Mars II 400 LED Grow Light And 70X70X160CM Grow Tent

[gasmeter]

After lots of research on different types of lights as well as checking out lots of grow journals both here and over on the 420mag forums and seeing people get great results using LED grow lights and giving good reports on them I decided to bite the bullet and invest in a Mars II 400 grow light and a 70X70X160CM grow tent.

When you check out the grow tents on the Mars Hydro web site/store the appropriate grow light is shown, which is useful for people like me who are just setting out, unfortunately the tent was not in stock, but I noticed Mars Hydro have a presence on eBay so I checked it out and I was able to buy the light and tent together.

Well pleased with the light and the tent both are well manufactured using quality components and materials.

So here are some images showing the light and tent unboxing and the tent set up in position.

Grow light in box

 

Box opened light manual, power cable and hangers, the manual is in German and pwoer cable has 2 pin European plug

Light in packaging

Grow light unpackaged front view

Light rear view

Cloes up of light switches

Grow tent boxed

Tent box open tent visible

Grow tent set up guide fortunately that was in English, but they have a video on their You Tube channel how to set up a tent

Grow tent poles and corner pieces and filter straps with velcro fasteners

All of the grow tent compenents unboxed ready to set up

Grow tent set up and in position with grow light hung inside tent

Worms eye view of grow light

Birds eye view of grow light

I got some help from my little snaggle toothed buddy

Finally the amusing label from the packaging, with a little cock up translating the word "with"

As I mentioned I am well pleased with the light and the tent Mars hydro make great products, my indoor gardening adventures can now begin.

Gasmeter

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[gasmeter]

Hi Sal,

Yes I did consider buying a couple of units with a higher wattage, but ultimately it all comes down to the available space and running costs and the 27 inch square tent at 5 and half feet tall fits into the room nicely and does not restrict access within the room and most important the cost of running the light is affordable.

Natty watch the shillins, every mickle mek a muckle

I agree it is all about the REAL wattage and spectrum the light provides and as you say it takes some serious research to even start making sense of what LED lights are available today, I have suffered information overload numerous times over the past 12 months trying to get my head around the thing.

It doesn't help that the technology is still in its infancy and developing at a rapid pace, but it is getting easier to make an informed choice about what kit to purchase now more people are using LED lights getting good results, so it can only get better in the future as more people use them to grow with.

This set up provides a nice starting point for me to build upon, once I have a few grows under my belt and I have built up a stash and become more self sufficient and I don't have to keep buying commercial I can then use that money to buy better lights and to pay for the power they will consume. 

Gasmeter

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[gasmeter]

I will have to check out the NASA experiments they sound really interesting, with the LED's I love the fact they don't produce much heat and provide the right spectrum and they are affordable to run.

For me the smell is not an issue, I just need to keep an eye on the temperature in the tent and move the air with a fan or two, the temperature in the tent is around 26 to 28 degrees C when the light is on and during the night around 18 degrees C so things are within normal parameters.

Gasmeter

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[Cannabissapean]

gasmeter,  congrats on joining the tent and LED community.  I am sure that you will be very happy with the results.

And I appreciate the discussion you two have been having.

But I have a little complaint, not at all against you fellas.  My complaint is against the lighting industry as a whole for not using the correct terms when attempting to describe the characteristics of lighting and lamps to prospective buyers.  It makes me so angry, and it IS this non-use of the correct terms that allows illicit marketers of lamps to be able to sell garbage lighting and especially garbage LED-lamps on the market.  So you are absolutely correct to be concerned about whether you are getting a good lamp out of China or even out of the European or American markets.  There is a lot of garbage out there.

But I know from where this misunderstanding comes.  It originated from the days when we had ONLY incandescent bulbs as the source for electrical lighting.  Back then, electricity was a relatively new thing, and most consumers knew virtually nothing about how electricity worked, and in fact, many were afraid of it.  Rightfully so, if you don't understand something like electricity, and you are also unwilling to take the time and dedicate yourself to a formal course of training, then it IS DANGEROUS FOR YOU.  My Dad was one of those luddites, and he remains so today. LOL.  And if a non-properly-trained person rigs-up electricity, then he endangers everyone around him. 

