Is It Safe? Mars LED Problem - Spring Growing Indoor

[HiddenGrow]

Hey there friendly cannabis growers. After taking some time off of cannabis growing, a voice inside told me to get back to the garden. I got my MH and my 4x4 up and running, grabbed some seeds and put them into the earth. After some trial and error, Frustration and an unlucky amount of males I have the start of three little trees.

Skip a month ahead and they are looking good. Very nice leaves and a sturdy trunk. Given a little rough love here and there and now they are ready to go.

So I open up my 5x5 tent and check my Mars 2 1600 and I spot something that made my heart sink. My light appears to have burnt out diodes spotted here and there on the board. It looks like the lights ran a little too hot and some of the lights blew up like popcorn. To my surprise the light and some of the burnt out diodes still work.

But would it be a risk to use this light? I don't want to have a fire happen when my back is turned. I am waiting for a reply from Sara to see what My options are. This light was bought in 2014 so it has had some love. Well see what can be done. My end goal would be to replace the diodes or upgrade the light entirely, but well save that for a summer project. Right now I am deciding if its safe to even use.

Let me know if you have had any similar issues or problems with this light or if this would compromise my tent.


Heres the girls so far.

Sorry for the length of the post. This should be the last long post.

 

[thebudking]

Personally, i would not run that light. It is showing signs of failure and i wouldnt risk a fire. I may be over cautious but i would question anyone telling you it is safe to run. Depending on how the mars are wired, dont remember off the top of my head, once a single led goes out, it can over drive the others and cause more failures of the leds. If it was due to over heating in the first place, the cooling fan could be bad, weak or dirty which will compound the problems. That is worst case, on the other side, you may be able to run it like that forever, depends on the risk you want to take.

 

[gbauto]

The board on the Mars is probably just like the King 1200 I have. The aluminum circuit board acts as a electrical pathway and as the heatsink for the led's. It also uses zener diodes to allow the series led string to keep operating if a failure occurs. If the fans are still operating I(as in me) would hesitatingly use the lamp until Sara can send you a new board. I'm amazed that it has lasted as long as it has-fortunately they are simple to replace.

 

[Mars Hydro]

It's the diodes problem,do not worry,it will not catch fire.please send email to service@mars-hydro.com which i mentioned in our main thread,we will try our best to help you.

 

[Lost In Nugs]

Personally, i would not run that light. It is showing signs of failure and i wouldnt risk a fire. I may be over cautious but i would question anyone telling you it is safe to run. Depending on how the mars are wired, dont remember off the top of my head, once a single led goes out, it can over drive the others and cause more failures of the leds. If it was due to over heating in the first place, the cooling fan could be bad, weak or dirty which will compound the problems. That is worst case, on the other side, you may be able to run it like that forever, depends on the risk you want to take.

What you described is happening when driving LED [P]arallel. The Am[P]s split this way.

Mars is wired in series, so the voltage splits, so if a LED fails the other still run with ~0.7 Amps. The only thing that happens if too many LED on one driver fail and there are not enough Volts beeing pulled from the driver, all diodes wont get any juice and shut down. Thats it.

The worst case in terms of security ALREADY happened. And as we all can see NO FIRE.

Its just a burnt Lens or Diode.

Resoldering gets quite a pain. I had this on my M2, luckily only some of the blues.






Current Grow SeymoreNuggets Flowering Journal - Nebula & Atomical Haze - Soil - 2x3 - 420W DIY COB

My journey seeking the light. Found some
SeymoreNugget's DIY talk - Building lights - Sharing ideas

 

[HiddenGrow]

Thanks for the info. It appears to be mostly red diodes burnt out. I wont risk using it, but I may run it during the flower cycle. I plan on getting it repaired of course and my plants need some time to fill out so I have some time at least.

Thank you all for your replies. When it comes time to repair it I will post what I did with pictures for anyone that has had similar issues.

 

[Mars Hydro]

Did you already send email to our service@mars-hydro.com?

