Supplemental lighting

[wuwuorganics]

Thanks for the conversations gentlemen, right on track with what I was looking for. I hope all goes well with the production when things open up though Teknik, your stuff is great and it seems like you are really catering to simple solutions for my simple mind. The buddies just seem so universal and easy to apply to any situation. I have 2xstrings each of the 4k and PC reds right now. Haven't opened the reds up yet, but the 4k I set up above my resting soil totes worked great. Gave me the ability to sow some cover crops over resting soil in a tote (roughly like 4-5 inches above the soil) which provided me with an active soil web and a supply of green mulch/worm food as well. Not sure if I posted about here or another place, but ill throw some pictures up if you guys want as it turned out better than expected in under 10 minutes. I'm in a shitty state and an apartment on top of that, so had to chop my real grow down mid flower and tear everything else apart too due to an inspection, so no current canna grow at the moment. Gonna leave most things packed up and just grow some kales for now. Definitely plan on mixing up a new batch of soil though and putting those 4k buddies back to work on keeping my soils fresh and active for the time being.

Sorry got on rambling there for a minute, back to the thread though. So is 500ma the absolute max for these 660/730 buddies? So if 2xstrings were to be wired in series on the xlg-25, it's safe to turn it up full power and run each string at 12.5 watts, each string getting the roughly 525ma? I was really hoping to be able to use these pc red buddies up top, as I have a lot of standard white leds at the moment and that broad red looks spot on for so many different things. Sorry if this is a dumb question as well, but would having the PC red's up on the top lights at something around 18" from the canopy still going to give that strong red bump? I have both qbs/strips, so would maybe be hanging them up a bit further than a lot of other set-ups if I wanted to pair them up with the 3k qbs for a grow or two.

[TEKNIK]

PC reds work fine for top lights, they give that extra boost but its over a very broad range of the spectrum.
I've had guys using the PC reds as top lights for a bout a year now but they were just on normal strips not in Buddies. They love them. They are perfect to use with QBs and strips. Nothing beats the spread of Buddies either.
All models are in full production now, I will likely run out of 4K CRI95 but more are being made. Some guys are buying over 10 packets of the 4K at a time and I wasn't expecting to sell so many so fast.
One guy bought 1000pcs of 4K CRI95 Buddies the first day I released them.

You can run 2 strings of 660nm and 730nm on an XLG25 driver. 525mA is fine.
Buddies can handle 1.5W each total, there are 12 per string so they could be pushed to 18W per string, longevity wouldn't be as long when pushing them that hard though.

The reason I have set the 4K and PC reds up at a certain current at 24V is so the plants can grow into them when they are used as side lights without burning them.
The 660nm in particular are extremely powerful and put out so many photons they will burn the plants if they get too close, you would need to keep at least 2 inches from the plants to not have burn. The option there is to dim them below 60% if they were used as side lights. Going to do some trials on that soon also.

[wuwuorganics]

Dang, that's a lot of buddies. Awesome to hear though and wish you nothing but continued success moving forward. The 4k's will eventually make their way into a tent as side lighting eventually, in my head it seems like a perfect source of well rounded side lighting to the inner canopy. That broad spectrum on the pc reds is so appealing for filling in a lot of gaps for my current white lights though. With those up top and some sort of blue/violet, I think I would be content with finally building a couple fixtures. Holding off for now though as I am in no rush at the moment, so waiting to see what finishing touches I can put on them before selecting drivers and finalizing everything.

I think I remember seeing it somewhere once, could be wrong, but are you able to share the spectrum for the blue's you will be rolling out in the future?

[TEKNIK]

Dang, that's a lot of buddies. Awesome to hear though and wish you nothing but continued success moving forward. The 4k's will eventually make their way into a tent as side lighting eventually, in my head it seems like a perfect source of well rounded side lighting to the inner canopy. That broad spectrum on the pc reds is so appealing for filling in a lot of gaps for my current white lights though. With those up top and some sort of blue/violet, I think I would be content with finally building a couple fixtures. Holding off for now though as I am in no rush at the moment, so waiting to see what finishing touches I can put on them before selecting drivers and finalizing everything.

I think I remember seeing it somewhere once, could be wrong, but are you able to share the spectrum for the blue's you will be rolling out in the future?

The efficiency wasnt high enough for me on the blues I made initially. Unlike every other company selling suppliment strips I actually test mine for performance, I just can't sell something im not happy with. If I wouldn't buy it then I dont expect others to buy it either.

There will be a new version soon that has pretty high performance. It will come in a strip of 8 buddies and consist of 2 400nm, 2 430nm and 4 480nm.
This will give a good blue boost to any QB or strip build on the market. It will also be able to assist with veg to keep internode spacing tight while the main flowering light is dimmed down.
This should also increase THC levels during flowering.
I need time to get it right but hopefully I'm not too far away from putting this into production, Buddies are quite complex due to the way they can operate on 24V constant voltage and also constant current while having little impact on performance.

I got the 660nm and 730nm so close that there is only a 2% loss on them to have this feature. I want to do the same with the blues.

[wuwuorganics]

You've got my business for sure with that approach sir. Those blue strings sound amazing though, so I may just have to hold off on the blue's til these come available. Addresses everything I could imagine to add to balance things out a bit in the blue spectrum. Whenever they hit growlightsaustralia website, I'll have to grab some, along with the some more reds. Hopefully be able to grab some of their new boards they are working on too and completely check off my wish list for 2-3 2x4ft tents.

[PeteR_1]

I agree that spectrum is important, hard to go past that efficiency of the 660nm though. From what I have seen regarding red spectrums is efficiency come in first then spectrum.
If there was only a 20% difference then I would choose spectrum over efficiency but 60% difference is a pretty big deal. This all relates to your electricity prices of course. If you get cheap electricity then who cares about efficiency. Most of the world pays alot for electricity though and that's where efficiency is a big deal.

IMO, for my small applications supplementation with a good Spectrum Wavelength Distribution at up to approximately 10% is more than adequate, e.g., a single Leafy Greens grow shelf with PPF 328 umol/s only requires a max supplement of ~ 33 umol/s, approximately 15 - 20 watts supplemental light.

[BlackmoreRulz]

Hi, been lurking here for quite awhile. Was hoping that maybe someone can give me a little advice.

I am have a 42" x 42" grow space running 7 of the Influx 09 3500k strips on a HLG 240H- 48B with 6 of the Vesta 2700/5000K on a XLG 240 - H - AB mixed in. I turn the 5000k channel off during flower.

My question is what, if anything, I can do to improve the spectrum? I am obviously trying to do this on the cheap, I have a HBG-100P-48B laying around that someone gave me, if there is anything that I can do with it would be great but getting a different driver isn't out of the question if it would be an improvement over what I have now.