My light has burnt diodes, does it matter?



The light is my veg light. It’s a Mars hydro ““1000w”” I think. Purchased in 2017 so I can’t remember. Pretty sure it’s 100w. I don’t know when these burnt but I’d like to be sure it’s ok to keep using the light

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I don’t see why not. I could be wrong but I don’t really see how it will cause any harm.

Kind of weird, you would think they were in a string and it would knock out others. If no smoke comes pouring out and it still produced light I would use it.

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I seem to remember that it will get worse because the load on the other diodes will be higher and lead to more failure quicker. I could be wrong though

Either way, I’d upgrade if you’ve got the budget.

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It all depends. But what is the option, not using it and saving it for another day? I would be thinking of a backup if I was the OP, myself I would take it apart to see what is wrong. But I have a thing for electronics.

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Upgrade is defiantly the way to go but I would still use it if it had enough diodes running. Might as well get what you can out of it since it is failing. A 5 year old Mars 100 watt light has likely given a person all it can at this point. I think you are right about it dying quicker but you might as well use it till that point.

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How old is that light?
I haven’t seen one with parallel diodes in a long time…

Cheers
G

It’s a first gen I think

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It is 5 years old but it has not been used for 5 years. I bought it, used it for a couple weeks, and then had to move to a place I couldn’t use it. I only started using it properly about a year ago.

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5 years old is at least a couple generations of LED development. The tech is improving at warp speed.
The improved efficiency and output of current generation LEDs might be worth the upgrade.

Yes, depending on the electronic circuit, having one of more Emitters burnout “could” cause premature failures of the other LEDs on the same circuit. Often light fixture have more than one circuit, so if one circuit is diminished the other circuits wont be. Better fixtures use protection components to keep the other individual Emitters burning normally even if a few burned out.

Other than the increased risk of more emitters burning out, there is no reason not use it. Of course the rated Par will be a little less in spots. If you know for certain that the emitters are individually protected (like better Christmas lights are) then there is absolutely no reason not to use it.

Oh I know this is majorly outdated. I’m only using it cause I had it around and it works for the tent that it is in. I am getting a bigger veg tent that will likely get a better light and this will stay in the small one until it fails.

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You nailed it. :+1:

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Yeah, I feel Mars has come a long way in the last year or 2 but their older gear was not known for its quality.

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I’m still running a mh refector 48 that looks like this. I got it in '17 and it’s still giving me good results for what it is. One day i’ll swap it out for a hlg and use it as an excuse to build a sexing tent. :rofl:

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Heck, I use LED light bulbs.

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Super easy to fix brother! My buddy had the same issue. I fixed his for him too. They way they are wired sometimes one burnt diode can make a bunch go out. Take a digital multi meter and put it on the resistance setting with the diode option. Test each one of the leds and resistors. You can cut out the old led and solder in a new one or you can solder in a piece of wire to bypass the bad led and get the others that are out to work.

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Not from what I know about LEDs! That was actually a major selling point for us with Low Voltage Landscape Lighting, when converting to LED. a 3W LED would replace a 25W halogen and a 6W LED would replace a 50W halogen. with landscape lighting (non-LED), thats EXACTLY what happens. 6 bulbs @ 50w ea on a 300w transformer. Blow one bulb, and its 5 bulbs pulling 60w ea. Blow another and its 4 bulbs pulling 150w ea and they all start burning up. CAST lighting made us take courses and learn how to distribute power properly. LED’s turned that upside down cause I could put a 1W LED on a 100W power supply, or I could put 99 of em on it, they would burn the same.

LED’s draw current differently than Halogens / filament based bulbs.

It all depends on if the power supply is designed. People now know how to build the stuff, earlier on in a company’s learning curve, who knows. I would say it is probably just fine (as much as I would say considering it has had failures already).

@Foreigner is most likely correct. Usually there is some parallel wiring with a constant current driver. If you have 1 amp going through 10 diodes in parallel, then each one gets 0.1A. Now if you lose 1, you get 1 amp going through 9 diodes and each one is now running with 10% more current than before. The extra heat from driving the diodes slightly harder can accelerate burnout among the other diodes.

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Most likely. Having some air movement across the light would help out.

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