Thanks for the info. It appears to be mostly red diodes burnt out. I wont risk using it, but I may run it during the flower cycle. I plan on getting it repaired of course and my plants need some time to fill out so I have some time at least.

Thank you all for your replies. When it comes time to repair it I will post what I did with pictures for anyone that has had similar issues.

 

[Lost In Nugs]

Thanks for the info. It appears to be mostly red diodes burnt out. I wont risk using it, but I may run it during the flower cycle. I plan on getting it repaired of course and my plants need some time to fill out so I have some time at least.

Thank you all for your replies. When it comes time to repair it I will post what I did with pictures for anyone that has had similar issues.

I can tell from your pictures they are blue

Current Grow SeymoreNuggets Flowering Journal - Nebula & Atomical Haze - Soil - 2x3 - 420W DIY COB

My journey seeking the light. Found some
SeymoreNugget's DIY talk - Building lights - Sharing ideas

 

[HiddenGrow]

Did you already send email to our service@mars-hydro.com?

Yes I did, Mercy got in touch with me and I sent her the pictures and awaiting her reply.

I can tell from your pictures they are blue

Current Grow SeymoreNuggets Flowering Journal - Nebula & Atomical Haze - Soil - 2x3 - 420W DIY COB

My journey seeking the light. Found some
SeymoreNugget's DIY talk - Building lights - Sharing ideas

Wow Sharp eye. I have really bad light sensitivity so even the picture on my computer was too intense. But yeah it appears to be mostly blue diodes that have burnt out. Well good thing its sitting in the corner like a box until it gets fixed up

 

[HiddenGrow]

Alrighty. I am getting everything settled for the Mars LED and I'm sure well definitely see her flower these girls. Thank god for good customer service.

As for the Plants. Today they have had a defoliation of a lot of fan leaves covering up little branches here and there. I hope this gives them a stretch. They got a 1/2 cups worth of a mix of HF All-Purpose, Fruit & Flower, Mykos, and Powder Molasses. All mixed up into the top soil and watered with rainwater. Then sprinkled with Ground Cinnamon for gnat protection. I have a mild amount of the little buggers roaming. I will do a spray of neem and soap to ward them off once there is some new growth. I mixed a spray about 4 days ago and it seemed to have been too concentrated and burned the leaves slightly.

Right now the Lights are on 20/4 and I will begin to lower the cycle as I get the light repaired. I had the lights on 24hrs and during the afternoon my temps were in the high 80s so Lowering the time also cools it down.

Pics to come.

 

[HiddenGrow]

Picture Time!

Feb 23

Feb 25

I had some smaller seedlings in here but they weren't doing well so I scrapped the seedlings until I build a cloning chamber. Then I can manage several smaller plants in with the clones where it is humid and clean.

Thank you for checking it out!

 

[Mars Hydro]

I'm glad to hear that your light is ok now.

Alrighty. I am getting everything settled for the Mars LED and I'm sure well definitely see her flower these girls. Thank god for good customer service.

As for the Plants. Today they have had a defoliation of a lot of fan leaves covering up little branches here and there. I hope this gives them a stretch. They got a 1/2 cups worth of a mix of HF All-Purpose, Fruit & Flower, Mykos, and Powder Molasses. All mixed up into the top soil and watered with rainwater. Then sprinkled with Ground Cinnamon for gnat protection. I have a mild amount of the little buggers roaming. I will do a spray of neem and soap to ward them off once there is some new growth. I mixed a spray about 4 days ago and it seemed to have been too concentrated and burned the leaves slightly.

Right now the Lights are on 20/4 and I will begin to lower the cycle as I get the light repaired. I had the lights on 24hrs and during the afternoon my temps were in the high 80s so Lowering the time also cools it down.

Pics to come.

 

[Mars Hydro]

wow,this is massive cannabis sea

Picture Time!

Feb 23

Feb 25

I had some smaller seedlings in here but they weren't doing well so I scrapped the seedlings until I build a cloning chamber. Then I can manage several smaller plants in with the clones where it is humid and clean.

