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I didn't know If I'd be breaking forum rules or just irritating everyone by posting off-topic. But ye, it's the first shipment of my lights that I'm currently making par charts for. Having to take a break after doing the 90cm x 90cm size, my lower back is so sore. @Prom is a super nice guy, he let me use his quantum sensor. Thanks again to you sir, tip of the hat!

Dqxslurri: Day 26 of flower. Quattro Kush: About ready to flip.

The big fad right now is additional UV diodes which, frankly, aren't true UV and plus, people aren't even aware of the dangers of true UV and how to protect yourself when using it. The commercial LEDs are definitely getting nicer, and they could be making them cheaper still if they weren't trying to stuff every gimmick onto the boards.

Hey @TikyIckee hope all is good your side! BROOO, these two packs and your wire nightmares are gone for good... I buy the tiny plastic brackets at ACDC, they come in different shapes and sizes. you literally make a line where you want the wires to run, slap a few sticky brackets on, and cable tie all the wires all along the one single line. ease pease lemon squeeze Honestly man, if I had the money I would run HID's too... you gona need everything though, I would first install a solar grid so I can store some electricity before I think about that jump, because with HID comes air conditioning. and those two things can suck you dry better than a gold digger wife. they do however produce the best nugs in my opinion!! about the Lumii ballast thing, a ballast and a driver is not the same thing if you look at it just like that, but in this case it does the same thing, I guess.... they probably configured the light in such a way so that the guys with the Lumii ballasts can make the jump for cheaper, another marketing tactic to convince people to make the jump and to keep them supporting Lumii. a ballast is just a old school name for a converter, you get different ones, but these that work specifically with lights just do what the lights need to put out, they convert the power from the wall to the power that the HID needs to put out. a driver is just a modern fancy name for converter aswell. depending on the technology and the form of power it needs to put out it will need a certain converter to do that. when building a samsung LED off digikey you'll see that there are many different MeanWell HLG drivers and they all do different things also, and each one is compatible with different strips depending on their outputs. I am almost certain that I wouldn't be able to wire up my MeanWell HLG driver to that Lumii LED, just because the tech does not support eachother or is incompatible. I could be way off though, these are just my speculations

Hahahah hell yeah man, I once vegged under a 50w 5000k flood light, did the thing!!! I have to admit, the blurp I got does pump them a little harder than the flood light, but then again the blurp is 360w (270true watt) so it puts up quite a fight for the 50w flood, but I am convinced if I added another 50w flood I would've had identical results and the 50w flood cost a fraction of the price of the blurp... and with the blurp you can't see shit, then you have to switch lights off and bring another light in like a head lamp or flashlight just to see the plants. Blurp is TRASH!!! ....I still use mine to veg though no one interested in buying, I even removed my sale post as I would feel too ashamed pawning off this peice of crap to someone else. will let her run till she can't run no more and replace the bitch ☺ already got the 288qb samsung helping her out.

I haven't found information on what diodes they use and as I am aware, that's what makes all the difference. I see they mention it's full spectrum with added 660nm diodes, which helps during flower. I would prefer having a flower specific spectrum with the 660nm diodes, and do the veg thing seperate with another light. to my understanding full spectrum lights are good for across the board, but I don't want a full spectrum light to flower with. they're great for the guys who wants or has to do everything under one light. if they could have a option to switch between the two spectrums it would be better, but then basically you'll have 345w going out in veg spectrum and 345w in flower spectrum, essentially leaving you with a 345w light to do either with. it would be kak cheap slapping a bunch of bridgelux or even cheaper diodes on a bar light then adding 660nm diodes. so I guess if I can get confirmation on what diodes they using for the rest of the light and if I can have a flower specific light and not only the full spectrum option, for the price it's at now, then I would concider it for sure. but if it's generic diodes mixed all together with some red in between I don't think it's gona be that great.

Yes when Led was still kak expensive it was worth building your own lights. But with Lumii Black 720w coming into The market it will be hard to build something for cheaper than that.

We're in the final stretch here! Past the 8 week mark, watching the trichomes for chop day. I'm loving the colour this cold weather brings. Seeing the 2 strains react in their own ways to it is interesting too! The Bananium has me really excited at the moment, rather sad though as I wish I had let this girl get bigger. I won't be harvesting much Bananium from this tent, it was the smallest plant in the beginning and could not compete with the stretch of the Deluxe Sugarcane. Overall I'm happy with the turn out. Growing for myself means I get to smoke all this beautiful bud, and boy am I happy with the product! In case you're wondering, the smaller dark plant on the left is Bananium, the other 3 are all Deluxe Sugarcane. Very easy to tell the difference in pictures. Let me hear some comments, things I could maybe improve on for the next grow, I am still such a noob at this!

