We should add a little note for safety in here: Any of these drivers CAN kill you. If you touch the bare leads with no load, it will put out as much current as it can at the top voltage. THAT CAN KILL YOU!
Of course, you can stop your heart with a single D cell, if you connect it to needles and stick them in both arms. But I’m talking about ordinary skin contact. They probably have a floating output, so you would not be in danger if you touched a single output and a cold water fixture, but I would not count on it. You might want to make sure you are on a ground fault protected circuit to increase safety.
If you touch both leads of a 45 volt or higher COB with one hand you will get a shock, surprising but not too harmful. I wouldn’t try it with both hands or wet fingers. Shocks across your hands go through your heart. Use electrical tape or heat shrink tubing as needed and make sure none of your connections touch the heat sink, etc. Keep you wires tie-strapped to the frame so they are not hanging down. Do not try to use bare stranded wire under a screw terminal. Use a terminal connector or at least tin the wire with a little solder so the strands don’t go astray. Use adequate gauge wire for your current. You can look that up online.
Direct current is no joke. Please have the utmost respect for what you’re working with and be safety minded. You definitely want to wait til after your light is complete to spark one up and admire it.
Ya that should be plenty for your needs. I’d maybe watch how the smaller plants respond to the 3500k boards. You could possibly use them to veg and replace one of them with 3000k in your big tent?
With one 288 board the best current application I’d going to be one of those constant voltage/constant drivers. There’s only one set of terminals so thermal runaway is not as big of a deal there, but there’s a couple of extra steps setting up that driver. We can cross that bridge when the time comes.
That could also be a good application for some of the smaller boards as well. I still feel like we’re going to see something a little more high end from hlg in the near future as well. I think qb elite has 90 cri option. I know a select few have boards they are running test grows. And I would most definitely expect something similar to the chilled tech boards, possibly running Samsung’s new lm301b.
It’s hard to say with them. They’re really good at rolling out products. Unfortunately part of that is they don’t say a whole lot until they’re ready to do so.
Florescent ballasts do limit current but they also make a very high voltage spike at the beginning of each 50 or 60 Hz cycle to get the current started. This would destroy an LED. You can see the waveform here:
HLG-320H-54A
Is the correct driver for the two quantum boards being over driven slightly correct? Shopping at arrow wanted make sure that was correct, I looked at the numbers. I just didn’t want to make a mistake. @dbrn32
Ya, that one is constant voltage and constant current. Hang on a minute I’ll double check. 2100ma output is like 115 Watts, 2800ma is like 150 Watts per board. Which one were you looking for?
Yep, I was wrong too. It’s constant current up to 114 volts. Still good though, hlg has vf max at 54.xx at 2800ma on 288’s.
In your defense, you weren’t far off. On those cv/cc drivers they list the wattage and the output voltage. If the 54 wasn’t a giveaway, that’s max output voltage. If you keep your eye out for a c in front of the last three or four numbers, the c stands for constant and the number following is the output current.
@dbrn32 That was the number I was looking at, but I also understand the 2800ma. Yes the QB’s are good up to the 54.xx volts. I’ll look for the C next time. I have the basics. You have to walk before you run. I’ll get this down, as I get more hands on. I learn faster that way.
For sure! That driver will run two or more quantum boards, and I’m sure people use it. I just said it was not great and left it at that. The reason we want to try and stay away from them is because the output current is 6 amps or 6000ma, twice what the boards are rated for. In the event a board failed or even became disconnected from the circuit, that whole 6 amps would be available to the remaining board.
There are ways to help protect against it, but it makes for more components and build difficulty.
Define full capacity please, do you mean max current? That is a negative. The two boards have different current ratings, so it would be impossible to have them both at max on the same driver. The driver I gave you will run the boards at about the same current as 80% of their lights and kits run the 288 boards.
You obviously talked to hlg for them to tell you to wire boards in series. What driver did they suggest you get?
