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#451
03/22/2006, 07:36 PM
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As for white, you will have to define white  I see posts here all the time that call XM's yellow...I have no idea what the aquamedic pendent is using these days. sanjay. |
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#452
03/23/2006, 12:35 AM
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BTW, I am trying to look into EVC ballasts...are they a sub of sylvania? Any other thoughts or observations beyond the hard data? I like their bulbs...their 20,000K in particular, and was wondering more...
Also, any plans to test this 'crystal star' 20,000K? Looks like a butt-load of blue... http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/s...t_ID=lb-h4020q
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"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it" -Al Einstein |
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#453
03/23/2006, 12:47 AM
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__________________
-Greg |
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#454
03/23/2006, 01:00 AM
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Sanjay,
Thanks for information. Jim |
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#455
03/23/2006, 09:09 AM
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There are a lot of new bulbs comming on the market... most of them tend to be private labels comming from just a few sources. My guess is that these are going to be very similar to some existing lamps, just have a different name. I really do not have the time, energy or inclination to test every private label lamp. Now, if Iwasaki, BLV, Ushio or some other respected brand name puts out a new lamp.... that is a different story. Or if its a lamp that is generating a lot of buzz.. then I do not mind testing them. I still have a backlog of lamps to test, and have not had the time to finish them. And now with spending time getting ready for my new tank, testing time is getting even more scarce. sanjay. |
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#456
03/23/2006, 09:15 AM
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I presented this data at the San Jose talk that I gave a few weeks ago. For now, this data will only show up in talks that I give (I have to give the people that invite me to give talks something new that they have not seen on the web). I am going to wait until I get some data on a couple of different bulbs before it gets sent out to some aquarium magazine.Just a sneak preview.... for te EVC lamps that I did a long term test on.. the PPFD values were just as high (or in some cases higher) after 13 months of use... but there were significant changes in spectrum. So at this point I would still recommend changing these lamps out after a year or so. sanjay. |
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#457
03/23/2006, 10:12 AM
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 I totally understand though. I'll just sit here eagerly anticipating your published work. If it isn't too much to ask, what ballast were you using during your testing, and what was your photoperiod? PM me if I'm asking too much for public knowledge. I won't tell.
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-Greg |
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#458
03/23/2006, 03:31 PM
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Sanjay,
Do you have any insight into how the EVC 250watt ballasts seem to score so high in PAR compared to IC? At first it seemed that they must run a higher wattage (which might mean faster burnout like with HQI), but then, after closer look, it seems that the bulbs running on EVC ballasts have unusually high scores in the 400-500nm spectrums, and not so much across the rest (like with HQI). Could this be a sign of EVC using an even higher frequency than, say, IC? Usually with ballasts, the boost is across the whole spectrum, but this EVC seems to boost just bluer ones. Ad to that, there is a bulb or two where the EVC even outperforms the HQI ballasts on. What gives?
__________________
"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it" -Al Einstein |
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#459
03/23/2006, 11:45 PM
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I do not really know how the electronic ballsts work inside, and what the differences may be. I have been trying to get in touch with someone who designs MH ballasts but have not connected with anyone yet. It may be a matter of tunning... differences in components.. differences in design... ?
sanjay. |
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#460
04/07/2006, 09:26 AM
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#461
04/11/2006, 12:40 AM
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http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...58#post7080658
I wanted to repost this post from PaulErik here, from ahc lighting. He gives an interesting breakdown of SE vs DE... "Pulse start and Double-Ended (DE) 250-watt lamps are designed better than most Single-Ended (SE) MH lamps used for aquarium lighting in North America. European spec SE, pulse start SE and double-ended MH lamps typically have the longest useful lamp life. The inner bulbs (arc tubes) are normally filled with higher atmospheric pressure. This decreases the rate of spattering during ignition/starting and blacking of the arc tube overtime. These lamps require a ballast that is equipped with an ignitor. The higher gas pressure requires a higher ignition voltage to start them reliably. Probe start SE lamps are known for rapid light output loss overtime. The starting method causes a lot of spattering during ignition. These lamps must have a low fill pressure to start reliably. Probe start lamps are old technology and will be phased out in the coming years in the commercial lighting field. HQI ballasts will decrease lamp life when used with lamps not designed for them. A prefect example is the Radium 400-watt lamp. This is a European lamp but is not designed to typical specs. It is actually designed for a standard pulse start / low current ballast. Using the HQI reduces service life significantly. This is not true for the 250-watt version. The 250-watt Radium lamp is designed for a HQI ballast (ANSI M80). HQI 250-watt ballasts are built to an ANSI M80 specification. All DE 250-watt lamps are built to this spec and only a few SE lamps are built to this spec. The M80 spec is considered a world specification. Currently the HQI 400-watt ballasts in North America are 430-watt HPS ballasts. These are not the best choice but operate European spec 400-watt lamps (AB/BLV/Ushio 10,000K and BLV 14,000K) closer to spec than other ballasts available in North America. I was asked to help design an improved North American 400-watt HQI ballast when 400-watt DE lamps were coming out. Unlike the current 400-watt HQI which is a Constant Wattage Autotransformer which uses a capacitor for lamp regulation it is a single core ballast with two coils (HX – High