I got shocked plenty of times with the European 220V AC. (You need to be a bit stupid to get shocked, but I'm perfectly qualified in that department.) Not that it's fun by any means, and surely can be lethal for certain people (heart conditions) or certain situations (water, falling, etc.), but it's...

Don't worry about buying too much, but be sure not to use too much at a time. Just a more than a cherry pit for your Vero29, to be spread evenly with a credit card. I'm too lazy to look it up for you, but Bridgelux has a video on youtube explaining the whole thing.

Me, having close to zero technical background and just as much hands-on experience, would benefit even more from any craftsmanship than can bought. My question is how much does it amount to. I tried doing some back of the envelope calculations: Online I see that the 135W kit, aka QB288, costs at the...

Re: "Final thoughts" - how much did you spend on U-channel aluminum bars (aka heatsinks)? Here in Europe a 2 meter bar is like €3-5 at the hardware store. As for ease of mounting: how complicated is it already to wire these strips (a bunch in series, and bunches in parallel) and stick them on the al...

Since Octopart does a meta-search and allows for quick and easy comparison between different sources I'm not even sure a full list is necessary. But yes, start a post titled "Where to source components" (or whatever phrasing to the same extent), make it sticky, update it with whatever info, and allo...

My source is octopart.com

About a year ago, when I started reading on the matter, 3500K@80CRI was the "online consensus"; what ever that is. Recently it seems the tides have changed and its 3000K@90CRI. A commercial grower told me recently that a comparative test he did (with 3500/80) got effectively similar results with bot...

Your plants look fantastic. You're on the fast track to growing some gold. The usual mistakes first time growers do is showing the plants excess love: excess nutrients, excess water. (Other mistakes I've made had to do with odor management and figuring out how to automate watering.) Wish I could be ...