Measuring light and power consumption

I use it on x100.... That to me is 10K Lux.
There are(can't find em somehow) conversion numbers for many popular emitters.... I believe the number for my BXEB strips was 68. So I divide the LUX by 68, to get a ballpark PAR number, which may or not be over, or under rated!
I just know from eons of experience in a perpetual system, that 50K Dr. Meter LUX, with BXEB strips, gives me satisfactory results, as far as light levels in conjunction with footprint...

Edit: 50K lux in FLOWER....only need 20(ish) to veg the way I want...

Yeah I started using 100x too.

Here’s what I ended up doing. Tell me if I’m at least somewhat on the right track. I want to keep these plants in veg for another week or so, and I want the light burn to go away, so I decided they don’t need to be anywhere near any sort of upper limit.

I raised the light to 10 inches above the canopy. I had no idea it was so close. I swear, doing dabs and looking at bright LEDs fucks with your head. I need to start doing this with sunglasses on. Anyway I adjusted each driver so there’s a pretty consistent range of 160-210 at 100x. It looks okay, according to my intuition, but that isn’t always spot on. In fact I’ve had a ton of dumb fucking ideas since my first foray into LEDs when I started experimenting with shitty blurples off eBay about a year ago.

I personally have never experienced, what I thought to be light stress, with a Dr. Meter LUX reading of under 20K. I've freaked a few out with 30K in the jump from VEG to Flower. Again, with Bridgelux EB strips.
30K has even produced satisfactory Flowering.

TerrapinBlazin said:

Yeah I started using 100x too.

Here’s what I ended up doing. Tell me if I’m at least somewhat on the right track. I want to keep these plants in veg for another week or so, and I want the light burn to go away, so I decided they don’t need to be anywhere near any sort of upper limit.

I raised the light to 10 inches above the canopy. I had no idea it was so close. I swear, doing dabs and looking at bright LEDs fucks with your head. I need to start doing this with sunglasses on. Anyway I adjusted each driver so there’s a pretty consistent range of 160-210 at 100x. It looks okay, according to my intuition, but that isn’t always spot on. In fact I’ve had a ton of dumb fucking ideas since my first foray into LEDs when I started experimenting with shitty blurples off eBay about a year ago.

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Doesn't look like light burn to me. What are your room temps?

Who knows, this meter might even be measuring more lux rather than less. If you notice day after day that plants are not or rarely "praying" that can be a sign of too high DLI over too long time.
You could blast them until they reach that point and raise the light until you see prayers up.... that's how I figured it out anyway, haha

True, if your plants are praying to the heavens within the first 2 hrs of lights on, your ppfd is on point

Humple said:

Doesn't look like light burn to me. What are your room temps?

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Room temps are pretty average for this time of year. About 60-65 at night and around 75 during the day. I don’t have very good heat here. The reason I think it’s light burn is because I moved one of them further away from the light and the chlorosis is almost gone on that one. It only happened really bad to the plants that were directly under the boards which were turned up way too high. I could turn them back up to where they were and get a reading but I’m reasonably sure it’s light burn. Can’t be a nute deficiency and last time I grew this pheno it was even colder and this didn’t happen.

I checked on everything just now and it seems like they’re already recovering. The chlorosis is completely gone on one plant and going away quickly on another. The one that took the most direct light from the boards will take a little longer but is already improving. My intention is to flip these as soon as they fully recover, or I’m gonna risk smoking/dabbing up all my stash before the next harvest.

So I might as well ask these questions about flowering now. My understanding is that you want the light further away from the plants. I’ve been topping and LSTing these plants and as soon as I prune them up and switch to 12/12 the trellis is going on. I can control the height of the plants really well with the trellis and I’ve got about 30 inches of travel left on the hanging ropes, so can put the light wherever it needs to be.

In some of your opinions, what’s the ideal configuration for a light that’s spread evenly over a trellis like this? How far and how many lux?

Hey Terrapin, love the setup! It's great to see our lights in custom configs, I'm glad our products fit your needs!