Reactance Autotransformer) and the capacitor is used only for power factor correction. The first coil converts the voltage to 220 and uses a second coil on the same core to limit current to European specs. This is the same way a North American ANSI M80 ballast is designed. They had a few prototypes made but they haven’t been released due to a low number of lamps made to this spec. A ballast limits current to a lamp. A HQI will overdrive probe start SE lamps (most SE lamps available in North America) and other low current spec lamps with more current than they are designed for. This causes the lamp to operate at a higher temperature. The temperature increase will also increase internal operating pressure. Quartz glass softness at higher temperatures. This allows salts and metals to leach out the arc tube and also increases the rated of impurities to leach inside. This can be seen with some lamps. The getter inside the outer bulb becomes exhausted quicker. With some lamps the getter will change color. The getter is placed between the outer and inner bulb. The getters job is to remove impurities / mainly hydrogen that will alter lamp performance. For optimal service life lamps should be used with the ballast the lamp was designed for. Using anything else will alter performance and these other combinations are not usually tested by the lamp manufacturers so the long term performance is unknown. When looking at tests where the wattage was measured from the input does not mean the lamp is actually being driven at that wattage. Another thing is lamps are listed by the ballast wattage (the nominal lamp wattage the ballast is designed to operate). For example look at the Radium 20,000K (Blue) lamp wattage ratings: 150-watt lamp is actually rated at 160-watts 250-watt lamp is actually rated at 270-watts 400-watt lamp is actually rated at 360-watts The rated wattage is what wattage the ballast outputs to the lamp (when used on the designed ballast). Note: Most manufacturers rate universal operating SE MH lamps in the vertical position. Operating them horizontally causes the arc to bow upwards and increases electrical demand. This will also change the color temperature and usually decreases light output and life. DE lamps are only rated for horizontal use and optimized for horizontal operation. Using a ballast that under drives lamps is also not recommended by lamp manufacturers. Metal halide lamps are complex lamps. They are designed to operate within certain specifications. When a lamp is under driven the arc tube never reaches the optimal operating temperature and internal pressure. This causes some of the halides to not completely vaporize. The none vaporized halides can react with the arc tube wall altering lamp performance greatly. The decrease in operating temp/pressure can also increase the wear on the electrodes. The getter is also designed to function properly at a certain temperature. If you look at the manufacturers specs to most of the electronic ballasts imported today you will clearly see these ballasts are not really designed to operate all types of MH lamps which people are lead to believe. These ballasts are generally designed to operate pulse start and/or probe start MH lamps. These ballasts will operate a 250-watt DE (ANSI M80) lamp like a standard pulse start (ANSI M138/M153) ballast would. In my opinion the electronic ballasts are a great alterative to probe start and pulse start magnetic ballasts." So it seems that the bottom line is that DE should be on HQI/HQI equivalent e-ballast, and that SE should be in e-ballast, or you will end up with diminished bulb life/spectral shifting. This supports a few pages or so ago where I posted that a lighting engineer (former pupil of Sanjay at Penn) stated that running HQI might seem good, but diminishes PAR by 60% within the year. She must have been talking about SE bulbs only, which makes sense since that is what she runs on her reef (She is against DE because something about the sockets easily arcing and welding the bulb in place...???...then again, SE has a rather violent end-of-life response). This also matches with my experience where my 10,000Ks seemed to color shift more when running on Icecaps than regular HQI when comparing to ones I had just put in. The e-ballast would in that case be worse for the DE bulbs than HQI. Hmmm. Sanjay, I was talking with my doctor buddy Al (ReeferAl here). He mentioned that he sent you various bulbs for long term bulb spectrum and PAR testing. I hope you plan on comparing the DE & SE on HQI & e-ballasts and mix&match to get some results that many a reefer has wondered over the years. So many mysteries revolve around these combinations of bulbs and ballasts regarding long term wear... I cant wait for concrete evidence!!!
__________________
"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it" -Al Einstein |
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#462
04/11/2006, 08:00 AM
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__________________
-Greg |
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#463
04/11/2006, 08:36 AM
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From IceCap:
["... If you look at the manufacturers specs to most of the electronic ballasts imported today you will clearly see these ballasts are not really designed to operate all types of MH lamps which people are lead to believe." ...] In general a reasonable conclusion and that's why we decided on a ballast with a sweeping, high frequency output so it could light any bulb. Any single frequency would not be the answer to the variety of bulbs available for reef aquariums. We did discover a whole family of MH bulbs that isn't compatible with our ballast, Ceramic Discharge bulbs. They use the MH arc to heat ceramic to the point it glows at a consistent spectrum from start to finish. Unfortunately, last time I looked the highest K offered was 5K. Only our 70 & 150-MH can run these bulbs. Andy |
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#464
04/11/2006, 12:23 PM
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Somebody needs to design an electronic ballast that will burn any MH bulb, and have an adjustable power/frequency output so you could run any wattage bulb and be able to "tweak" the color a bit. A dimming function like the IC 400W ballast would be cool, only implemented in such a way that it could be controlled by a lamp dimmer so you could control it with an X-10 lamp module or even have X-10 control implemented in the design. Better yet, incorporate digital control into the circuit so you could program dawn/dusk and overcast conditions on a small digital display. Make them linkable so you would only have to program one, and the "master" could tell the "slaves" that today is going to be overcast for a few hours or whatever. A battery backup so you could use it with an aquacontroller or such and it wouldn't lose its programming. It should produce nearly no heat, be encased in a NEMA 4X enclosure with watertight mil-spec twist-lock panel mount connectors, look really cool with blinkey lights and buttons, and cost under $50.
