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Powering a single plant stealth box.

Discussion in 'Growing Marijuana Indoors' started by Sign, Apr 24, 2016.

  1. Can I power a stealth box without connecting cables to it? I thought of using an accumulator. I know nothing about these stuff. Is it possible at all?
     
  2. How do u mean ? You don't want cables running across the room ? Place it in front of a plug socket or wire a new socket in .

    Every piece of equipment needs a power cord of some sort unless you run pc fans off 9v box battery's , doubt any grow light without a proper supply of power , dunno what an accumulator is so couldn't help you there

    If life gives you lemons
    You make lemonade
     
  3. The short answer is yes. The longer Answer is I wouldnt.

    Im assuming the plan would be two batteries, one charging one in use. Swap them once a day, