Please explain what a Flipbox is

[GuerrillaRed]

Pardon my ignorance

I've been wasting my Saturday afternoon away playing with graph paper designing my next grow room and ultimate grow room. I'm intrigued by the idea of a Flipbox, but I'm not sure I entirely understand it. How does it power double the lights? What's the catch? Or do these things produce 20,000w worth of light from 10,000w of power?

I apologize for the dumb question, I'm just beginning to learn about the advanced side of electricity. Thank you.

 

[rives]

A flip is a relay box that has an input from a single ballast and will output to two lamps, but only one at a time. The idea is that you can run 12 hour cycles in two rooms on opposite lighting schedules with a single ballast. If you understand relays, a DPDT relay is used, with one lamp powered by the normally open contacts, the other lamp on the normally closed, and the ballast feeds the common contacts.

Many electronic ballasts aren't compatible with them because they have end-of-life sensing, power failure re-start timers, etc, and some of them will have their warranties voided by using a flip. Some of the issues can be avoided by doing a "cold flip" vs a "hot flip" (turning the power off, switching the relays, turning the power back on vs switching with the power on), but this increases the cost and complexity of the flip box.

I've never bothered to dollar it out, but offhand it doesn't seem to me that there would be as great a savings as you would hope by the time you compare the cost of the flip vs an additional ballast, the potential downsides that it can introduce, and the restrictions that it puts on your grow. YMMV.

 

[GuerrillaRed]

Hey thank you for your answer!

I know that was a dumb question, I thought that's what they were. Yeah just in my humble opinion, not sure that's for me. I appreciate the in-depth answer.

 

[Plush1]

It seems it just saves you money on ballasts. You can run two lights off one ballast if you stagger them.
They try to sell it by saying "double the light output per 24 hours" but if you think it thru its the same whether you run 2 ballasts 12/12 or one ballast for 24 hours. It doesn't even get you more harvests faster. The only savings is the ballast.

Of course I'm stoned so I may be missing something.

 

[j78z]

Rives quite a few of the new digital ballasts , hortilux nanolux & a few others are now "flip compatible " and I assume they ( the manufacturers ) are referring to hot flipping . I figured you new this since you seem to know pretty much everything about growing & I avidly follow and eagerly await your posts ( esp. In the CMH thread ) A question for you though . Can the 315 watt philips digital ballast be hot flipped or do they incorporate the above mentioned safety & end of life features ?

 

[rives]

Sorry, can't claim to know everything about growing, or even close!

I don't really follow developments in what is being offered for electronic ballasts. I do know that Gavita specifically states that using a flip will void their warranty.

Yes, the Philips ballast has end of life sensing, but according to their literature it there is a time delay that keeps it from going into effect for 30 minutes, so it shouldn't affect flipping. They also have line voltage sensing and will shut the lamp off if the input voltage deviates too much from spec.

The only mention that they make of hot restrikes is that the ballast is unsuitable for that usage and the insulation in the ballast will not take the voltage levels necessary for it. I don't really know if they have a time delay built in to eliminate the ballast from trying to fire, but I don't think so - they list various times in their literature to allow before restarting the different lamps that the ballast will drive. I built re-strike logic into my controller to eliminate the possibility.