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-Greg |
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#465
04/11/2006, 12:47 PM
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Armygreen11, you are dreaming
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go BIG or go home |
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#466
04/11/2006, 12:50 PM
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A friend was asking me if I knew anything about some 'adjustable' halide ballast. One that you could hook up to a computer or something and program the ballast with some software depending on the bulb you wanted to run (so you could crank it up for DE, and turn it down for SE or something). I havent heard of it...but it sure would be a nice feature to have with an electronic ballast. Im sure it would knock up the price a bit...software development and USB interface and all...but it would be nice...
Does something like this exist already?...my buddy seems to think he heard something about it...
__________________
"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it" -Al Einstein |
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#467
04/11/2006, 05:07 PM
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This one ??? the IEPC ballast looks like it will do some of the things you guys are asking for.. but I doubt it will be $50
www.vb1000.com They want to talk to me about testing it, I guess I should reply to thier email sanjay. |
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#468
04/11/2006, 11:36 PM
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Wow, that thing is SWEET! Seriously, when I hit the lottery, I'm getting a few of those. Definately get back with them Sanjay. Even if only for the sheer fun of getting to play with one.
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-Greg |
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#469
04/12/2006, 02:26 AM
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My G0D, its a masterpiece! I want 5!!! I wonder what the pricing would be like though...that 1000 in the model number might be a hint, eh?
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"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it" -Al Einstein |
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#471
04/12/2006, 08:42 PM
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What would be the best 400w SE Electronic Ballast? PAR, Punch in Blue spetrum, bulb longevity?
EVC Ice Cap Blue Line
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The more I learn, the less I know. |
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#472
04/16/2006, 02:41 AM
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Sanjay, I need help. I forget what the exact rule is, and figure you might know, or where to find the exact details on...
The rate that intensity diminishes from a source of light. The square rule, or something like that. Something about within a distance from the bulb less than its length... It has to do with the reason linear bulbs are able to penetrate deeper than the point source intensity of halides. I remember seeing it, it gets brought up, and forgotten just as quick...but I would like to know it. Can you give me the details teach'? How do linear vs point source bulbs vary the inverse square rule?
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"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it" -Al Einstein Last edited by hahnmeister; 04/16/2006 at 03:04 AM. |
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#473
04/16/2006, 08:52 AM
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According to the inverse square law, the intensity of a point source of light decreases inversely as the square of the distance from it. So if you were to double the distance the light intensity would drop to 1/4 of what it was. A MH has the light source size of about 1.5-2", whereas a 4ft FL lamp has about 4ft of light source. So to really measure a 4ft FL as a point source you would have to be about 20ft from it. Measuring FL lamps is kind of tricky at short distance.. since the light source is quite long. A FL would spread the light over a larger area. So if we assume we have a FL lamp and MH lamp generating the same number of photons/sec, they would be spread very differently, resulting in very different values of PPFD if single point reading was taken. I have not found an easy way to compare the FL with MH that I feel would be acceptable to the reefing community. Hence I have not ventured into testing FL lamps. The best caparison in my book would be to compare the output of FL lamp fixtures, in a manner similar to what I did with reflectors. Since what we really want is the spread distribution. On a 4 ft fixtures, this woould mean collecting even more data points than what I did with the MH reflector using a 3ftX3ft grid, and several (6-8hrs) of just data collection if we go with larger grid. It would need a whole new setup and hell of lot more time than I am willing to put into it right now. I did test some 2ft T-5 fixture from Sunlight supply..... to see that result come to WMC It will eventually get written up, but for now its only available in my talk.sanjay. |
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#474
04/16/2006, 01:48 PM
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Ok, thanks Sanjay.
What I am getting at in particular.... T5s, or any linear bulb for that matter, would penetrate deeper than halides (up to a distance of say, 48" for a 48" bulb). So while halides would be more intense closer to the bulb, the T5 would be more intense at say, 24" or 30" down into the tank. Correct?
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"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it" -Al Einstein |
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#475
04/18/2006, 05:03 PM
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I do not know if this will be the case.. definately worth checking out. I know that for a 4X24W T4 Sunlight supply fixture, the peak intensities are lower than that of metal halide up to the 12" that I tested. I would doubt that the t-5s will be more intense as you go further down. This is something that can be put to rest with some tests. Next time I get setup for testing, I can try to test this.
sanjay. |
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Linear Mode
