FINALLY got an update from UPS on my replacement.
Scheduled Delivery:Monday, 02/16/2015 Approximate Delivery Time: 9:45 A.M. - 1:45 P.M.
Scheduled Delivery:Monday, 02/16/2015 Approximate Delivery Time: 9:45 A.M. - 1:45 P.M.
Intelligent gro: How to get a supplier to fix their product?
- Thread starter Squeeg
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- #42
Riddled with problems right now and a boatload of potential. Couldn't have said it better myself. Even with the malfunction, I still like the product. Communication between supplier and end user needs much work and better handling. If I didn't "feel I have to bug the guy every few weeks" and was informed of delays instead, sure I would have been upset, but I wouldn't have felt I was being swept under the rug and left in the dark. A bad batch of diodes and shitty thermal compound usage at manufacturing plant is a very viable and easily communicated MASS EMAIL TO ALL people who bought this. Like car companies send out mass recalls, this could have been handled this way, and I would hope Igro would adopt this policy and make us all aware of it instead of us getting pissed off and resorting to sponsor forums to bitch and whine.
I'm glad there was a solution found and shipped out to needed persons involved. Once my light is fixed, maybe I will show a grow or 2. Critical kush feminized seeds turned out amazing for a test grow under 100% power. Can't wait to get a full grow room under my light and compare notes between hps and LED.
I'm glad there was a solution found and shipped out to needed persons involved. Once my light is fixed, maybe I will show a grow or 2. Critical kush feminized seeds turned out amazing for a test grow under 100% power. Can't wait to get a full grow room under my light and compare notes between hps and LED.
I have much the same attitude as you do, Squeeg.
David got his ass handed to him.
The Chinese factory guarantees its goods, but only parts, so the reseller gets to fix everything at his own expense. And since the parts aren't swap-out plug-in, he has to pay to have customers' panels shipped back and forth. Since the manufacturing was shoddy, he keeps steadily getting failures - F'n nightmare. 
And David's personal relations skills are, how do we describe them ... weak? ... underdeveloped? ...
What an asshole. If a seller hops to it and seems to be making every effort to fix his mistakes, we'll listen to the reasons and excuses. But David seems to think we give a rats ass about his problems, as if they were valid excuses. Customers want what they paid for and they want it to work right. They're pretty unreasonable about that.
So far, it looks like he hasn't left anyone hanging. We've all been promised a solution. I have some parts coming to repair my blown module, and I'll do the soldering and thermal paste myself. Of course, one wonders what keeps the other 5 modules from failing in the future.
But this is a good lesson to folks who like to surf 'baba and think maybe they can order a bunch of lights real cheap and resell them at a profit. Sure you can.
But there can be unanticipated developments.
David got his ass handed to him.
The Chinese factory guarantees its goods, but only parts, so the reseller gets to fix everything at his own expense. And since the parts aren't swap-out plug-in, he has to pay to have customers' panels shipped back and forth. Since the manufacturing was shoddy, he keeps steadily getting failures - F'n nightmare. And David's personal relations skills are, how do we describe them ... weak? ... underdeveloped? ...
What an asshole. If a seller hops to it and seems to be making every effort to fix his mistakes, we'll listen to the reasons and excuses. But David seems to think we give a rats ass about his problems, as if they were valid excuses. Customers want what they paid for and they want it to work right. They're pretty unreasonable about that. So far, it looks like he hasn't left anyone hanging. We've all been promised a solution. I have some parts coming to repair my blown module, and I'll do the soldering and thermal paste myself. Of course, one wonders what keeps the other 5 modules from failing in the future.
But this is a good lesson to folks who like to surf 'baba and think maybe they can order a bunch of lights real cheap and resell them at a profit. Sure you can.
But there can be unanticipated developments.
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- #44
Still no word on mine ... 
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- #47
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- #48
PrimalUrge
New Member
Glad to know I'm not an dick and was right from the beginning, I told people this dude and his setup was sketchy from the get go. Sorry to hear about your issues and hope once you get your new parts in they last.
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- #50
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- #51
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- #52
Well they lasted the night. I know for sure 2 panels were already changed on my light. Stripped screws, wrong screw in one place and different looking soldering job on the 2 panels.
Why do I always have 1 screw left over from everything I do??? Hope it wasn't important.
Oh, be careful taking off center cob lense. If your cob is burnt like some of mine were, they're stuck pretty good. I broke off 1 arm on 1 lense, but having 2 good posts should be good enough.
Overall, it wasn't that hard if a task to swap em out. David or the manufacturer had put solder on all the solder points ahead of time, so it was just a matter of heating it up and pushing wire down. It's not as pretty as the old solder joints, but it's passable.
They leave very little wire if you have to strip some, so try not to melt your stripped wire off when soldering.