Back then, the vast majority of consumers learned only that a 25-Watt bulb produced "enough light to illuminate their night-table", a 40-Watt bulb was "barely good enough for the reading lamp in the living room", the 50- or 60-Watt "made reading even better with less eye-strain", and the amazing 100-Watt bulb "could sufficiently flood the entire living room with a happy-amount of light".  I know that is an over-simplified view, but I think you understand where this is leading.  The vast majority of consumers learned to associate "percieved" light-output in relation to the Watt-number on the incandescent bulb.  The lighting industry, therefore, adopted this 'innocent-by-ignorance' misunderstanding as a convenient marketing tool in order to offer the consumer the ability to choose the lighting intensity based on the Watt-number, very convenient, and it was OK for those days.  The marketing tool worked beautifully for many decades, because for many decades, there was basically only one kind of electrical lighting - incandescent.  By the way, incandescent bulbs convert no more than 5% of the energy they consume to light.  95% of the energy they consume is converted to heat.  Heat produced = energy lost.  And that heat has to go somewhere.  It dissipates into the air, into the lighting fixture, into the wiring, into the insulation on the wires, no wonder house fires occur.

The HPS(high-pressure-sodium) and MH(metal-halide) lamps are improvements upon the incandescent technology.  They are a special form of incandescent, whereby the use of high-pressure gases and specially formulated metals in their filaments produce extremely intense light.  HPS produces the broader spectrum, similar to the old incandescent but much more intense.  HPS is suitable for the entire life of the plant if you wish.  MH produces more of a bluer spectrum and is therefore more suited for Vegging; Cannabis prefers less blue and more red/orange/yellow for flowering.  The HUGE drawback to both these lamps is the heat that they produce and the hole they burn in your pocket.

But then came along the fluorescent tube.  It produced light a bit different, not quite so broad a spectrum; it no longer included all the wavelengths of the visible spectrum like the incandescent, but with continued advances, the spectrum-range could be shifted slightly or fine-tuned depending on the ionizing gas used and the powder-coating on the inside of the bulb.  Hence, we have Cool-White, Warm-White, Sun-Glo, Gro-Spectrum, etc.  The light is also not continuous, it flickers at 50Hz or 60Hz, depending on the frequency of the incoming mains.  The older ballasts were not so efficient, having a lambda ( λ ) only on the order of around 0.50; meaning that approx half the energy consumed is converted to light, and half the energy consumed is converted to heat.  Technical advances eventually improved the ballasts, and the advent of electronic ballasts can now produce a lambda ( λ ) of 0.98, meaning that only 2% of the energy consumed is lost in the form of heat. (If you are in the market for fluorecsent lamps, it makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER these days to buy any lamp with a ballast lambda ( λ ) less than 0,98.  Anything less is simply old technology for the same price that will unnecessarily suck the money out of your wallet in electricity bills.)  Do me a favor and punish those manufacturers and distributors by leaving those inefficient products on the store shelves.

With the discovery of semiconductors came quickly the invention of diodes and transistors and solid-state electronics.  The LED (light-emitting-diode) is a special diode, whereby radiation is emitted/released when electrical current flows across the diode-junction.  The wavelength produced depends on the particular materials and doping of those materials at the junction of the diode.  Hence, we have red or blue or white or UV or IR, or whatever wavelengths are available out there.  I won't go further into the theory of how they work, you can google that for yourself.  LEDs produce more light output (lumens) per energy used (Watt) with relatively less heat than their other lighting counterparts.  At first, LEDs could not produce high-intensity light without self-destructing, but again, with technological advances, today we have high-intensity LEDs.  Even though they produce light with relatively less heat, the light is produced from a relatively small point, therefore the heat is concentrated and the LED-junction must be protected against self-destruction using heat-sinks and air-circulation.

You may have  noticed when you go to purchase LEDs for home lighting, that there are TWO different numbers on the package, both expressed in Watts.  How fuggin stupid.  The lower Watt-number is supposed to be the true energy-draw for that bulb.  The upper Watt-number is ONLY an expression of the "percieved light-output" according to the 'old-standard' of brightness based on the laziness of the industry to educate the consumers.

Watts is NOT the correct term to use when describing the amount of light that a lamp produces.  Watts is the expression of the energy consumed by the lamp when it is operating.   LUMENS is the correct term for the light-output.

Watts and lumens together are important in judging a lamps efficiency in comparison to another lamp.  Such as, how much light-output (in lumens) am I getting from this lamp in comparison to the energy that the lamp is consuming (in Watts).  This is the lumens-to-Watt ratio.        

lm / W                              Obviously, the higher the ratio, the greater light output you get for your energy expense.

