As the title suggests, saw a 400w halide bulb demonstrated today, plugged straight to mains very impressive, only a matter of time before they're doing it with 600 watters.

what, where? these on sale?

no links?

Links? on here? yeah right... trust me they're out there and they're very impressive. The guy who demonstrated them to me is starting to distribute them now so expect to see one in a growshop near you soon.

How about a name so we can google them?



To quote the Grateful Dead. "I don't trust a nothin'! But I know it'll turn out all right!"

I'm a canna smoker. Why would I trust anyone?

come on give us something

Sorry lads im trying to find something... Max wattage is 400w atm and only Metal Halide but they reckon a 600 watter will be relesed soon.

I'll call him tomorrow and try to get the manufacturer details to post up, Chinese company I remember he said. A shop in Yorkshire was getting some in but fucked If I can remember which one!

Wb

PMSL ya stoner bastard

Blue cheese x purple wreck... I don't know if I'm rupert or fuckin stupid by the second one!

You don't mean the online electrical wholesaler do you? If so give them the widest birth possible IMHO.

sk

Nah mate It's a grow shop, like I say can't remember which one though...

They could be fake

impressively fake!

they might also sell 4000w Nuclear Fuelrod powered lights ....... in a box!

have u got a link?

I'd have thought you could connect up any HID with an internal ignitor direct to mains, it's just that if it does work the current will not be regulated so you will get power or light bulb failure quite quickly. This sounds like it could be a red herring to me.

Edited for spelling and puntuation, as usual

try it, it doesn't work. it needs the choke as well as thr ignitor. the.voltage applied to the lamp has to be high enough to cause arcing in the gas, and light. i've connected up hps before, e40 cap wired straight to mains, nothing happens. mains voltage isn't enough to light it. if there are ballast free lamps available, i think they would have to have a small ballast as part of the lamp itself, like cfl lamps have. unless the lamps themselves are very different to the standard ones we get now.

calling bullshit on this one.

I'm still on the case... yer gonna be eating your words randaliser mate.

sounds bull to me ..............

here, here! sounds like crap to me too....

self ballasted lamps have been widely available for some time, mainly for reptile lamps, the ballast is basically just an inline resistor, usually a standard lamp filament inline with the arctube, often used in reptile lamps to give a dual heatlamp/uvb lamp, with the filament ballast providing the heat and the arctube providing the uvb. resistive self ballasted lamps give off a ton more heat than standard lamps, and it would be hard/nigh on impossible to fit an inductive ballast inside a lamp tube, so inline resistances are used because they're basically just a short length of wire, but resistance uses real power (as opposed to inductance/capacitance that only uses a very tiny amount of real power, although still some) so they're generally only available for up to 150w lamps, otherwise the amount of power the ballast uses starts getting ridiculous. someone could well have come up with something though, maybe someones came up with an electronic ballast that can withstand the heat from an hid?

I'll believe it when I see it (the light).
































coat please.

Isn't this what an internal ignition bulb is?

I might be completely off target there. Im no sparky but I thought that the ballast was basically used to ignite the thing, or does it regulate flow too?

No mae, the ignitor provides the high voltage required to start the lamp arcing (there is a high internal resistance to overcome before arcing begins). A ballast usually contains an ignitor as well as other control gear that controls current. An HPS presents a negative differential resistance to the supply, i.e. an increase in current results in a drop in voltage so that the HPS would draw more and more current until either the light or the power supply goes tits up. The ballast presents a positive resistance to overcome this and regulate the voltage.

Hi anyone used
Sylvania SHP SELF START HID Sodium (SON) 70w Lamp.

Now Devil did you get it from NHW? Just been speaking to him about them.

Got one this morning, I'm told it produces 10% less total lumens but the spectrum is 6000k which better suits veg growth compared to a standerd mh.

The bulbs do seem to run slightly warmer than a standard 400w, not as warm as my 600w but deffo a little warmer. (which ties up with what scraglor said) Dunno what else to add really, I'll stick it in the veg room and see how it compares side by side with the 600w mh I normally use in there.

Click to view attachment

This tread is worthless without a link.
I am out off here.

What do they cost

No links allowed mate for obvious reasons, they'll be hitting all the grow shops soon as long as the feedback for them remains good.

wb

Ah OK thanks

Wattage? Lumens? Cost? Manufactorer?

