14/12 Photoperiod and Other Non-24 Hour Options?

[Goldengoose7]

Yesterday I received my replacement iGS-15 Timer system. They actually sent me TWO complete systems and I am happy to report that so far, BOTH are working perfectly on my test bench. I have both set for a 30 minute cycle with a 15 minute on time.

This puts them through their paces much quicker and can identify any issues.

After 24 hours of testing, I am pleased to report that not a single "DELAY" has plagued either system and both have turned the lights on, on time, every time!

Tonight after lights out in the Bloom Room, I will switch in the new system set for a 24 hour cycle at the same on and off time as my Intermatic timer.

I will then start the 14/12 cycle during the last week of flowering for my Blueberry and GDP plants which begins Saturday!

 

[Goldengoose7]

iGS-15 Replacement Activated in Bloom Room!
Current cycle set for 14/13 • 27 hour day

The display on the iGS-15 is indicating how many hours and minutes remain for this current "LIGHTS ON" cycle. When the timer runs out, the lights will be shut off and the timer will begin counting down how many hours and minutes until the next LIGHTS ON event takes place.

I have the following plants in the Bloom Room at the moment...

Left to Right: Purple Urkle #4 Week 3 • GDP #1 Week 1

Left to Right: Blueberry Kush #6 Week 1 • BBK #4 Week 1 • Purple Urkle #10 Week 1

I plan to leave the cycle like this for the next few weeks and see how these new starts do. The GDP was already starting to flower outside when it was brought indoors. A problem with Powdery Mildew today forced the evacuation of all the plants in this room for a spray down, and after cleaning out the area and running the AC for several hours with nothing in here, we hope to have eliminated any remaining spores. The late flowering plants that were in here before the fungi was discovered have been moved outdoors to finish now that darkness hours are getting close enough to 12 hours to prevent reveg.

The lights are being kept on longer immediately to help destroy the fungi's preferred growing conditions to further help eliminate the pesky fuzz!

 

[Greenie]

Hey Golden!
In post #42 above, is that a 2ft/ 4 light? you mentioned in the other post? Good luck with the new timer! I will be watching to see how the next bloom times will work for ya

 

[Goldengoose7]

Hey Golden!
In post #42 above, is that a 2ft/ 4 light? you mentioned in the other post? Good luck with the new timer! I will be watching to see how the next bloom times will work for ya

Hi Greenie!

Actually All of the Above and More.

The first photo shows a 4 foot x 6 tube Hydrofarm Designer Series T5 fixture.

The other shot with the small plants is a 2 foot by 4 tube of the same series. These are augmented with several 45 watt CFLs in clamp on shop light fixtures with and without shades.

Thanks for checking in!

 

[Greenie]

Hey Golden. what are your hours for seedlings and clones? 24 hour??

 

[Goldengoose7]

Hey Golden. what are your hours for seedlings and clones? 24 hour??

18/6 usually.

Sent from my iPod touch using Forum Runner

 

[Greenie]

thanks

 

[bluegil]

i found a digital 7 day timer power strip at home depot 4 plugs on timer and 4 plugs that always have power,it works great,16 or 18 bucks,check em out!

 

[TorturedSoul]

i found a digital 7 day timer power strip at home depot 4 plugs on timer and 4 plugs that always have power,it works great,16 or 18 bucks,check em out!

What is the minimum on/off time? How many events/changes may be programmed in? What is the rated resistive and inductive load?

 

[SteveHman]

What is the minimum on/off time? How many events/changes may be programmed in? What is the rated resistive and inductive load?

I use those same timers in both of my grows, mostly because they have 4 timed outlets and 4 constant on outlets.

They have one on and one off per 24 hour period. You set the time on the digital clock and then select an On and Off time. It has a setting for each day so you could do all sorts of funky schedules.

I just set the time for the first day and then let it run. If you don't set any other days it will just repeat the same schedule as the first.

They also have a battery backup to keep the time, which is handy if you experience a power outage (if you live in SoCal you know what happened this past week).

It's rated at 15 amps, 1800 watts according to the instructions.

The one "glitch" I've discovered with these is, if you set the time and schedule the the program then set it to auto, it may not run until the next cycle comes around. For example if you set the clock at 9:00 AM but you have the start time at 7:00 AM and press "auto" it won't come on until 7:00 the next day. I guess the "trigger" doesn't fire until it goes through the cycle. Other than that, it works great.

