SolStrip LED lighting: Product info and announcements

That’s a sweet looking light bro. Well done :+1:

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You need to figure out what amps are gonna be pulled through the wire then find cable that has a slightly higher amp rating.

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Hey man, nice work! What is the connector called that hooks your driver cord to the frame?

It looks like that would take a good yank and not pull any wires.

This picture:

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I believe its called a pg9 cable gland or something. I don’t know if I set it up properly but it does keep the cord from tugging when you tighten it.

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Just catching up here, been focused on our website upgrade.
@neogitus, I have to ask, did you read the assembly instructions for the SolStix Rax that were sent with your order, that you posted here? Did you glance at them at all? The rack assembly couldn’t be simpler if you just follow the step by step instructions.

If you use the wiring diagram in the instructions you run two negative (black) leads down the center two SolStix (affix them with the black cable ties), keeping them from hanging and flopping around. Your end-to-end wire runs are what used up all your wire. To replace it, get SOLID CORE 18 gauge, often called “primary wire” at the Home DePot or hardware store. Do not use stranded wire.

You’ll attached the cable glands to the wrong port (hole) in the frame. The glands, and the power connector and wire nuts, should all be parallel to the SolStix, not perpendicular. Those ports are for a controller add-on that you didn’t order. Ignore them for now. You’ll probably need to pick up some new Wago nuts with your wire, they are hard to remove once installed.

Looks like you’ve mostly got it sorted with a little help from our OG friends, but I’d highly encourage you to clean up these things, especially the wire runs, before putting those lamps into service.

If your vendor is quoting the 600w Mean Well at 3x the 320w, you should look for another vendor:
https://octopart.com/hlg-600h-24a-mean+well-47113554?r=sp

Most sources price the 600w at a little more than 2x the 320w price, but you also get wireless digital control options that you don’t get on the 320w. Good reasons to go either way depending on your needs, but not really so much on price. Biggest downside with the 600w is weight IMO - they are beasts.

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I looked at it 100x. Just because it’s simple for someone doesn’t mean it will be for everyone. It def could be simpler with pictures or even a video. Why would I have asked for help here if the instructions were so easy to me?

Now I’m just annoyed that I did shit wrong and have to take everything apart so I prob wont try again for a few days. The instructions may look good to someone who has done this before but to me they just looked gibberish and still do. I don’t know a single thing about this shit. I’m not a light builder and have never done this before.

And the thing about the cable gland, still have no idea what that means lol. There’s only a big hole on one side of the aluminum frame on both the lights. Looks like its gonna be awhile before I have my thing setup right. I only turned it on for 10 seconds to take the pic and it’s been off since hope I didn’t damage anything. Would it burn out if I left it on for too long or something or are the wires just hanging dangerously?

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I got the meanwell 320 from eBay. New it cost me £50 delivered.

The 600 I gave around £190 for it from rs-online.com
https://uk.rs-online.com/mobile/p/products/8163865/?grossPrice=Y&cm_mmc=UK-PPC-DS3A-_-bing-_-3_UK_EN_LED+Drivers_Mean+Well_Exact-_-Mean+Well+-+LED+Drivers+-+8163865-_-hlg+600h+24b&matchtype=e&kwd-71743562168103:loc-188&msclkid=669cddf02b0115d0d10a83b5a4e51696&gclid=CPb1tfiOz-cCFTBAHQkda2UNyg&gclsrc=ds
As you can see it’s MORE than 3x the price and closer to 4x

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Cable gland:

One rail of each rack pair has two large holes or “ports”. The power ports are on the vertical leg of the rail, opposite from the SolStix mounting holes (small holes), as per the instructions you posted above:

“Use the female DC power connector and black PG9 cable gland to mount the
power connector through the power porthole in one of the Rack rails (it’s the large
hole in the vertical side).”

You’ve taken on quite a large rack build for someone with out any experience wiring a basic circuit, so I appreciate your frustration. Looks like you’ve learned a lot, but I still think you need to re-run your wiring before you put those lights into service in a grow environment. You’ve got a lot of power there, you need to make it safe. Feel free to reach out to me directly at solstrip.com for help.

Recommended wiring for SolStix Rax (from the instructions):

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Like I said, you could have got the 600w much cheaper from other vendors. Octopart lists several offerings for about 135 GBP.

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Still near enough 3x the price of what I paid for the 320 bro.
These 600s. How do we go about adding WiFi to them??

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That’s what I was going to ask! If it was a HLG-600H-24B I would say with a Blufish controller like I run…

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Mines the b version with the cable you add a potentiometer to. Basically they are not Wi-Fi enabled but you can add a Wi-Fi enabled potentiometer to it I reckon :+1:

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Well the B series use a 3-in-one dimmer, so you can control it with resistance (potentiometer), 0-10v, or PWM. PWM over wifi can easily be done with an Arduino and some basic programming. That’s essentially all my fancy $200 controller is.

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Yeah it has an extra cable that I just isolated with tape. I’ll just stick with the potentiometer and a sonoff pow cheers :rofl:

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Wait until you see the monstrosity that will be my new light in the workshop. Hint, it has 27 solstips in it. :smiling_imp::smiling_imp::smiling_imp:

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I can just imagine bro. Go big or don’t bother at all is my way of thinking but the Arduino stuff and all that programming I’ll pass :laughing:my brain just can’t process information like that. I’ll not clutter @Baudelaire thread anymore. I’ll pop by yours and see how much it’s moved forwards since I confused everyone with the plasterboard sizes :laughing:

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I’m a programmer by trade and decided that it was cheaper to buy a solution than to spend the time developing one at my current wage.

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Ok cool… so that’s a cable gland.

What can you use to extend the wires from the driver to the cable gland?

Like if I want to have a remote driver for a theoretical sol strip build, what kind of yank proof options could connect something like this:

To the gland?

Thats the wires that come from the driver that would eventually connect to the actual strips.

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You need to keep the cable from the driver to the strips as short as you can otherwise you will get driver loss.

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