Optic Lighting Vero COBs updated

medicinehuman said:

I am still waiting for my convex lenses from LCK-LED, they were to be here by now. I emailed and asked what's up 2 day's ago and again yesterday. No reply so far, makes you lose faith in Hong Kong and China. If there's no product coming I will have to wait and contact paypal. That is BS to me when someone can't return email at least. I hope if anyone else ordered from them that they had better results. It felt good to get that out.

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LCK is pissing me off too. When i placed my order, i ordered 48" heatsink among other things. When my order finally arrived two weeks late there was no 48" sink. No notification, nothing. After a week of emailing i finally got a reply saying the post office would not accept it based on its size. Bullshit. I waz then told they would replace with something else. I told him what i would like instead and have yet to receive a reply almost a month later. Not impressed.

I think they changed the design at some point so there is some confusion. The ebay ad shows 6 COB and the website shows 4 COBs. The website listing says 6 COBs, 6 fans, but 4 2.15A power supplies. I will check with them to verify what exactly each model represents in the new design and see if we can get it listed clearly.

DonPetro said:

LCK is pissing me off too. When i placed my order, i ordered 48" heatsink among other things. When my order finally arrived two weeks late there was no 48" sink. No notification, nothing. After a week of emailing i finally got a reply saying the post office would not accept it based on its size. Bullshit. I waz then told they would replace with something else. I told him what i would like instead and have yet to receive a reply almost a month later. Not impressed.

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He just emailed and said wait 2 day's because customs may have slowed. I am too let him know later this week if they have not arrived. We'll see.

Good news, LCK-LED refunded my money. They said they could resend them? or refund me.

medicinehuman said:

Good news, LCK-LED refunded my money. They said they could resend them? or refund me.

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Good for you. There seem to be some issues with LCK-LED recently.
http://budgetlightforum.com/node/38264
http://budgetlightforum.com/node/38094

medicinehuman said:

Good news, LCK-LED refunded my money. They said they could resend them? or refund me.

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At least you got a reply...i'm still waiting.

DonPetro said:

At least you got a reply...i'm still waiting.

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What a bummer.

SupraSPL said:

...dont forget the discount code supraspl, 10% off + free shipping.

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Just for the record, they'll still do the 10%, but because they have lowered their prices they no longer do the free shipping. Just placed an order, that's what I learned.

So far good people and excellent email communication -- I've read here others had problems in the past with delayed responses, so far for me all communication has been quick and clear.

Optic has been great to me! answer emails the same day and quick shipping was a plus! I finally got over here to post a pic of an Emerald Mtn Blueberry HeadBand grown under 200watt optic vero29 3K in 18 in x 24 in area at 12 inches to canopy!

Generic COBs on the other hand seem to be hit or miss. So far out of 3 100W COBs I have received, 2 were damaged to the point of uselessness. One of them was damaged in a way that would be hard to notice unless you were checking the output because it lit up but put out only half as much light as the other. One of the 20W COBs died within seconds when I ran it at 40W.[/QUOTE]

It's a Cree! and a bit off topic.. but can anyone help please out, was doing a google search and found myself back here
: )>
I have a CXA that was fine and now appears to be putting out half power. So I can look at it and see the individual diodes. Before troubleshooting (redoing the paste, jiggling wires) I was wondering what to suspect, dodgy driver? The driver, MW Lpc 1050, is cooler than the others.. I'm hoping its the driver : ( when iv'e had dodgy cob mounting before the cobs sting just wont light (iv'e only used drivers in series), larger drivers with possibly different built in protections..

edit: fixed! thanks

I dunno, I gave it a few jiggles and it seems solid, when I switched it back on all is sweet! back at full power. Not confident with these ideal holders.. also i have nothing to measure so small newton meters, it really is a very light hand on that screw!

SupraSPL said:

I received and tested the new version of the 120W Vero18 unit...

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SupraSPL, did you run that light through to harvest?

I have a small space (22"x28") and went with the Optic 120w. It's over a single plant, but one that has about 5 feet of vertical space to grow into. I'm hoping the little engine has enough balls to get some decent growth out of the plant, but I'm pretty certain I'll supplement it with side lighting using some of the countless CFLs I have left over from my first grow.

My inner scientist wants to run the whole grow to the end with just the 120 to see what it can do on its own, but my inner farmer is all about product and maximizing potentials and would pack the room with all the lights I can fit. If they arm wrestle, the farmer is gonna win. Never a dull moment in my inner world...

Hi SupraSPL
Im so glad its you who got to test optic lighting. Ive been looking at them too and need some good advice. Right now I have 4x rw150 and I wanted to add some more wattage, it was between more rw150s or add something else. I ran into opticlightings site .
I see almost everyone is doing cob diys, and I hear how great they are. I was interested in their 200 watt cxb3059 I think it was. I'd like to know what you thought of them , I can afford 3x 200 watts , I think it was the cxb that had the most par and lux @ 16in.
How much do you think 3x 200watts would cover? Anyway any advice you got would be great and appreciated. Thanks

Humanrob said:

SupraSPL, did you run that light through to harvest?

I have a small space (22"x28") and went with the Optic 120w. It's over a single plant, but one that has about 5 feet of vertical space to grow into. I'm hoping the little engine has enough balls to get some decent growth out of the plant, but I'm pretty certain I'll supplement it with side lighting using some of the countless CFLs I have left over from my first grow.

