bobblehead overtakes

[high life 45]

From what I have gathered most of the rf interference comes from the cord between the lamp and ballast, if you have a long distance your gonna get rf interference. nobody sels a sheilded lamp cord. Lumateks def interfere with hamm radio, and if your neighbor happens to be a hamm radio junky, your gonna have probs( true story... happened to my friend after they bought their house and some lumateks...)

Im interested if anyone else looses lower fm stations when lumateks are on....

Sorry bout the hijak bobble

 

[megayields]

stick to ur lumateks brother,,,I bought two brand new quantum adjustable 1000 watters one blew up after two weeks and when they are on and I have my laptop battery cord plugged in there is a delay in my mouse go turn the quantum off problem goes awayhouse,,,,and I can leave the lumateks on no problem,,,,i gave my to a buddy who has no computer or internet at his ,,,,,i called lumatek they said they had some kind of rf blocker or whatnot built in the newer models,, but do some investigating I am just relaying my experience and if it aint broke don't fix it peace bro,,,
stop by when u get a chance,,, hope your mom gets to feeling better,,,

Everyone here who used Lumateks threw them away, or they quit working on them.....I bought a Quantum loved it.....I think I just saw at Arminus op Solis Tek's and I'm hearing good things about them!

Grow on my brother...hey try posting once in a while so we know your still alive!

 

[silver hawaiian]

Everyone here who used Lumateks threw them away, or they quit working on them....

Going on 3 years and running strong

 

[Arminius]

I picked up a used dual 600 lumatek a year ago, and still running strong.
All these things are made in china, and you never know when the child working the assembly line was daydreaming of a juicy burger...
I can get 600 Solis Tech dimables for 150 out the door, and very pleased so far. 5 year warranty is a factor too...

 

[megayields]

I will never buy a Lumatek...period!

 

[FlowerFarmer]

Running over 16 lumateks - have never missed a beat. Most are 240v only 600w...tiny little things. The others are 1k dimmables.

Running 4 1k phantoms.. solid units as well.

Got a few Quantums in action... they work fine, but honestly the fans and quality of the units scare me. I've seen too many fail/melt around the fuse area..in which the fuse did not blow as it should have.

^Although Lumatek had a similar issues (fuse area melting) with their 1K units when they were 120v only units, all of the lumateks I have are solid as a rock. I do however run everything 240v which might be a contributing factor to the reliability I experience.


All of the units I've tested for interference by sitting in my truck in the driveway or nearby waiting for the lights to kick on. Tuned into a clear AM radio station... it would take on static or go full static once the lights kicked on.

I have however ran them all over the place. So long as you don't have some ham radio enthusiast in the area to get their panties in a bunch I think you're in the clear. I do however believe most of the interference come from the cord set (antenna essentially) and wiring issues within the home. Interference gets into shoddy or un-terminated cabling and can travel great distances..

At my old location I watched (on camera) Time Warner Cable trucks show up at my house and knock on the door. I then lost connection to the camera and came home to find the cable wire cut that connected to my house. I called Time Warner and they couldnt explain why their were service men at my house and why I was cut. They came out the next day and hooked me back up. I continue to grow and use TWC services for the next year or two before moving. Who knows?

 

[Junior Capsula]

Currently running 4 dual 600 Lumateks and having the same issue with local cable company. First they cutoff my internet connection and didn't put it back on until a tech came in my home to find the "backfeed". He blamed it on a loose connection on the modem. Couple of weeks later and they are still coming by saying they have to come inside again, really sucks, running 4 dual 600 Lumateks, and a couple t5 badboys, doubt its the t5 so I'm assuming its the Lumateks, I have a plasma tv in a room and when the lights are on it acts up daily.

Want to swap out the Lumateks for Sun System 1 600w's, its the only analog ballasts I could find from Sunlight thats not made in China, pricey at over 200 a piece but won't have to worry about RI. I figure the analogs will last forever and I can work on them in my garage if they break where a Lumatek and a Quantum have to get sent back. This issue is the only gripe I have about Lumateks, yet Quantum, Phantoms, Solis Tek and every other digi I can think of will cause the RI. These Lumateks have been bulletproof since I purchased em over 3 years ago, and after numerous grows it sucks to see them go but don't need anymore headaches. 4800 watts @22 amps with the dual Lumatek, hard to beat.

 

[high life 45]

For the most part, people running larger amounts of ballasts seem to have probs with lumatek. I dont think all e ballast are going to cause the same RF interference because most of them fire the bulb at a different frequency. I will say with quantums and eye hortis I am having an awful lot of "harmonic distortion" .. the bulbs literally make a high pitched noise. I am interested in trying the am radio test..

 

[catman]

I mighta known somebody who had a single Lumatek 600 fuck up FM stations and cable tv for an entire building. I'm happy with a Phantom...it was made to be mounted vertically, haha!

 

[Mister_D]

. I'm happy with a Phantom...it was made to be mounted vertically, haha!

That's exactly what sold me on mine. I figured vert lighting was better, so vert ballasts must be the only way to roll . Seriously though it has been a solid ballast for the couple years I've owned it.

 

[FlowerFarmer]

I've got a few friends who run a hydro shop. Out of all of their electronic ballast brands (they carry pretty much all of the major names) they said they DO NOT get the phantoms back.. at all. Lumateks & Quantums make up the majority of their returns, but phantoms are reliable as hell. Said they've returned maybe like 2 Phantoms, and suspected they were ran in a closed cabinet or space which caused them to overheat.