Thank you for checking it out!

 

[HiddenGrow]

Hi there Folks, time for a late night update of the garden.

The girls got a defoliation on the th
They are growing quite nicely and filling the netting I was thinking of the best arrangement since there are just three inside. I was hoping the biggest of the girls would overtake the two. It is three times as bushy as the rest. Almost too much if I would say. I trim leaves and it seems to grow them back instantly It's insane.

I fed them a tea brew of the FF all purpose mix with beneficials, powdered molasses, and worm tea from a worm bin. brewed for 12 hours and watered to the plants when the light came on. They drank 3 gallons between the three of them. Then three days later I gave them another watering of rainwater.

Hum hum hum Lets see Ahh now I remember. I topped them Friday because I figured they needed to spread out more around the edges.

I was planning on flipping this month once my Mars 2 diodes came in. I was estimating they would e here next week, but nope! they came in on the 2nd! the day I got a confirmation number. Talk about customer service. Thank you MarsHydro team. If i knew it would be this fast i may have sent it in. But that's not what curious cats do. Were gonna repair it at home.

That's all..... For now.

 

[HiddenGrow]

Here is a picture Update! I figure I should keep posts lean and mean. To prevent my eyes from burning out my skull.

Here are the ladies!

2/26
Right after defoliation.

This girl is a real bush it took the trimming like a champ and made it seem like nothing happened. I know you may think it's bigger because its getting more light. neigh neigh shes about a month older in a batch that only had one female out of twenty seeds. I think I've just had bad luck so far. this picture was before topping.

This has been the average temperature so far. sometime last week I got a spike of 88 which is weird. Since it hasn't been that hot outside I worry it'll get hotter soon.

 

[HiddenGrow]

Just to be quick because I am not sure if I said what lighting I am using but it's a 400w plantmax mh 7000k with a blah blah digi ballast with a hood I got for $20 with a pretty good spread. its about 30" wide 36" long. Since it doesnt spread evenly on two of the plants I have two 4' supplemental t5s right over where the mh doesn't cover. I'll try to make these last updates just pictures.

2/28 here are ze girls recovering from the foliage trimming. I gave them water mixed with a little fulvex and liquid karma to help them absorb the tea brew they had a few days earlier which they slurped up I also spread them apart so they would have too fill the center of the screen instead of working their way outside.

3/02 This day I added a vermiculture pot in two 5gal buckets for more worm tea and a coco soil mix that will be for future growing and a little co2 boost.

 

[HiddenGrow]

3/5 time to catch everything up.

Thank you all that have made it this far and read through my nonsense. Tomorrow I will determine which diodes to be replaced and do the work. It doesn't seem too hard.

 

[HiddenGrow]

Is there anyway to move this journal to the grow journal section? I think I will start a new journal since this once is in grow lighting.

 

[HiddenGrow]

So after procrastinating for a few days I buckled down and opened up the light to fix it. started about 2pm and finished officially at 12am due after taking a few breaks. All the diodes were fixed on the second try.

My trusty lab assistant was operating the camera during the operation.

What you need is
The replacement diodes and fuses. The customer service sent extras.

a Philips scredriver

and Grandpa's Soldering iron

Now opening it up

Make sure to clean your heat sinks if you haven't opened it up in a while.

Make sure to mark the diodes that need to be fixed.

And make sure to find the tiny pos/neg alignment

Just one thing I noticed. The new diodes had two chips inside instead of one. I wonder if it makes it more efficient.

 

[HiddenGrow]

Alrighty Got the Diodes removed but it looks messy

A little bit of rubbing alcohol can only do so much. I was careful not to touch any of the other diodes. It didn't do as good of a job as I wanted to but i feel it did a good enough job.

Ahh Nice and put together. Lets see if it turns on.

Nice!.... wait theres one off.

and its on the grow spectrum. no no. not good

Ahh there we go. all fixed.

Well that's it for the journal. I am running it for its first time on 18hr as a test. Lets see how well my job did. Thank you Mars Team.