My inner scientist wants to run the whole grow to the end with just the 120 to see what it can do on its own, but my inner farmer is all about product and maximizing potentials and would pack the room with all the lights I can fit. If they arm wrestle, the farmer is gonna win. Never a dull moment in my inner world...

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I did not run it at all , just for testing because all my space is already being used to test my own lights, but in a 4.23 sq ft space as you described
I would estimate 9 PAR W/ft² or 387 PPFD. You are correct that is on the low side so I would say that space is too big for that light so I would recommend a pair of them.

If you went with the 200W Vero29 model you would get 14 PAR W/ft² or 695 PPFD which is very good intensity IMO

Air Jordan said:

How much do you think 3x 200watts would cover? Anyway any advice you got would be great and appreciated. Thanks

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Looks like the 200W CXB version is using CXB3070 3000K. The 3070 and Vero 29 are close efficiency in that power range so on paper the Vero29 200 probably the best value of the 2 and the Vero29 360 improves on that value but decreases spread.

So if you used 3 Vero29 200W models I would estimate:
in a 3X4 = 553 PPFD
in a 4X4 = 738 PPFD

SupraSPL said:

I did not run it at all , just for testing because all my space is already being used to test my own lights, but in a 4.23 sq ft space as you described
I would estimate 9 PAR W/ft² or 387 PPFD. You are correct that is on the low side so I would say that space is too big for that light so I would recommend a pair of them.

If you went with the 200W Vero29 model you would get 14 PAR W/ft² or 695 PPFD which is very good intensity IMO

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Thanks for taking the time to figure that out, I truly appreciate it. Perhaps next time I'll put the horse before the cart, and ask before I buy them. Oddly, on their website they say: "Coverage Area: 36″ x 24″ @ 16″ above canopy" -- which I believe would be 6 square feet? My intention is to move that light into a different space, but I would still be counting on it to cover 4 square feet (it's a 2x4 room, and I have a pair of them). It sounds like my plan is insufficient.

Other question, can you run Vero 18's and 29's side by side, or do they require different distances from the canopy? (I'm wondering about putting A51's W90's on either side of an Optic 120)

Humanrob said:

Thanks for taking the time to figure that out, I truly appreciate it. Perhaps next time I'll put the horse before the cart, and ask before I buy them. Oddly, on their website they say: "Coverage Area: 36″ x 24″ @ 16″ above canopy" -- which I believe would be 6 square feet? My intention is to move that light into a different space, but I would still be counting on it to cover 4 square feet (it's a 2x4 room, and I have a pair of them). It sounds like my plan is insufficient.

Other question, can you run Vero 18's and 29's side by side, or do they require different distances from the canopy? (I'm wondering about putting A51's W90's on either side of an Optic 120)

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I think 387 PPFD will give decent results for a short canopy but I prefer to be in the 750 range for flowering. In a 2X3 it would be down to vegging intensity so that ad could be a bit optimistic, I will work on that I told them I would crunch those numbers and I just got a PAR meter so I can do some more testing.

As far as mixing 18s and 29s they may need different heights to get even coverage and that may also depend on the lens angle. When it come to things like distance to canopy I never use a rule of thumb I just adjust each unit as necessary as the canopy grows and changes I will tie branches up, bend tops, raise lower and tilt the LEDs etc

use the 18's for side lighting and 29's over the top.

SupraSPL said:

I think 387 PPFD will give decent results for a short canopy but I prefer to be in the 750 range for flowering. In a 2X3 it would be down to vegging intensity so that ad could be a bit optimistic, I will work on that I told them I would crunch those numbers and I just got a PAR meter so I can do some more testing.

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I gotta say, this is disappointing. People absolutely trashed Mars-Hydro (and other Chinese companies) for making claims about the coverage of their lights that were overly "optimistic", I did not expect this from Optic.

What intensity is best for growing plants depends... therefore advertiser will likely be liberal. That doesn't mean they are wrong. For instance, at the recommended footprint I would expect the GPW to be higher than in a smaller footprint. Doesn't mean it will be the highest yield per foot though. There's a compromise between maximizing space and maximizing wattage. The photosynthetic response graph floating around here isn't detailed enough to show what's going on between 0 and 500. Being curious I normalized the graph (rough estimate) and some simple math will give an idea of how much photosynthesis we can expect in various spaces and brightness.


If we have a 2x2 area with a PPFD of 800, we can give it a rating of 16(NP). A 2x2 area with a PPFD of 400 would have a 10.5NP. Double that space with same density and the result is 21NP. In theory a 2x4 space of 400 PPFD would out yield a 2x2 space of 800 PPFD by 33% for the same amount of electricity.

All that aside, Optic advertises the emitters and current. Not hard to figure out what the lumen rating or PPFD for a particular area will be.

So I've had a 200w Vero29 unit from optic running 24/7 for a couple days in my 5x5 tent just to test it out. Haven't had any fans on. It barely even heats up the tent. I'm fairly impressed.

Mind you I do have a 10" vortex fan continually extracting air from the room the tent is in, so that does effect and impact it - but the T5's I had in there previously would heat the tent up quite a bit more (more watts mind you almost 100, but less light...) noticeably in the same situation.