Finally convinced a friend to upgrade from HID, helped him build a LED qb bar light. He was thinking of retiring the HID for many reasons. replacing shit the whole time. electricity consumption. heat.... told him if he puts out the cash I'll source and order the shit for him, recieve everything and when time comes to slap it all together I'll just need a hand, he just needed that last nudge and so it begins! I think I was more excited about the build than he was! He's got a 1.2m x 1.2m x 2m tent, so we basically copied the 4'x4' example design on LED gardener, used the Q series samsung LM301H strips in 3000k. First things first, size of the tent will determine the size of the frame that we build for the LEDs. Work out how much Aluminium strip we gona need. Source local aluminium extrusions. This was the only profile available in bulk on the day, we didn't wana wait, so we planned around this. You can work with any profile and have any extrusion company roll out the profile you want at the lenght you want. Easiest part of the build. Having the aluminium, knowing how you can lay strips on the extrusion profile you can use this information to spread out the LED strips as much as possible so there are no fluxuation areas. no need to raise the hight of the light to get better coverage which would mean loosing intensity. no need to have to have certain height requirements for best output, because you don't have excessive heat coming from the light and not ALL the light comes from one spot and then has to spread, instead you spread the strips out further so you can bring them closer to your plants without having intensity issues. also the configuration being a bar style light you wont have issues with the fixture heating up at all. we run the light for 18hrs, shine laser thermometer on the frame from below the light source, got 34°C. 5cm away from the light source on the aluminium frame we got 29°C and at leaf surface at 15cm away it was room temperature... will get a apogee under the light asap, if anyone wants to follow up on that. now, the layout.... knowing what amount of strips you gona use and the size of tent you have to put them all in, you build a frame that can easily fit inside the tent then just space out the strips as much as possible. Next step was to cut the aluminium to the right lengths and clean up the edges. Along with the aluminium for the frame you'll need the smallest pop rivets the shop has to offer and a aluminium drill bit same size as the rivets. Now, slap the frame together. 2 long slats get a tine 45° corner cut out the flat so the fin is still in one peice, make a small cut on the other side so you're able to bend the aluminium without it snapping. grab a big 90° angle, make sure you have 2 x 90° angles. lay them together making sure all 4 corners are 90°, throw some clamps on, drill right throug the 2 corners that meet and pop them together with the rivet. Now grab a electrical junction box to hide all your wire conections, use the junction box to space out the aluminium stips, making sure you can fit enough strips on to accommodate all the LED strips needed. using a pensil, mark out where the aluminium strips lay and number them 1 - X and mark the frame with numbers corresponding to the strip that goes there. drill holes in all the aluminium strips where you need to pop them to the frame, put them back on the frame using the numbers to see where each one goes, use the hole im the aluminium strip to mark where you need to drill into the frame, drill all the marked points, lay them out, pop them in. here is what ours looked like at this point. BOOOM!!!!! got a digikey box in the mail It's all there and all undamaged! Now that we have the driver. it's time to build a bracket to hold the driver in place. same like we built the square for the frame, just a small one, like this.... -note the corners driver still has some space to move around, but sits nice and snug, we ended up putting two small self tap screws throug the screw slots at the bottom of the driver to hold it in place, didn't get photos of it, but did get photos of how we attached the bracket to the frame, using two small peices of aluminium and popping them onthe the fins upside down we now had a flat surface to mount the bracket onto. like this... Here's where we're at now, Time to make this big boy easy to hang! 5.5mm threaded hooks with 2 self locking nuts, one screwed all the way to the top and one to hold it in place. Time to slap on some double sided thermal tape, this tape can hold up to 60kg at 120°C.... or so it sais..... so it should work! AND YOU KNOW WHAT COMES AFTER THE THERMAL TAPE!!!!! FUCK YEAH step by step getting there!!! now for the fun part, the wire nightmare.... luckily I have OCD-AF and find great therapy in wire management! we also quickly reaslised that we're going to need more than one junction box, easy peasy, the driver has 2 outputd so slap another one on the other side of the driver and have half the wires one side of the light and other half on the other side. I got so carried away with finishing up the light I never took a photo of what the wiring looked like when I was finished, but that was by far the most satisfying thing about the whole build. when time came to plug the bitch in I was just focussing on the damn light. here she is in all her pride and glory here she is lighting up the tent, and this is where she'll be for the next 10 years probably. hopefully. it's a 1mx1m frame in a 1.2m x 1.2m tent - fits perfect. those intetested in the wire work if you wana see what it looks like I'll lower the light to take a couple photos, otherwise this last photo will show just how hidden and tucked away everything is. not one loose hanging wire, no excessive wires, no bulky no extras. Now to answer some questions..... LED Strips - R3831 Driver - R2300 Import Tax - R1500 Aluminium - R600 Thermal tape - R200 Ratchet ropes x 2 - R300 Those are all the more expensive parts of the build, the other stuff like hooks, wires, wago connectors, cable ties + hooks for wire management, pop rivets all those things gona work out +/- another R500 Let's say all in all = R9231 that's that. buddy got 3 x Peanut Butter Breath cuts and 3 x Canna Health Genetic #21 cuttings under that light, potted in FF premium classic, will post few updates here as things progress. have a good weekend all!

So things have changed a bit with the indoor setup. It's been switched off. Life and Eskom. So my auto grow now is mother nature from about 9am-6pm then under supplemental 85W light. Dark period (light off) 4am'ish till I take them outside at 9am'ish. Pic 1-3 sprouted 02/03. So 2 months +. Rest of the pic's are a mix of 1 month and some old. I can kick myself for fucking things up with the Strawberry Vostok F2 grow looking at these ladies.