All in all, it took me about 3.5-4 hours. Hanging the light by myself overtop of the canopy was kinda difficult cause this 10 panel light is fairly heavy and awkward to balance on one outstretched arm over the plants.
But it's done and so far working well.
Have increased cold air blowing on top of light into fans. Over night my highest temp reading was 88 F.
I'm just happy it's done.
Why do I always have 1 screw left over from everything I do??? Hope it wasn't important.
Oh, be careful taking off center cob lense. If your cob is burnt like some of mine were, they're stuck pretty good. I broke off 1 arm on 1 lense, but having 2 good posts should be good enough.
Overall, it wasn't that hard if a task to swap em out. David or the manufacturer had put solder on all the solder points ahead of time, so it was just a matter of heating it up and pushing wire down. It's not as pretty as the old solder joints, but it's passable.
They leave very little wire if you have to strip some, so try not to melt your stripped wire off when soldering.
All in all, it took me about 3.5-4 hours. Hanging the light by myself overtop of the canopy was kinda difficult cause this 10 panel light is fairly heavy and awkward to balance on one outstretched arm over the plants.
But it's done and so far working well.
Have increased cold air blowing on top of light into fans. Over night my highest temp reading was 88 F.
I'm just happy it's done.
- Thread starter
- #53
I run aquaponics btw to an ebb and flow setup. I have koi right now in my tank, but hopefully this summer I can get my greenhouse finished and put in tilapia. Koi are a pretty dirty fish and I have to run my water through a filter before my plants. Ph is 6.0-6.3 and ppm is unknown, but the plants love it. I am going to experiment this year with deep water, constant flow and with a mister system. I'm documenting the misting system right now as I'm building another small 3x6 room in the basement.
I prefer the basement because it's less trouble for heating and cooling. Humidity in summer is not an issue cause I have multiple dehumidifiers.
Bugs don't seem to last long down here. I introduced daddy long legs into my veg and grow room and since I don't use soil anymore, most fly problems don't exist. I did have spider mites for about a week, but placing a couple daddy long legs directly in infested areas seemed to wipe em out within hours.
Having 500 gallons of aquaponics and 40 fish, I can't and don't use pesticides so my water is pretty much drinkable if I had to. I've tried it. Tastes like swamp to tell the truth.
I won't be happy until I get 1+ gram/watt.
Last summer I grew a 3.5 lb tomato in my basement off 2 54w HO t5's.
I use t5's for clone/veg room and may get a small UVB to experiment with.
I use no chemicals at all. I even grow my own fish food in a small 50 gallon Rubbermaid container.
My whole set up had taken 2 years to put together and closing in on $10k, but in the next year or 2 I will have built a 56' geodesic dome greenhouse for food production and if I can figure out an economical way to keep tilapia warm in these cold Canadian winters expand to 2500 fish and 8-10000 gallons of water.
Now I'm looking for next set of LED lights for second grow room to experiment with.
I prefer the basement because it's less trouble for heating and cooling. Humidity in summer is not an issue cause I have multiple dehumidifiers.
Bugs don't seem to last long down here. I introduced daddy long legs into my veg and grow room and since I don't use soil anymore, most fly problems don't exist. I did have spider mites for about a week, but placing a couple daddy long legs directly in infested areas seemed to wipe em out within hours.
Having 500 gallons of aquaponics and 40 fish, I can't and don't use pesticides so my water is pretty much drinkable if I had to. I've tried it. Tastes like swamp to tell the truth.
I won't be happy until I get 1+ gram/watt.
Last summer I grew a 3.5 lb tomato in my basement off 2 54w HO t5's.
I use t5's for clone/veg room and may get a small UVB to experiment with.
I use no chemicals at all. I even grow my own fish food in a small 50 gallon Rubbermaid container.
My whole set up had taken 2 years to put together and closing in on $10k, but in the next year or 2 I will have built a 56' geodesic dome greenhouse for food production and if I can figure out an economical way to keep tilapia warm in these cold Canadian winters expand to 2500 fish and 8-10000 gallons of water.
Now I'm looking for next set of LED lights for second grow room to experiment with.
- Thread starter
- #54
20 hours of run time, 1 blinking light. Shit.
**ok upon further investigation after I popped the covers off I discovered I didn't tighten down the center cob leaving a gap and this particular cob got a bit hot. This was the cob with the broken lens post. I simply added the leftover screw I had and pulled the light pcb tight to heatsink.
Also reduced intense from 100% to 90% and let it run for a couple hours. No blinking so far. Will check again when bloom box cycle gets close to finished running tomorrow morning and see if it's still working.
The power cord is running hotter than ever it seems when at 100%.
**ok upon further investigation after I popped the covers off I discovered I didn't tighten down the center cob leaving a gap and this particular cob got a bit hot. This was the cob with the broken lens post. I simply added the leftover screw I had and pulled the light pcb tight to heatsink.
