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I believe they had a low voltage version. This fixture is out of production now and they have moved to the 1900 series.

Yea. It's crazy to see how something so small can change the landscape in a generation. Chestnut Blight, Dutch Elm Disease, EAB, Pine Beetle

The benefits are 1) higher mounting height giving more working space 2) less shading in a greenhouse application 3) more familiar/ easy swap out for plug and play HPS to LED conversions.

To me, the value of the HPS is the heat. The additional infrastructure for tubes, ducting, and heat evacuation would negate the benefit and make LED a better fit. I ran ducted hoods for years trying to run HPS in a small room, but with higher ceilings and mounting heights, HPS heat the canopy. This drives metabolism or else you need to rely on heat / HVAC. LED has more targeted PAR and I would engineer any new room or facility around them if building from scratch.

It is the IR heat from the HPS lamp itself. Acts as a heat lamp as well as PAR delivery. If you see a spectral chart for HPS that goes above 800nm, you'll see a significant spike and that is where the heat comes from.

@gandygrows thank you for the info. For an all LED grow room or tent, would adding a 850nm IR flood light do anything for LST?

@@deleqtronica8733 To my knowledge, this has not been tested for application. The efficiency and conversion to benefits are something worth exploring. I have a couple of IR COBs in the lab just for this. Keep an eye out for that :)

@gandygrows that's awesome, I grow in a small room not in a large space so heat is always an issue for me. I seen your video on hybrid setups and it interests me but I don't think I my room would be able to handle the heat. I ordered a couple of UV-A and IR flood lights, I'm thinking of mounting them up as well. I want to see what your findings are with the IR leds, if they do nothing I'm going to return them.

Driver design has improved some. It still depends on the type of driver i.e. Higher Voltage drivers may not run well dimmed, older drivers have differing curves of efficiency depending on drive current. The fact remains as you said that lower drive current will make chips and fixtures last longer overall. The thermal management due to increased handling of heat from lower power is a great benefit if you need to reduce heat. I have found myself running heaters and humidifiers to optimize LED at certain stages. More control overall but that heat from HPS was actually good at cycling the HVAC and fans and keeping warmer leaf temps. Thanks for your feedback!

Yea. It can still happen too when you're rusty. I thought it would be good to show some of the issues with this run and how to recognize and overcome them. I'll have the full cycle run posted soon.

Yes, Time will tell here. That center diode is definitely going to run hotter than its neighbors eventually causing some current hogging or potential runaway to failure. More of a fan of using the ceramic HP chips with the secondary optics. This is a hot take but one I still stand by that more diffusion and less focus of the light is better than secondary optics. *caveats being for special applications, types of crop and canopy, mounting heights and total system size. Component protection is still absolutely key for maintenance and longer life of fixtures.

Any zero-to-ten-volt dimmer or a resistance-style dimmer will work. RJ connectors are available for TrolMaster-style dimmers as well.

Now we have a comment to clarify :) Thanks for the feedback

If you have humid fresh air, yes. If you have to add Dehus to compensate for the added transpiration rate, you are effectively adding heaters. In a hybrid configuration, in extreme heat situations, you can toggle off the HPS to keep temps in range.

@@gandygrows I'm in a hot Humid climate area. So AC has to run 24/7. But I have to use a dehumidifier also to keep the dam humidity in check. It is what it is. But I will say I'm getting great results. VPD is all over the place because of the fluctuation. My plants seem to like it tho.

@@zkilla4611 Hot and Humid are best LED applications. Plant canopy needs to stay warm and humidity needs to not get too low. Too high of RH is always an issue. Not sure what scale you are on 200 sq ft or 20K sq ft facility, but look in to CannabisMechanical's setup on IG. You can trick a mini split with a heat pump to do both, cool and remove humidity. If you hang Quests or Andens, they are essentially just heaters. I'll do more deep dives on this nuance of the topic because I am still learning the difference between latent and sensible loads and heat, re-heat and dehu etc. The initial point to make is that if you take an HPS facility and just swap out 1:1 for LED, you will have issues with too much humidity when removing the Heat from the HPS. Also the heat from HPS heats the canopy directly whereas and LED facility you have to control the Leaf Surface temperature with your ambient temperature, not the IR light from the light source. I've heard a ballpark number of no more than .4 VPD differential bandwidth if possible. A little positive stress is generally good for crops, but when you have high RH or VPD swings, thats when you get condensation, mold or PM issue conditions. If your HVACD can keep up with all the moisture, keep pushing those plants until you can't hold your bandwidths or you'll have issues. Hope this answered some or part of your question!

You are correct. This was for demonstration purposes only. HPS prefer to be fired and operated at full power for optimum spectrum and performance

Yeah Man! Got several more fixture videos in the chute. Thanks for watching KT!

Nailed it!

It depends on crops, if your in a greenhouse, plant response and budget among other things. Feel free to reach out to review your project. Lastly, the switch to LED from HPS is not a clean swap without environmental control system review and potential upgrades

Check out the RF Series for lower ceiling heights.

Thanks for your feedback. From a commercial or industrial perspective, having quality fixed inputs is the most feasible. I think the jury is still out on UV-A and B. Lots of marketing based on old publications with sub-optimal conditions for strong data. UV-A could just be adding energy to Photosystem I or it could be a cryptochrome response in some crops. I agree that Far-Red has the most well know beneficial effects and would be ideal to have Far Red on an independent channel for controlling plant morphology i.e. Leaf expansion or internodal spacing. I think it's difficult to quantify the nuanced effects of spectral tuning without tightly controlled experimental setups. R:B and R:FR ratios are definitely important but if you have a reference quantifying the effects, please share!

I checked out the Greenception site and pricing. They are ~1.4 Euro per watt and geared towards home growers. And at the time of checking sold out :) The cabling and chassis style of the GC fixture are dated, and those types of fixtures are available for less than a dollar per watt in the States, along with UV and FarRed. However, the addition of these chips (particularly UV) requires higher voltage at the system level to run properly and will be the shortest-lived component in any system containing them. It would definitely work for home-grow, but I think you could find more cost-effective options with equal quality at this point.

I appreciate your feedback. This is two years old now, so I am sure some things have changed. 5 star review

pH 4.01 calibration solution