Use External Dimmers on LED grow lights? Is it possible?

Indoor Growing
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I have 2 MARS HYDRO TS 600 LED Grow Light 2x2ft. They don’t have built in dimmers. Has anyone ever tried to hook up an external dimmer to there lights?

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LEDs dim slightly different than conventional fixtures. (I believe) all the dimming would have to be done after the driver, as you use PWM to turn the lights on an off rapidly. If they don’t get enough voltage they simply won’t turn on.
In my experience with stage lighting, LED fixtures that don’t support a dimmer natively are just not dimmable without reworking the fixture.

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Can I ask why you want to dim these? They only run 90 watts. It seems overly complicated to save .02

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Sorry I was away. I would like to slowly increase light intensity throughout the flowering stage. I read by doing that the plants enjoy it. Rather than blasting it with max light throughout the flowering process.

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As mentioned above:

  1. It probably wont work, and might even damage the drivers.

  2. Your lights are already under powered unless you are growing in a very small space - like less than 4 sq feet.

If you are still worried about too much light - just raise the lights higher above the plants. The energy drops as the square of the distance, so twice as high = 4 times less energy reaching the plants.

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You could accomplish this with DIY LEDs and a microcontroller. Doing it at a price that’s worthwhile? Not going to happen unless this is worth a lot to you.

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Yeah. Its really not that important. I felt I should ask before I ended up wrecking my lights or buying a dimmer that didn’t work. Thanks peeps.

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i’m running a marshydro ts3000 the dimmer control in on the outside

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M SpiderFarmer has an option for an external dimmer but I don’t know enough about led’s, in general, to know whether the diodes are dimmable I have a few bloomspect 600-watt blurples that came dimmable tough cool but good luck sir

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The LED chips themselves are dimable with no problems as long as you stay within the acceptable ranges for those diodes.

Its the drivers that are the issue. Some LED drivers have built-in circuitry that allows for dimming and some dont. If they dont have it built-in, then you are running a big risk by hooking up an external ‘dimmer’.

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You can also find drivers with an input to attach a potentiometer for dimming. You could use this to attach a microcontroller. Then programming is it’s own issue… I’ve wanted something similar- a sun analog, with sunrise and sunset effect if both color and intensity. Only difference is I wanted it for sleep regulation. Never has been cheap enough to bother.

Something to consider would be if you DO ever build your own LED setup, if you used multiple drivers per panel, you could stagger the on/off times. So it gets one half the strips at turn on, and then an hour later the other half turn on.

Beating a dead horse at this point, feels like, lol. I’d be curious thought if there is any substantial change with a binary lighting system as opposed to a fade in and out.

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@ChemicalDependant yeah to some people it seems to much to bother. Imitation of the sunrise and sunset is something I’ve considered Imitating.
Anyone ever read about it making any difference?

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LED drivers either use constant voltage or constant current to power the LED’s. The voltage/current can be varied by 0-10V PWM input on the drivers(Meanwell). Dimming the LED’s will have an impact on the color spectrum emitted - this differs according to the manufacturer of the LED’s (OSRAM, Samsung, Maxim, etc).

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I love the dimmers on my LED’s from GrowLightsAustralia. Oh so easy to reach and adjust.

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Prawn is a good man and knows what he is doing……. Good lights but not cheap and shipping adds to the price considerably!
Good to see you over here…. @webeblzr

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Hi @bitwiser welcome to OG, good to have you joining in👍

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Thanks for the welcome. I am doing research on problems growers are facing as I am an embedded software developer. I’m designing an automation system with AI/Machine Learning capabilities. Would like to hear what common problems growers are facing and proposed solutions.

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Hey Oldjoints, Prawn really is a good dude. I wish I was a methodical as he is.
They do something with shipping, as it became cheaper once they processed my order.
I’ll be ordering the Buddies soon, I just need to recoup my beat to a pulp bank account this year.
Great seeing over here man!

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