We need facts man!

400w

got one coming to my mates shop so we can have a look at them ,

any news ? im expecting a normal son-t but with an internal ignitor so will be a normal bulb , the box should read vialoz nav-t (son-t) 400 W/I

So everyone does realize that using a ballast free HID (or cfl) is much less green than using a ballasted lamp with a seperate ballast, yes?

When you throw one of these Chinese specials away, you're also throwing out the ballast, associated electronics as well. NOT walking lightly on the earth in my opinion.

well said sir .

this being the reason i changed from cfls
(twas a nongrower hippy gel who pointed this true out )


peace

he showed me them 2 weeks back when i was in there..had one in a mini growstar on display.

the ballast in this case is just a filament of wire though, it's that little halogen lamp that runs alongside arctube, so not particularly wasteful and you're not throwing out any electronics. if it does only produce 10% less lumens then that's pretty good, depends how much power the ballast uses up though, as a magnetic ballast uses (mostly) reactive power, which is REAL power, basically a magnetic power draws power from the grid, stores it in a magnetic field then sends the power back to the grid, in an endless cycle, so the power never actually gets used up, which means it doesn't put a load on the generator, and doesn't use up any fuel, a resistive ballast uses 100% resistive REAL power, it doesn't send it back to the grid and any power it uses is turned into heat and wasted as heat. depending on the running voltage of the arc tube will decide how much power it wastes, if for instance the arc tube runs at 170v, the ballast will have to drop 60v across it, a 400w lamp will need about 2.4A at 170 (2.4x170 = 400W), meaning 400w is used by the lamp, the power dissipated in the ballast will be a massive (in comparison to a magnetic ballast) 144watts.

that example was purely an example of how a purely resistive ballast wastes power mind you, what i would imagine they have done (at least it's what i would have done) is design an arc tube that can run at a much higher running voltage than standard lamps, meaning the ballast has to drop less voltage across itself to limit the current to lamp, less voltage dropped across the ballast means less power dissipated by the ballast.

but yeah, it is less green than a normal HPS/MH lamp, but then growing weed indoors, is hardly a green activity anyway, in fact it's a MASSIVELY non green activity, considering not only do you use tons of fossil fuels growing, you release any slight offset from growing plants by then turning it all back into smoke again, so i'd be more worried about the extra cost myself

Thanks Scraglor, very informative post.

Yep cheers Scraglor.

Oops

sorry, just re-read my post, a mag ballast uses reactive power which ISN"T REAL power, it just appears to be using power because it draws a current and drops voltage across it, but because it stores it and sends it back it doesn't get used up, as opposed to resistive power

well if it's a 400w then those figures are complete bullshit straight from the off.

a 400w mag ballasted hps/mh uses approx 440w, if the self ballasted lamp uses 40% of that, then it's total power draw can only be a maximum of 176watts, so it's not a 400w lamp if it's only pulling 176watts IS IT!? it most likely uses 40% MORE like the original example i gave, because it's got a fuckoff great halogen lamp as a ballast, in fact 30-40% more would be about spot on, as most standard 400w lamps need about 2.2-2.4A and 170v to run

e2@: one good thing is the halogen lamp as a ballast means that a good portion of the power needed to ballast the arctube is being given off as light at least, but as most of us will know, that's still only a small portion of the power as halogen lamps are extremely inefficient.

personally i don't see any point in these for grow room use at all? more heat and less light for the same amount of power???


40% less power

Is this the same thing as the 'GES SON T Tubular Internal Ignitor 250 watt'?

Have seen them online for about 20 quid for a 250w version and was thinking of giving it a go as opposed to splashing out 20 quid on a bulb and 100 odd quid on a ballast for the veg cab - gotta be better than the enviros. And if its a case of just swapping out the bulb it would be a cheap way to see if the veg cab is high enough can handle the heat of a hid.

have to disagree their mate, there are less and less coal factories now days

as for this bulb, seems like those 1 off china manufactured experiments that will pop after a while

I would be very hesitant to use any lamp where the manufactorer didn't post specs on a web site where they could be checked. And while growing canna indoors may not me the Greenest activity ever, that is no excuse to not trying to be as green as possible.

I see no reason to buy these lamps.