I have about 1200 watts running through each one (lights fans etc...).

 

[Goldengoose7]

Ah! Ok... So this is still just a 24 hour timer then. It is not capable of running any of the 26, 27 or 28 hour cycles we were discussing in this thread.

You had me excited for a minute since I thought that there was low cost option out there besides the $350.00 iGS-15 I have been playing around with!

Speaking of which, I still plan to get back to my light cycle experiments, but it probably won't happen until next season. I will probably just start a new thread at that time.

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[RacerX]

Ah! Ok... So this is still just a 24 hour timer then. It is not capable of running any of the 26, 27 or 28 hour cycles we were discussing in this thread.

I have a 'heavy duty digital timer' from hd and I'm pretty sure the powerstrip one is the same programing. Although mine is only rated for 1000w.

From what I understand is you can set these larger cycles but you are still bound by weekdays.

You can do
Cycle 1 on 6:00 am monday
Cycle 1 off 8:00 pm monday
Cycle 2 on 8:00 am tuesday
Cycle 2 off 10:00 pm tuesday
ect..

You do this for the week but only 1 week so you have to change it slightly so it lines up again on monday.

I think its like 13:08 and 12 or
21 hours 36 minutes on with 12 off

Day 1 - Sunday, 6:00am til Monday, 3:36am
Day 2 - Monday, 3:36pm til Tuesday, 1:12pm
Day 3 - Wednesday, 1:12am til Wednesday, 10:48pm
Day 4 - Thursday, 10:48am til Friday 8:24am
Day 5 - Friday, 8:24pm til Saturday 6:00pm

Author: MisterIto

In

How do I Manipulate the Photoperiod for Larger Yields

 

[TorturedSoul]

I just realized that the timer that you originally purchased was the same one in post #5 of the thread that RacerX referenced. It had been so long since I read that thread that I didn't notice when you posted the picture of it at the beginning of this thread. I wonder if McBudz had better luck with his than you had with yours?

 

[Goldengoose7]

I just realized that the timer that you originally purchased was the same one in post #5 of the thread that RacerX referenced. It had been so long since I read that thread that I didn't notice when you posted the picture of it at the beginning of this thread. I wonder if McBudz had better luck with his than you had with yours?

Don't know. As I mentioned, P&G discontinued the model 11s timer because it was so inaccurate and could not be relied upon to maintain those cycles. The iGS-15 I have now is spot on in terms of any cycle i have set it to do and with none of those odd "delay" issues of the first one they sent.

Unfortunately, all the back and forth screwing around with the defective units ate up my entire window for testing this season, so this experiment will have to wait for another time. I am still using the 15 to control my flowering room, but it is just doing a standard 12/12.

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[slowhand15]

It will be interesting To see the results of 14/12 etc.

As for vegging, I can't understand why anyone would use 18/6.

I always used 24/0 since the 1980's.

I tried 18/6 once, about a year and a half ago and my final yields were a lot lower.

 

[Goldengoose7]

It will be interesting To see the results of 14/12 etc.

As for vegging, I can't understand why anyone would use 18/6.

I always used 24/0 since the 1980's.

I tried 18/6 once, about a year and a half ago and my final yields were a lot lower.

Hey Slowhand!

Yep... From the small amount of time I was able to run the 14/12 cycle, it seemed to be causing faster trichome production, but not enough time to be sure.

As for the non 24 hour day cycle...

Two simple reasons for that...

1) Heat Dissipation
2) Energy savings

Plants need to have "down time" whether you give that to them or not with a dark cycle, they will still "sleep" during some part of a 24 hour day. In my unused guest bathroom where i have my main light stations, if I run with the lights 24 hours a day, the heat can get pretty bad in there and our forced air AC only runs during the day and perhaps a few hours into the evening. Much easier to time the dark cycles around the hours of no AC to minimize the amount of heat given off by the T5 lights.

The energy savings is not huge, but it is there, and since there is really no benefit to the plants by running a 24 hour day cycle, I prefer to give them some dark time.

As for your yields... The amount of hours you give your plants in veg really shouldn't have made any difference in your flower cycle yield provided that you waited until they were at least 35" tall before you started with the 12/12.

I veg my plants outdoors for the majority of their lives and they never get more than 16 hours of daylight during the peak of summer. My yields this season have been off the charts so far. I am averaging close to 5 ounces of dried bud from the Blueberry Kush plants I harvested at the end of August. They were 35" and 38" tall respectively, so that is a lot of bud from average sized plants.

