Congrats on this grow. I LOVE your cabinet. I nearly bought a supercloset at one time but the cost was just too high. I may build one for myself one day but for now my tents do the job. Wicked nice lookin' buds, though. Cheers!
Scientifically speaking, you ought to make sure everything is the same so the only variable is the lights. Unless they are both used in the same environment on the same plants it's real easy to taint the results so anyone can claim BS on the test. I hope to hear more about how the test is set up.
You could build a nice QB light fixture with your budget. I did 2x 600w QB fixtures for a 4'x8' tent for under $1k. Also, hortibloom had their luma cob bars on sale super cheap recently, you could get 3x of the citizen 1212 240w bars for $539 at 45 watt/sq ft. That would give you a little higher...
I managed to grab a bar, they seemed to have them in stock. All the various COB configurations were available. https://www.hortibloom.com/product-page/luma-b4-cob-led-grow-bar
For those that have no idea what vpd is (like me) here's a link. Lots to know, lots to learn. Thanks to all the old masters helping out newer growers like myself.
I live in a very hot area so I got a small portable AC unit to be safe and make sure my plants are kept at a reasonable temperature. Summers are brutal where I live. I feel like the AC will take care of dehumidification duties as well. It's dry where I live and very rarely gets above 50%...
PS I do have a fan/carbon filter and an AC unit, c02 and a controller is next but I am looking for a deal. So yes I do plan to do all that stuff eventually but my plants are coming out of veg in a couple of weeks so I need lights asap.
Way too late for that, LED parts have long since arrived. I am also not sure how well plants will grow with perfect environment and no lights. Overall cost of running these for the foreseeable future outweighs how cheap HID lights are to start with. HPS would about double my electric bill, not...
Switches finally arrived. I connected everything to the switches and ran a test tonight, everything worked as planned. Although I did mislabel the switch in my diagram above. Should be a DPST switch. Anyhow, everything seems to work as I intended. Now just to put this thing together this weekend.
I have 8x atreum 288.2 boards that I am building lights with that are like the HLG QB kits... 1200w of lighting for under $1k. I looked at Timber too but DIY was much cheaper. If I was rich I'd go with Timbers for sure.