Oh man, tell me about it! I'm having trouble with one of my kids atm. Just had a sudden behaviour change, quit his apprenticeship so he could bum around with his mates. Had me worried he was doing meth or some other weird shit. Cant seem to talk to him. It's a worry. But then my oldest boy smokes a bit of weed, has done some LSD, but communicates which is the biggest thing. He seems to have a good handle on things in general. I've happily given him a bit of weed in the past, just so I know he's getting good stuff and nothing laced with meth or whatever, or that synthetic shit. His mother would kill me. NZ is still quite conservative, obviously. We had a referendum to legalise weed this year, and the vote was tantalisingly close. I think it was like 48% for, 51% against. I think we were a bit too distracted by covid to have a really good debate about it. My own parents were dead against it when I bought it up in conversation, but 5 minutes later had changed their mind. Since the vote was so close, theres been a big shift in the attitude of the Police here too. New legislation gives them the power of discretion, and now aren't even doing their annual aerial cannabis recovery operation, instead pumping their resource into fighting meth. That's a good thing
Well that was a bit sad. I went and checked up on the outdoor grow. It's been 5 weeks since I last checked. All of 'his' weed was well and truly gone, all bar a fairly dried up stump, and 'mine' was looking pretty sad too. There was no seed in it, so that was good, but the buds were quite light, and there was only 4 nodes. Oh well, it's all learning. The plant was very yellow, so I didn't think it would do much more, so just took it home. I think that I might have poisoned the poor thing, giving it too much seaweed tea, or maybe the square of carpet I had around it as 'mulch' was leaching something to fuck it up. I dunno. At least it doesn't stink too much, drying out in my shed. I've come to the conclusion that maybe outdoor sucks.
So I'm still waiting for those China bits to arrive, but in the meantime playing around with ideas for flower light and driver. Nearly found a good driver, but it was coming out at 50VDC, 8A, which just a tad too much with no real way to dim it down for my wee 2x2. Just gonna suck it up and get the MeanWell. Found a few other heatsinks, and I've devised a good plan for them. Some of the heatsinks had a good milled spot, so now that I've found a couple more, I can join em up and make a handy little fixture. I'll have room for 4 CXB3070'S and can dot in some far reds in the middle, and maybe IR as well? Dunno if that's needed or not, but should be a good ka flower light.
Day off work today, Mrs Noobie at work all day....got work done! I cut down my flower heatsink. That was a mission. The cutting disks on my grinder wouldn't cut through all the way, so had to hacksaw that sucker. Phew. Looks good though! 10kg cut down. Made some wooden rails for it to slide into position at the top of the cabinet. Secured the wooden lid I have for the cabinet on as well. Plan to use the space between heatsink and the 'ceiling' for excess cord storage by velcroing them to the ceiling. Theres a couple inches there. Gotta figure out how to filter and vent, as well as power in. I smashed in an earth rod outside and sneakily snuck an earth wire into the shed, installed a buzz bar top right of cabinet. I just plan to earth most shit. The veg heatsink I was planning on using wasted too much space, so found a rack mount option which gave me some space for the cloner pump to sit in its little anti vibration hammock. Think that's about all for now. I've put the flower heatsink on the rails so I can slide it out to access the ceiling space. Plan to have the power supply to cobs pluggable, so I can unplug and remove. Still lots to do, but damn, I'm running out of inspiration for today.
Oh yeah! My dodgy af LED drivers arrived from China yesterday. They were going to be my stop gap veg lights. Came with warm white COBs, but have some cool ones coming soon. Hahaha, check those suckers out! Lol, I got no idea how I'm supposed to wire that shit up! Not sure how to test those. Might end up blowing something up. They might be short lived. Hehe, that'll learn me!
So I went and bought some more shit. Wire, heatshrink, and some plug type things for wiring up cobs. $22 Also found some good stuff. Another router kinda thing with 3 internal compartments im gonna turn into a carbon filter. I've got a flat fan I've recovered that'll sit in the mid compartment and on the two sides ill make some carbon filters with activated carbon which I'll get from the pet store for aquarium filters. I've already sourced some filter material to stop the carbon falling out top and bottom, and I'll make up another grid plate to form a cavity under the filters for air flow. Make some passage for air between compartments, and boost it out with the flat fan. I'll have to make up some flat conduit to take the air out the side of the cabinet, and have the whole filter assembly attached to the ceiling. Getting kinda tight for space up top there, so might have to drop the light an inch. Also found a kinda flanged plastic pipe thingie on the side of the road today that'll be a good cable entry point at the top of the cabinet, and I've got a black draw string bag, I dunno, from a pair of sunglasses or something, that'll seal tight around any cable coming in and not leak light. Alibaba says my COBs are about to arrive.
Hmm. Been thinking...maybe my fan is too grunty? Not sure. Regardless, its bloody noisy! I've done some bench testing. It sure moves some air. Even if I can muffle the noise down, its still gonna create quite a drought in the room. Hmmm, maybe I need to learn how to program the kids Arduino, and make a cut off switch for it. Someone comes into the shed, kills the fan. Think I might try muffle the outlet, make a bit of a cavity and soften the inside with foam rubber of something. Need a bit of R&D. Maybe I can drop the amperage feeding it. Good times.
So anyway, I hooked up two of these fans to a 12vdc 1.25A power supply. In parallel, didn't seem to kick them back at all, so I put them in series. Now doesn't putting them in series retain the current, but reduce the voltage delivered to each? So that would have them getting 6v each? Anyway, the fans output was greatly reduced to an acceptable level. Cool. Started thinking about how I could run the two fans at the same time in my space, but then thought I'd see if I could find another power supply stashed away in the endless clutter of my shed. Found an old cell phone charger. Way old. 9vdc @ 0.21A, hook it up, and we have a winner! I feel a whole lot better about continuing down this path with the flat carbon filter now. It was starting to look like it was time wasted. Hehe, wasted.
Ok, so I think I've let my OCD get away on me with the filter. Hope it'll work. Should hold about 1.8kg of carbon. I decided against using a fabric screen In favor of packing more carbon in there and allowing as much air flow as possible. It's a work in progress, so that may change. Still yet to work on the exhaust side of it, and muffling the sound.
Finally got around to starting on my 'veg' light. Not sure what K those cobs are coming in at, but I decided to mix em up, and I've got one cool white and one warm white. I'm gonna mount the drivers at the top of the cabinet, and made the lead to power the cobs pluggable so I can shift things around if need be. I can also choose to run either the cool of warm cob separately, or both together. It was fun putting it all together! Still gotta sort out my earthing before I fire that up, to be sure to be sure.
Bitta work tonight on the out side of the carbon filter. Damn, gonna cost $30 for carbon for it. Think I can get a cree cob for about that price. Hope it works. On the plus side, I gave my boy some of what little bud I did get off of 'my' plant the other day. Said he got a good relaxing stone off it, didn't completely blow his mind and he managed to keep a relatively clear head. If you remember, that plant didn't stink too much, which is fucking awesome, and although it was growing about a couple hundred yards away from 'his' boy plants, I managed to get one single seed off my girl. One. Hope its a girl. I feel I've got unfinished business there. I kinda mistreated her, over feeding I think. Fingers crossed when the time comes for it