Only time I have deviated from the 18/6 indoors was a few weeks ago when I couldn't get my Blue Cheese clones to reveg after they started flowering in the cloner. (The mother plant entered early flowering outside just as I was taking cuttings)

I had to change the cycle to 20/4 to finally get them to reveg, and for now, I am leaving them on that cycle just to make sure that they stay that way!

Bottom line... If you can run a 24 hour light cycle free of all the issues I laid out above, then go for it! You obviously don't need a timer for that light station, and although the plants are still going to grow at the same rate that they likely would under 18 hours of light, you could have less problems with humidity related issues like Powdery Mildew.

 

[slowhand15]

As for your yields... The amount of hours you give your plants in veg really shouldn't have made any difference in your flower cycle yield provided that you waited until they were at least 35" tall before you started with the 12/12.

I would love to run 18/6 because I know the plants exchange sugars during their dark period. I'm in flower mode now-12/12.

Maybe I'll try next grow. My cuttings are rooted and growing pretty good. I took mine late too.

It will be interesting to see how the 14/12 goes.

I'll be around watching this thread to see what happens.

 

[Goldengoose7]

I would love to run 18/6 because I know the plants exchange sugars during their dark period. I'm in flower mode now-12/12.

Maybe I'll try next grow. My cuttings are rooted and growing pretty good. I took mine late too.

It will be interesting to see how the 14/12 goes.

I'll be around watching this thread to see what happens.

Hey Slohand!

Since my last post here I uncovered some rather problematic bugs in the iGS-15's firmware pertaining to making simple adjustments to the various timer settings. Right now, if you make even the simplest change to your existing settings, the timer screws up the calculation for the next ON cycle and basically adds an additional 12 hours to the countdown! If you make another change, it adds ANOTHER 12 hours! Only way to fix it is to do a hard reset which then requires you to reenter ALL your cycle details and options! Definitely NOT something I want to be forced to do after a minor adjustment to the light cycle or even to the hour and minute of the ON cycle's start time!

PnG has been working with me on this for the last several weeks now. Why I was the only owner to report these relatively obvious glitches with the programming section is kind of odd for a product that has been on the market for close to 9 months. Have they even sold any of these yet? Am I the only user of this product that has attempted to alter the settings after starting the timer into a programmed light control session? :icon_roll At least they have been able to duplicate these bugs and are working on a new version of the firmware. They are also in the process of programming a browser based firmware updater that is platform independent. They currently only offer a Windows based application that can FLASH the timer's mother board with a new version of the timer's firmware. This product has a USB port on it for interfacing it with a personal computer. This was one of the many high tech features that attracted me to this product in the first place. I didn't realize at the time that they were still in the dark ages and were only offering this option for their customers who ran the Windows operating system.

I'm a Mac user and I told them that they needed to get with the times and stop discriminating against Mac users by not providing a universal app for updating. I asked them why they just didn't design a browser based app like what most router manufacturers have been offering for over a decade for ALL of their customers to use to update the device's firmware when an improved version of the router's operating system was released.

They replied that the thought just hadn't occurred to them, but that they agreed that their Mac owning customers as well as their Linux using customers should have the same opportunity to update their units with the latest iGS-15 firmware that their PC using customers were already enjoying. I would say that this is even more vital given all the issues the current versions of the firmware have had to date!

Now it is just a matter of waiting for this new browser based update app to be coded, tested and sent to me. I will likely be the beta tester for the OSX userbase and will attempt to flash my two timers with the improved and hopefully bug free version of the iGS-15 operating system.

Once that all gets done, then it is just a matter of WHEN I will be able to rearrange my indoor grow rooms and return my flower room back to a flower room. (it is currently being used as a second veg room for next season's GDP mother plants)

Keep subscribed so that you will be notified when I start up the next 14/12 experiment likely sometime in early 2012.

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[dickkhead]

this isnt the only timer capable of 32 ours light
the mdt-1 timer can do 100 hours of light 100 hours of darkness if you wanted not that youd do that but it goes up to 100 and is digital!

 

[GigaGrew]

mega bump!

hey GG. read every word....did you do another test!?

need to know if this myth is fact or fiction, we should really know once and for all whether our plant needs circa 50% darkness or a 12 hours in every x hours. =)