Equipment reviews and suggestions

[Demonsofdirt]

I am looking to get a thread started on reviews. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Equipment suggestions that have really impressed you or that you recommend staying away from. It could also be nutrients, amendments, IPM, etc.

What has made your life easier and what has you cursing its existence?

 

[Demonsofdirt]

First up for me is Niwa Grow hub environmental control. It is more directed at the home grower although with little ingenuity you definitely could adapt to control more. It is more or less a power strip that has WiFi and an app to control the four outlets. It is able to set up vpd target point so the environment will stay in rh and temp to keep set point.

The app stores and displays stats for environment and can be accessed remotely. It has been a bit glitchy but overall I’ve been mostly happy with the unit. The customer service however is very good and they have always been extremely fast to help jump over any hurdles. That is something that is very important to me especially in this day and age.

I have the original version that has been updated. The original has an internal fuse that actually blew during a power surge a couple months back on mine. I contacted them and they wanted me to send in the unit to have the fuse replaced for $25. I’m one of those people that doesn’t like paying for anything that I might be able to do myself.

I opened up the unit (voiding any future warranty work) located the fuse and removed it. I then soldered the two contacts together and added an inline mini bus fuse on the load line which is now mounted externally.

It cost me under $10 and now I have an easily replaceable fuse should it happen again.

It is my understanding that the new model already has an external fuse.

 

[Demonsofdirt]

Next up is Migro LED specifically the Array 12

Some may be familiar with Shane as he does a ton of testing on LED lights and offers some really great break downs of the numbers. Last year I had wanted to try out LED so I started doing some research and was drawn to the Migro lights as he seemed like he put a bunch of thought into his products.

I placed an order for two Array 12’s which are actually three independent Array 4’s. Designed to light a 5x5 and has actually been replaced with the Array 5.

For a home grower it really is an interesting unit as you can daisy chain the lights together so they all work on the same dimmer or you can run each one independent which is nice. Especially in my case where I randomly make small veg spaces and things are changing and evolving as I work towards getting the home grow where I want it.

The lights build quality appear to very good and there does seem like a bunch of thought went into the design. I am sucker for nice tools and craftsmanship. My initial impression was very high.

I hung one system in a 5x5 tent and got started. I didn’t have a good go and was struggling to get plants to be happy and healthy. It’s a very long story that doesn’t fit with the rest of this thread but I ended up shutting down the lights after about three months of use. The tent was cleaned out and the lights hung there for almost 8months unused. Then end of this past summer I dusted things off and got started again.

I was about a month in with using the lights again and noticed the center light bar was losing a bunch of diodes and they were doing some weird things when turning on and off and adjusting the dimmer. I have seen LED do a very similar thing in a commercial spot I had been working but it was do to a broken condensation line pouring water into the fixture. Definitely not the case in my tent.

Shane was extremely helpful and responsive with email communication up to I had an issue. Lended some insight on a lighting plan and answering questions. Once I brought up the lights having issues the tone changed and it seemed like there was no possible way his lights were malfunctioning and it had to have been something I did. Going back and forth with emails of pictures and videos I noticed the other two bars in the tent had some diodes that were going out but nearly as bad as the center.

I understand that people do a lot of stupid shit and I wasn’t expecting him send me a bunch of free lights. However I was extremely disappointed at the finger pointing towards me and lack of accountability that maybe his product was failing. His only solution was that I package all the lights up that were malfunctioning and send them back to him.

Mind you he is in Ireland I believe so the I couldn’t even wrap my head around what that would cost to ship almost new lights that were fully under warranty. After exchanging multiple more emails he then told me a could send them to California (better but I am in the Northeast) and they would ship them to him. These lights are currently in use and I was just looking for a middle ground or a compromise. I had done the tests of trying different drivers and I actually have another setup that never even made it out of the box. I proposed that I send him just the light bar that had the most malfunctioning diodes and no drivers so that it would be the smallest and lightest package.

My thoughts were that if he deemed it my fault I’d not only be out more money from shipping but also I would then be out a fixture. It wasn’t working properly it at least illuminated some space below and could be used for veg. After a span of silence he informed that I would have to send everything that was not working for him to do his testing which meant sending the whole packaged that makes up the Array 12.

I have hung 100’s of lights and I even have my original lights from over a decade ago that have traveled with me from coast to coast and back again. I have yet to damage a fixture. I am lead to believe that it was the ultrasonic fogger that did the damage. It was once I introduced that to the tent that I began to see the problem and once removed after the plants had enough mass no more diodes have gone out. They have the ip66 rating and he assured me that humidity should not be the culprit.

A long rant but some times it feels good to vent haha