ZxP is 8 weeks tomorrow and the Wedding Cake is 7 weeks. The ZxP is looking ripe for the picking, so I will probably turn the taps off tonight. The Wedding Cake still looks a bit green and glassy so it will keep going, maybe through to 9 weeks. ZxP Wedding Cake My Organic Tent™ is at 3 weeks into flower and is pushing some good flower already. I am going to bump up the Biobizz ratios a bit. I have been alternating between feeds and fresh water so far. I am impressed with the results of the Biobizz nutes.

I think we made a kak load of feminized auto seeds. We're going to need some indoor testers. Anastasia 99 x ak77 and ana99 x old school cheese from fastbuds. All auto

@Totemic, you were in the competition. I sampled the bud that someone entered of yours. There were about 50-60 flower strains entered. Loved meeting the main man from praxis glass, loved watching him blow glass, and I finally met the owner of zadankness, spotted him in the crowd and cornered him. A seriously awesome event, lots of action, smoking and fun. More importantly it was well attended from far and wide. See you next year.

or should we rather not ask

So. Everything is looking good. I have 4 Bobby’s Widow u and going. I still have hope for the 5th one to join the club. The 6th one’s tap root had issues.

This is the way.

Hey Peeps This was an awesome read. Kudos to you @Naughty.Psychonaut, the light looks like it came straight of an assembly line. What's put me off building one is stray wires and sh#£ that look more like Frankensteins monster. I currently use an HLG 100 to veg and have 2x600W HPS lights which I switch over to flower. I'm pretty pleased with them so far and there's been no real stress to plants as the switch from LED to HPS happens. Been eyeing out the Lumi 720W which according to my research runs on the lumi ballast. My confusion here is : Is a driver and a ballast the same thing? I have been under the impression that a driver simply converts AC to DC for the diodes to run correctly. So driver for LED and ballast for HPS. Would anyone out there recommend the Lumi 720W? Is anyone able to do an explanation (for dummies) on my driver/ ballast confusion? Stay safe, stay blessed. Peace always ✌

Hey man. Yeah I noticed in my last grow I can also get a little closer. I like to keep it about 30cm, maybe 25cm from the canopy but I am pretty sure I can get nice and close. Maybe 15cm or 10cm. Will check. Love it. Golf balls are my favorite. I think definitely red diodes and a good cleanup should help. I hear you man. Also been on a blurple light and what a piece of shit. Maybe good for vegging. I actually foujd my normal 6400k flood lights do a better job. Lol. Cant wait man. Would be very cool to see. Please let us know what he produced under that bad boy. Once again. Nice build

I agree man those ladies looking good and they pushing the frost like it's no ones business, no doubt you gona have a lekker stinky harvest!!! a thing to keep in mind, the very very best grower in the world, the guy running thousands of plants at a time with no struggles and no hassles is sitting figuring out ways to better his practice, because there is always room for improvement and there is always something we can do about it, doesn't matter what it is. that's why the guy who is the best, is the best. cause there came a time where he accepted that he doesn't know everything and has some more stuff to learn and opened himself up to change and try new things. we can look at that information and take it personal and be negative about the fact that someone pointed out a flaw in something we did or we can be positive and constructive about it and use the information to our advantage. no one is here to beat on anyone, we all here because we wana help one another achieve better results with our cannabis growing adventures. anyway, enough ranting on! those indoor ladies organic or synthetic? I see you talking about 2ec, so I am assuming you doing a synthetic grow? Going the GHPF in a coco medium will be concidered organic and you'll need to add microbes and what not. all the organic stuff. if you growing syntetic, strictly coco and salt nutes I would say just do a runoff EC test? this should give you an indication of what's going on in the medium. 2ec in a synthetic situation should be 100% for those size plants, so I am sure you have some kinda build up. the plants with the claw leaves and I see one with burnt tips, you could easily fix. just stand back with nutrients till they start asking again. or till they look 100% then carry on feeding. if you wana carry on just as you where, I would suggest a nice flush with clean water of about 2 to 3 times the amount of feed you would give. then with next feed you carry on with 2ec. pretty much the same if you're doing organic growing, except you have to let the pots dry to 30-50% after the flush. where as coco mediums you have to keep above 50% moisture at all times. with organic you flush properly and wait a good couple days till its dry and carry on with your regime.

Bananium looks amazing. Very very nice grow dude!!

@Naughty.Psychonaut, yea probably right, but it's only some of them, and not much I can do about ot now. It might be the medium, or the fact I use same feeding throughout veg and flower. The crystal's are looking good though, and no signs of PM, which is my main goal for this one. I'll add a couple of blocks of coco to the substrate for next grow, and maybe just use the greenhouse powder on veg. Need to try some of the 'flower power' nutes now available.

Quattro Kush: 18/6 (medium defoliation). Flip to flower soon.

Another one I wish I could enter. All the flower I'm harvesting now is seeded though. I reckon I'll have to do a run specially for all the cups next year. Hope it's a raving success. Good luck to all the entrants.