Also reduced intense from 100% to 90% and let it run for a couple hours. No blinking so far. Will check again when bloom box cycle gets close to finished running tomorrow morning and see if it's still working.
The power cord is running hotter than ever it seems when at 100%.
It still sounds like a power supply problem. How do they regulate power on these lights anyway, I have not seen one to take apart? Does each modual have it's own regulator, or is there one regulator for all of them? Is it a digital power supply or analog? Something must be drawing too much juice. They should be able to run at 100% all day and night if that's what you want to do without a problem. Maybe you have a digital power supply that is set up for Europe and there might be a small switch to change it someplace on the power supply board. I have seen that on some electronics here and there. Just a thought.
My guess is this...
Because of the poor thermal design of the cooling in these lights and extremely hot operating temp, I think that the junction temps of the LED's are heating up which is driving up the voltage. Since there probably is some type of PWM or other regulator on the circuit, the voltage when it gets too high may be beyond the threshold of the regulator so it is killing the power?
Just a guess and I'm not an electrician, but seems that it would make sense... as voltage rises due to heat, it may be overloading the drivers and/or circuits of the cob?
What do you think Techhead? you seem to know much more about circuits and wiring and such than I do....
Because of the poor thermal design of the cooling in these lights and extremely hot operating temp, I think that the junction temps of the LED's are heating up which is driving up the voltage. Since there probably is some type of PWM or other regulator on the circuit, the voltage when it gets too high may be beyond the threshold of the regulator so it is killing the power?
Just a guess and I'm not an electrician, but seems that it would make sense... as voltage rises due to heat, it may be overloading the drivers and/or circuits of the cob?
What do you think Techhead? you seem to know much more about circuits and wiring and such than I do....
Could be Icemud, Hard to tell from here, but if they are running there diodes at max current they could be running into thermal runaway. What are they running in there 3, or 5 watters? it does not matter, but what does matter is the current. Let's just use a 5 for an example, It is made to run at 1 amp of current for as long as you want it to, but you can drive it up to 1.5 amp for a while, and if you pulse it you can run it up to 2.5 amp, but for a very short time. Now if you do run it at 1.5 amp for too long, and don't get rid of the heat fast enough it will start to break down the PN junction. This will make the diode start demanding more current. In electronics it is not a request for more current, it's a demand. Then the current regulators start going nuts as they try to keep the current regulated and start to toggle on and off. If you can find a way to test the current to one of the strings of diodes you can see if the current does start to rise just before the lights start blinking. That's the only way to find out if I'm correct.
These panels have 63 watt COBs, containing 21 - 3 watt diodes, and this is the circuit that flashes.
Does that concentrate the heat issues like I imagine?
... still no word from David and no replacement parts since Monday Feb 9th when he told me he'd send them ...
Does that concentrate the heat issues like I imagine?
... still no word from David and no replacement parts since Monday Feb 9th when he told me he'd send them ...
- Thread starter
- #59
Sorry to hear that he still hasn't sent them graytail. He's still hasn't answered to me regarding pcb replacement video, although it is straight forward and simple. Maybe since he's no longer sponsored here he thinks he's away from it all. I believe he's still a sponsor in another magazine....
That just sucks.
As far as heat goes.... I didn't actually get a look under the hood long enough to see what my tech guy was doing and looking for.
He said everything looks and checked out fine when he hooked up his meters and gadgets. He did say the power cable itself is junk though. After 36 hour run with all channels @100%, I haveno blinking issues. I installed a thermometer probe inside the case- averages 83 degrees with a high of 88. Well within tolerance.
That just sucks.
As far as heat goes.... I didn't actually get a look under the hood long enough to see what my tech guy was doing and looking for.
He said everything looks and checked out fine when he hooked up his meters and gadgets. He did say the power cable itself is junk though. After 36 hour run with all channels @100%, I haveno blinking issues. I installed a thermometer probe inside the case- averages 83 degrees with a high of 88. Well within tolerance.
Maybe it's just a simple as the power cord. If it is getting hot it is dropping voltage, and could be starving the unit that's just Ohm's law, and Watt's law working together. Ohm said E over IR, and Watt said P over IE. Try upping the wire gauge on the power cord, see what happens then. Something like that will not make anything worse, so go for it. I have seen this type of power starvation on other electronics. There are rules to go by for what wire gauge to use for what current you need to draw, just as there are rules for what size pipe to use for water, and it does work pretty much the same. You get a lot more flow with 10 pounds of pressure in a 6" pipe than you can with 10 pound of pressure in a straw. You get a lot more current in 10 gauge wire than 26 Gauge at 110V. If your power cord is getting hot they didn't follow the rules, most likely to save money. 20 gauge is a lot cheaper than 14 Gauge.
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