Where a 100-Watt incandescent bulb may produce 1600 lumens, the ratio is                                                                          1600lm / 100W = 1,6

Where a single 36-Watt fluorescent tube may on average(spectrum-dependent) produce 2700 lumens, the ratio is          2700lm / 36W = 75

Where a 600-Watt HPS may produce 90,000 lumens (MH is similar), the ratio is                                                                  90,000lm / 600W = 150

Cree boasts to have produced high-output LEDs at 300 lumens per Watt.  If you have an LED lamp manufactured with 90 each 3-Watt Cree LEDs, hopefully properly heat-sinked and air-cooled, then the ratio is                                                                                          90x3x300lm / 90x3W = 300

As you can see, the LED has a distinctly advantageous lumen-to-Watt ratio, but only if you have the right LED.  Pretty much any single LED consuming less than 3-Watts is not able to produce light that is intense enough to reach sufficiently into the foliage to be useful for growers.  There are some manufacturers boasting LED grow-lamps, but they will not tell you the specifics about the individual LEDs.  If the single LEDs are only 1-Watt or 2-Watt LEDs, then they aren't good for anything except window displays.  That may be OK for a store display of plants, but not for us growers.  (I have also heard some good things about another LED called the Golden Dragon, but I've not seen this one yet.)

But the Lumens-to-Watt ratio is not all that should be used in the comparison.  The proper spectrum (the collection and intensity of wavelengths/colors) is important.  A lamp producing a spectrum with wavelengths that are useless to photosenthysis is junk for us growers, no matter how intense it is.  Some so-called grow-lamps contain exactly such useless LEDs; the lamp manufacturer himself could be ignorant of grow-spectrums, or it's a way for the fraudulent or uncaring manufacturer to use-up what he knows is useless LED stock from his warehouse.  Don't fall for that trick.  They are out there.

Another thing to consider is the radiation pattern of the lamp.  HPS, MH and fluorescents throw their light outward in all directions.  The HPS and MH do this from essientially a single point, whereas, the fluorescent does that from the entire surface of the tube.  This means that although the fluorescent is rated at a particular lumens, that light-energy is spread-out over the entire surface of the tube, hence its intensity is significantly lower.  (IMHO, fluorescents are great for maintaining mothers or starting clones and seedlings in a slower growth mode.  But growers wanting fast growth and fast yield know that they will need to transfer the clones and seedlings to higher intensity lighting for the explosive growth.)  Light that radiates in a direction away from the  plant is bascally wasted.  Reflectors can be used to reflect some of that energy back toward the plant, but NO MATTER HOW GOOD the mirrored or diamond-surface is, most of the light energy is still absorbed by the reflector.  Even NASA's Hubble mirror absorbs some of the light energy it receives, Physics fact.

The LED technology has another distinct advantage in that the light from the diode junction can be directed or focused downward with much less loss of light energy than its other light-source counterparts.  Individual LEDs are available to the lamp manufacturers with different aperture angles.  Basically, the aperture angle controls how much of the emitted light energy is hitting the right areas of the plants.  Aperture angles greater than 120° will diffuse the light energy and allow too much light to spill away from the area of the plants, and aperture angles tighter than 60° don't allow enough overlap of the wavelengths so that the leaves get a good mixture of the spectrum. 

If the prospective seller won't disclose the number of LEDs and their individual wavelengths, the lumens of the individuals or the total lumens, the strength of the LEDs (3-Watt, etc.), the aperture angles, etc. then don't buy from him.  Most likely, he is a fraudulent or inexperienced or ignorant manufacturer.  Good manufacturers have performed their due diligence and will know these technical details and ARE PROUD of their products to the point that they are HAPPY to disclose this information.

[gasmeter]

Hey Cannabissapean thanks for the information it is very useful and well explained nice one man.

I overstand your anger about the lighting industry failing to address improper use of terminology allowing shysters to take advantage of the publics ignorance and sell them crap products.

As you say openess and transparency are paramount, the manufacturers should be happy to make the specifications available publicly if they are confident their product is fit for purpose in order to allow the public or potential customers to make an informed choice whether or not the product is what they require and if they should buy it.

These are just good marketing and promotion best practices, provide as much information about the product as possible, if the product is any good it will sell itself, so unless your peddling crap in that case you will want to be vague about the shit your peddling.

Gasmeter

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