Are cobs really worth it?

Growcob5

Active Member
What about QBs to protect yourself from FLIR aka helicopters looking for grows?

Gov. Chickenpooper-D :dunce: and the Dems and Repubs in CO are recriminalizing pot for the little guy.

Time to go to Oregon where the state legislature voted to legalize coke, meth and heroin ( I am not kidding). :o

I am not sure it has gotten to the OR gov desk yet/
Ur on the real i seen a lot of picks like thiss look at this my boy got nocks at door than a kick for this is what fuck him look an see give a way. Thats my bors home i try to tell him win i cud not get out that door i seid u need to figger it out no no i got this i got this week laeter kick kick boys in blue Screenshot_2017-07-13-23-13-16.png
 

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SoOLED

Well-Known Member
been a minute since I posted, I took all the data I learned from here and our crew has been, under more demand then ever. getting patients medication at a reasonable cost. I have lots of pics on my phone, we done some really nice runs. mostly Colorado OG, Tahoe OG, and the very popular black berry cherry pie x G4 by in- house-genetics, just a lottery winning pheo, from the beans.

its all COB led, but I'm still throwing in the CMH's at about week 2 of flower. were saving about 600w (alot more in VEG) for every 10x10 area.

are COB/LEDS worth it; yes.

Ill say this too; its a better way to grow, from engineering aspects, cost, ease of use. all of this makes time for other parts of your operation. you can spend more time on dialing in for best results.

I worked with huge XXLHPS hoods and ducting, with specialized light hangers/safety chains to handle all the weight. magnetic ballast that weight 10,000 pounds. the wasted money of boxes of bulbs that might still be good. I cant imagine going back to all that. (the old man refused to use digital ballasts: I never questioned him)

just constant break down, clean, set up soO much better, that alone should be worth it.
 
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SoOLED

Well-Known Member
well at least your cmh bulbs are good for a solid year or more. id like to see some of the hybrid grows with cmh and cobs if you dont mind posting pics
I Have some old ones posted from; I think it's been a year. We also switched from blue buckets to green top hat feeding systems. We picked up a lot of gear and not running anymore DE's at all!!! Top to botttom OG Tahoe, my grape ape, and the BBCG4IMG_0943.JPGIMG_0940.JPGIMG_0874.JPG
 

VegasWinner

Well-Known Member
I have read a lot of threads on riu that have truly opened my eyes and changed the way I grow, but this is just 14 pages of shit slinging, my god.
Cobs are worth it.
Funny. I retired all my cobs for chilledled tech lights and DIY Samsung flexible strips and my own pcb 100w board. Cobs are radiators with lights attached heat is lost energy or lumens. Samsung diodes run at 175mA create very little heat and creates luminosity nearing 200 micro moles per watt
 

PSUAGRO.

Well-Known Member
Funny. I retired all my cobs for chilledled tech lights and DIY Samsung flexible strips and my own pcb 100w board. Cobs are radiators with lights attached heat is lost energy or lumens. Samsung diodes run at 175mA create very little heat and creates luminosity nearing 200 micro moles per watt
You're generalizing high power ceramic/wafer packages vs mid power pc boards, nothing more................................. congrats:)
 
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CobKits

Well-Known Member
Cobs are radiators with lights attached heat is lost energy or lumens.
COBs and midpower LEDs like the 561C use the exact same phosphor white technology and both operate up to about 200 lm/W at similar capital cost when run softly. Thus at similar luminous efficacy they have similar heat creation (albeit the boards may "seem" cooler because the heat is spread out).

boards and strips can offer an advantage in coverage but as far as luminous efficacy its the same technology. The limiting factor in efficiacy of a diode is heat removal, and running a cob at 10-20% of its maximum current is right in the same efficiency range to running a mid-power chip at 10-20% of its maximum current. There currently is no efficiency that a mid-power chip can reach that a cob can't. The use of mid-power chips is a design decision based on cost and application of light spread. As far as efficiency, its not a "magic bullet", its simply a blue die under a white phosphor (same operating principal as a cob where the dies are all together under a single phosphor layer. Advancements in technology will be better blue dies and better heat transfer, both individual diodes and COBs will see these improvements. Hard to say if we will continue to see the 10% year over year yield increases, the tech will probably slow down/top out, due to the fundamental electrochemical and material science limitations.

midpowers may offer an advantage on coverage (and ability to mix spectrum) but cobs will always have a niche because of cost and economics of scale. You can get a 300 diode mid power board which you have to design and have assembled (for our market, in relatively small batches which drive cost up), or a you can get similar results out of a 600 diode COB (or a few 144 diode cobs) off the end of an assembly line making millions of them at the highest production efficiency and the thinnest of margins. Throw that in an off-the-shelf COB holder and its the cheapest easiest path to efficiency for many people. Of note is the fact that cobs have gotten so much more efficient and more notably so much cheaper, that we dont have to run them at such high currents to end up with a cost effective builds, so in theory, COBs achilles heel, the heat removal requirements are diminishing year over year, just on chip cost because people can buy more chips cheaper and run them at 1050 mA or below

luminosity nearing 200 micro moles per watt
i think you mean lumens per watt as "micromoles per watt" is not a unit

maybe you mean micromoles per joule and its closer to 2 not 200.
 
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SoOLED

Well-Known Member
Funny. I retired all my cobs for chilledled tech lights and DIY Samsung flexible strips and my own pcb 100w board. Cobs are radiators with lights attached heat is lost energy or lumens. Samsung diodes run at 175mA create very little heat and creates luminosity nearing 200 micro moles per watt
once you start getting in to margins like that you will changing gear all the time.
 

wietefras

Well-Known Member
once you start getting in to margins like that you will changing gear all the time.
Especially since his assumptions are not true anyway. As CobKits also explained, COBs aren't less efficient than boards at all. So if people are chasing non existing benefits then indeed they will just drain their wallet and waste their time.
 

CobKits

Well-Known Member
im not knocking boards- in fact ill be stocking them soon

certaily not worth shelving a good cob rig. anything cxb3050 or better has years of life left imo.
 
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