TerrapinBlazin said:

Yeah I started using 100x too.

Here’s what I ended up doing. Tell me if I’m at least somewhat on the right track. I want to keep these plants in veg for another week or so, and I want the light burn to go away, so I decided they don’t need to be anywhere near any sort of upper limit.

I raised the light to 10 inches above the canopy. I had no idea it was so close. I swear, doing dabs and looking at bright LEDs fucks with your head. I need to start doing this with sunglasses on. Anyway I adjusted each driver so there’s a pretty consistent range of 160-210 at 100x. It looks okay, according to my intuition, but that isn’t always spot on. In fact I’ve had a ton of dumb fucking ideas since my first foray into LEDs when I started experimenting with shitty blurples off eBay about a year ago.

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You might wanna flip those to flower if ya haven't already?

atreum said:

Hey Terrapin, love the setup! It's great to see our lights in custom configs, I'm glad our products fit your needs!

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Hey glad you joined this site! You probably recognize my light assuming you’re the same guy I’ve been emailing. I’ve said it all over the place here that your boards give HLG a serious run for their money!

Airwalker16 said:

You might wanna flip those to flower if ya haven't already?

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I’m flipping them as soon as the whiteout goes away entirely.

TerrapinBlazin said:

Hey glad you joined this site! You probably recognize my light assuming you’re the same guy I’ve been emailing. I’ve said it all over the place here that your boards give HLG a serious run for their money!

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I think I might be a different guy, you've probably been talking to our engineering team. We appreciate you giving us a good word!

atreum said:

I think I might be a different guy, you've probably been talking to our engineering team. We appreciate you giving us a good word!

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I’ve been talking mostly to Mike and Ryan in marketing. Added you all on insta and you guys put a pic of my light on your page. I reached out a while back to see if you all would consider selling me your black heatsink material because I like it a lot better than the stuff I order from heatsinkUSA, but nobody ever got back to me about it. No worries. Glad you’re on here, because I’ve been talking your lights up a bunch and recommending them to everyone who’s just getting started with LEDs and/or interested in boards.

Okay so I’ve decided I do want to flip these now. I risk running dry if I hold off much longer. How should I go about increasing the light for flowering? The chlorosis is almost healed and I’m worried about what effect turning up the light will have. Is it okay to keep the light how if it through the stretch and turn it up once buds start developing?

TerrapinBlazin said:

. Is it okay to keep the light how if it through the stretch and turn it up once buds start developing

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Yup.
Occasionally I have had to stick a plant in the flower area a little early in the perpetual set up. Not even under a light, for 10+ days.
They always finished up just fine.

Nice, and sorry for the typo. My phone does that sometimes. I have a trellis so they can stretch as much or as little as they need to, but I want to trigger them. Does the distance between the light and the canopy matter all that much as long as the coverage is okay? Say with my light is there anything preventing me from running it 8 inches above the canopy the whole time, just for the sake of running the light off less power?

I still also haven’t been able to find a straight answer on the ideal amount of lux for flowering. I’ve read somewhere that you shouldn’t ever exceed about 60,000. Is there any point below 60,000 where you start to see diminishing returns, like say a range where there isn’t a huge difference in yield but a significant difference in power consumption? I want to get a nice yield of rock hard golf ball nugs, but I also want to keep my power consumption to a minimum.

Anyway I hope this works. I increased the light to about 40,000 lux across the canopy. Only using 280 watts out of the available 460. The boards are nowhere near full power.

I did my normal pre-flip defoliation so that light gets to all the bud sites, and I’m going to keep this shit pretty flat in the trellis. I’m guessing I’ll have to both raise the light and turn up the power further as flowering progresses.

TerrapinBlazin said:

anything preventing me from running it 8 inches above the canopy the whole time, just for the sake of running the light off less power?

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Not at all. One of the major benefits of DIY LED, the lack of intense heat.... I've put lights together for another grower, low amperage, high diode concentrations, that I've literally seen his tops within inches of the strips, with no ill effect whatsoever.