Watch to choose

[Dennham77]

Getting ready to buy a 315 CMH. Watch would you choose and digital or a magnetic ballast ?

 

[TLC]

I have a Phantom digital with no complaints. The ballast mounted outside the grow room is a plus for heat elimination.

Best of luck!
T

 

[Dennham77]

Thanks for the info

I heard somewhere that a digital ballast can interfere with other signals like Wi Fi or TV is that true ?

 

[Emilya Green]

Thanks for the info

I heard somewhere that a digital ballast can interfere with other signals like Wi Fi or TV is that true ?

a good digital ballast will be electrically quiet. I own 3 Lumatek ballasts, and even when all three of them were going I did not get interference on any of my devices or on my very sensitive ham radio equipment.

digital is always going to be better than a dumb magnetic ballast. Magnetic will have the same draw all the time, and is electrically VERY noisy and most will generate a good amount of heat. Digital will be able to fine tune the frequency and voltage to suit the bulb... my ballasts would even adjust for a light as it was starting to get old, not to mention that I could run most of my HID lights in 3 different wattage levels using these remarkable devices.

 

[Dennham77]

Again thanks for the info its helpful

 

[TorturedSoul]

a good digital ballast will be electrically quiet. I own 3 Lumatek ballasts, and even when all three of them were going I did not get interference on any of my devices or on my very sensitive ham radio equipment.

I have a purple (adjustable) 120V 400-watt Lumatek ballast. It did throw birdies on my "all band" (25mHz - 1.3gHz) scanner when I did a full scan. But they were all on completely unused frequencies. And even the "eff see see" wouldn't have been able to detect them unless one of their employees happened to be <7' away (in the same room). Less interference than my vacuum cleaner!

 

[Emilya Green]

I have a purple (adjustable) 120V 400-watt Lumatek ballast. It did throw birdies on my "all band" (25mHz - 1.3gHz) scanner when I did a full scan. But they were all on completely unused frequencies. And even the "eff see see" wouldn't have been able to detect them unless one of their employees happened to be <7' away (in the same room). Less interference than my vacuum cleaner!

Exactly... not only are they well shielded and already pretty quiet, but they also oscillate at a much higher freq than normal for an inverter circuit, I think it was around 26mhz. This not only provides much smoother operation of the light, but by the time you double, triple, quadruple that frequency to figure out where all its harmonics are, you are immediately out of the HF frequencies and well up into VHF and UHF, where propagation is at best line of sight and no more than 7.5 miles... if you had a good signal. A practiced RF snoop would have to be right on top of you to hear these things, and she would have to know what she was looking for.