Unfortunately they cannot be flipped (the Phantoms).

At least not using the common flipboxes from HortiControl or Powerbox. The green LED will just flash on the phantom and will not kick the light on. They need fully powered OFF, then flip, then back on.


I've heard Lumateks wont work with the flip either, but could of swore I had a friend flipping them with the horticontrol unit. No longer in touch with him to confirm.


Quantums work well with the flip.



Without going custom are their any flips on the market which power down the units before flopping the cordset, without needing to tweak with a separate timer like Bobble is doing?



Racks are lookin good dude...

 

[Avinash.miles]

phantoms FTW
i returned 2 quantums that went bad.... 3rd time i said , fuk it gimme a magnetic for the trade in.... they gave me a phantom instead, havent had a problem since.

 

[megayields]

Actually I have 2 old magnetics that I have had for 4 years....not a BIT of trouble...where the hell is Bobblehead?

 

[FlowerFarmer]

^be sure to change those capacitors every once in a while. Your output will dimish over the years with old capacitors.

Well worth the $30-40 for a new cap to ensure you're getting max output.



I believe there is a way to determine when a cap needs replaced by measuring the ohms between the 2 terminals, but I'm unsure of the details. I'm phased out of mags now, but when running them I made sure to replace the capacitors about every 5 years. There is a thread concerning this somewhere around here on IC

 

[bobblehead]

Just been busy... I'm making big moves in the real world. Creating something of value where before there was only chaos. Living the "American Dream".

The grow is going well, except for my water situation... I have water, so that's good... but it comes out of the RO unit at about pH 4.0! So with the main reservoirs empty, there is no buffering to keep the pH stable, and it drops to about 3.8-4.0. I have to add a lot of potassium hydroxide, which also plays with the EC... So keeping the plants happy isn't so easy without an automatic pH doser. I'm going to look into that.

I had a good trip, stayed up all night building another bed in the horizontal room. I accidentally killed 2 600w ballasts a couple weeks ago, in addition to the one that took a shit on its own... So the new bed has 2 430w lamps and a 600w... Which puts my horizontal room at 5.06kw. I had to add some natural air conditioning; ducted the intake to the garage, full of cold air. Hooked it up to a cooling controller, and I'm running this 5k room with 435cfm extraction and 435 intake on a controller. I have an 8" fan to upgrade the exhaust when the temps get higher outside. This room has room for improvement, but for my first horizontal grow since I first started playing with growing, it aint too shabby imo.

Headband @ 6 weeks

Headband @ 4 weeks

You can see the new bed in the middle. Its 2' x 8'. I need 1' on either side to get my thunder thighs around the room. Something I mention cause I thought 6" was going to be enough for some dumb reason... ha ha... I ended up unscrewing the bed and cutting it down to size. I filled the new bed with peat/perlite instead of coco. I've read that peat is supposed to be better for cannabis than coco, so i'm going to give it a shot.

 

[bobblehead]

Octagon @ 8 weeks- the buds are getting fat!

Straw DD Coliseum @ 2 weeks... These plants are having too rough of a start to take off like they should... We'll see what happens over the next few weeks I guess. I got some horti-trellis up to open the plants up a bit and stand them upright.

Straw DD Stadium @ 1 week. This room is also peat/perlite. This room is also a little rough, but doing better than the previous room.

My veg room is STILL full! I think I'm going to reload the octagon with these plants instead of new clones. It only makes sense. Next week I'll have time to transplant them, and then in 2 weeks the octagon will be open and ready for its last run.

 

[Arminius]

I have a question about the bonsai hero trimmers. I just charted my remaining harvest for the calendar year, and it looks like 21 harvests with only 39 weeks left. Needless to say, I can burry myself pretty quickly if I don't figure something out...
Would you buy them again if you had a choice? That's pretty much the only thing I need to know...

 

[bobblehead]

I have a question about the bonsai hero trimmers. I just charted my remaining harvest for the calendar year, and it looks like 21 harvests with only 39 weeks left. Needless to say, I can burry myself pretty quickly if I don't figure something out...
Would you buy them again if you had a choice? That's pretty much the only thing I need to know...

If I was really big time... I would buy them 5x over and supply everyone in my trim crew with a pair.

I'm only at 12,460w total flower power... and the bonsai hero trimmers save me a shit ton of time trimming without mangling the buds.

I still do a final dry trim with fiskars... But for a rough wet trim, the bonsai hero is a life saver.

 

[bobblehead]

Here's some literature that should help explain why I'm giving peat moss a try.

http://www.usu.edu/cpl/PDF/CoconutCoirPaper.pdf

SUMMARY
These studies show that coconut coir should be used with great caution. Although the Sri Lanka brands performed better than the Mexican brands, no brand performed consistently better than sphagnum peat. Some species tolerate coir better than others. The addition of calcium sulfate to the media did not have a consistently beneficial effect on growth and in some cases it reduced grow th. The best growth in coir media
occurred in the Grow Coir ® brand. We are continuing these studies to determine the underlying causes of poor plant growth in coir.

 

[Arminius]

Looks interesting. Just skimmed it since company is on the way ;-)
Maybe a side by side? You have a couple of set ups that are similar enough for a valid test right?
If not, I could, once all 5 rooms are up and running...