just barely in the crack.

There you go with the crack again love the MacGyver stuff going on, all the pics got me curious too

 

[Jewels]

"We like pictures"
That was imparted to me by a redfro in my first post.

Pictures help me feel like I am explaining myself properly ; actually providing information. I sometimes get lost in wordy descriptions like

" I can take this thing and turn it upside down and put it in the left side or should I just switch the orange three?"​

Like wtf? Show me a picture man - Im stoned here.

 

[spyralout]

"We like pictures"
That was imparted to me by a redfro in my first post.

Pictures help me feel like I am explaining myself properly ; actually providing information. I sometimes get lost in wordy descriptions like

" I can take this thing and turn it upside down and put it in the left side or should I just switch the orange three?"​

Like wtf? Show me a picture man - Im stoned here.

Pics definitely help a lot although well written explanations are cool too. Pics just make things click faster especially paired up with good dialogue. And funny banter.

 

[BigBallzWillie]

Haha, they're all phillips screw connections on the back of the light receptacle. It actually went pretty quick, or maybe I was really high and it just seemed that way. Lmfao. A bit of labor, but it only cost $120 or so in materials for a 3'×4' 400+ watt dimmable grow panel.
It's at a growmies place right now flowering for him.

Ya man, the little white dome on the led light bulbs. Run the tip of a razor knife around the edge where it meets the actual light and it'll come off pretty easy.
Makes it into a spotlight of sorts with the diffuser globe removed.
More than doubles the amount of light it gives out, and sends it all in one direction primarily.
It's the same type deal I use for the clone box, super cheap. I did a thread on it when I made it.

Set up a quick jig on the chop box and knock those bulbs off fast. Bonus is no sticking yourself with the razor knife! ouch

 

[Jewels]

Thankx to @Jesselikes2Grow, I now have 600 ppfd on my sprout.
He crack'd open his seat of knowledge with a torrential brown wave.

Last time I was nursing a seedling this size it was with 200 watts of T5ho.
Today 14 watts ,,,lovely.
I am saving the earth AND filling my jar.


This nude LED is just like a shiv ; doesn't look like much, but deadly in close quarters.

 

[Jewels]

Can I display gif's in here?
Not working for me.

 

[spyralout]

Can I display gif's in here?
Not working for me.

Are you trying to link or upload? I upload mine and they typically work

 

[Jewels]

So, my last run I harvested the cross labled " i "
in the photo.
This time I am growing the diamond labled "ii"

" i " had four diff. Pheno's. One of them smelt of racid strawberries. I lost the clone. I would love to hit on that again.