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Do smart meters detect flip flops?
- Thread starter GOT_BUD?
- Start date
Not sure myself. I believe digital ballast cannot be flipped the same as magnetic ballast. If i'm not mistaken, digital ballast have to shut off for a minute before it flips, whereas magnetic's do not. So it seems like digital ballast would be detected. No clue about LED's, never used them.
BlackMarketMic
Member
How many watts of led's are you running? Unless you're running a 2000w + of leds I would not even bother. The main reason us hid guys run relays (flip flop) is to avoid having one big room with 6000 w + of hid lighting that runs 12 hours per day, this type of grow is more obvious if they start analyzing your power consumption. By having the same amount of light split in two separate rooms running 3 1000 w ballasts on relays 24/7 makes it slightly less obvious because your consumption is not all in a 12 hour daily period. It's also cheaper to buy 3 ballasts and 6 bulbs versus 6 ballasts and 6 bulbs. But then it gets more complicated if you need 2 blowers 2 carbon filters 2 pumps etc.. Unless you're a diy king and you know know how to use 1 item for 2 rooms it tends to be more complicated and costly to run a grow with relays. Also hids especially hps use much higher voltage/amps to ignite the bulb this creates voltage spikes and it's a bit of a load for your panel to handle when you have 4+ 1000 w hps turning on at same time. Your running leds you don't have this happening when your lights turn on, and you can use regular little relays from radio shack to flip your leds if you choose to do this.
That's exactly what I will be building.
With the laws in my state being as draconian as they are, I'm trying to do everything I can to minimize my risk of being visited by "the Man". Including building 120 volt flip flops for a couple of my LED lights. I figure they'll cost me about 30 bucks in parts including the relay, so why not?
BlackMarketMic
Member
Better safe than sorry. Get some Omron relays or a similar brand they are good for a project like yours, they cost 15-30$ each at RadioShack or other electronic supply store. I have a few of those they're good.
Ya, it's not the power company that scares me, it's the cable tv companies. Their cables running thru your walls and floors are very sensitive on picking up ballast frequencies of all types. And unlike the power company, cable gets all kinds of complaints about the interference from HID lights and employs technicians full time to locate and eliminate offenders. They even work special hours to find us out, it seems a lot of lights turn on ~ 8pm, if your tv pixelates around that hour - now you know what they are...
We are legal, but we are also off the cable grid. no cable running in my walls, all the people in my area use satellite and aerial.
I have found I feel to be less brainwashed by the BS media, like the recent elections I did not even really get flooded with the BS unless I visited friends. ; )
That's just another reason why I'm using LED's. No RFI to worry about.
I cut the cable earlier this year. Everything I watch I stream through either Netflix, Amazon prime, over the air (just football), or my Kodi app.We are legal, but we are also off the cable grid. no cable running in my walls, all the people in my area use satellite and aerial.
I have found I feel to be less brainwashed by the BS media, like the recent elections I did not even really get flooded with the BS unless I visited friends. ; )
grouchy
Active member
That's just another reason why I'm using LED's. No RFI to worry about.
That's not true. I can pick up my meanwell drivers with an AM radio.
troutman
Seed Whore
Some digital ballast are RFI leak proof protected now.
Worse case scenario turn your entire grow room into a Faraday cage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
Worse case scenario turn your entire grow room into a Faraday cage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
Can of Bliss
Member
If only there was some kind of metalized film that we could cover our walls with...
I'm surprised at the lack of shielded lamp cords in the industry. It's my (loose) understanding that a lot of RFI comes from the wire between the bulb and ballast. If I noticed a problem; I'd probably start with putting some grounded foil tape on that.
troutman
Seed Whore
If only there was some kind of metalized film that we could cover our walls with...
I'm surprised at the lack of shielded lamp cords in the industry. It's my (loose) understanding that a lot of RFI comes from the wire between the bulb and ballast. If I noticed a problem; I'd probably start with putting some grounded foil tape on that.
You'll actually laugh but mylar works.
Mylar - The cheapest RF protection around
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSyZjI23ZNk
Homemade Faraday Cage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQe3B_59kgw
Bobby Boucher
Active member
Unless you have one of the tools the field techs use at your disposal, you aren't going to know if your metallic foil is really trapping the rfi. My am radio cleared up at ~10-15' and my cable guy told me I was still disrupting everybody in a quarter mile radius (upwards of 600 people) with a measly 600w'er. Seems like a lot of people are willing to bend over backwards to run digital ballasts. Risk doesn't very much seem worth the reward.
Well hot damn time to squirrel away some electronics to appease my paranoia
BlackMarketMic
Member
It's the digital ballasts that use sine wave outputs in the kilo Hertz (khz) range that put out really bad rfi like Apollo horticulture amazon lights for example. A shielded cable between the ballast and bulb will fix that. But really any time you are modifying/increasing a frequency you have chances of causing rfi... Welding equipment is another strong source of rfi we had to analyse sine waves on our electronic board set ups at school but if the guys in the welding class were welding and using plasma cutters it would scramble the entire school electicals and make it impossible for us so teachers had to schedule there days to make sure we didn't have that problem.
Gavita says: "Using shielded cable would in many cases cause problems powering your lamps, so unshielded wire is used for the connection to your lamp. This unshielded wire is the cause of the most problems as it acts like an antenna. So, if you use electronic high frequency ballasts we recommend to keep the leads to the lamp from the ballast as short as possible and install the ballast as close to the lamp as possible."
https://www.absolute-koi.com/article39.html
Finding these really usefull for all job types these days.
Finding these really usefull for all job types these days.
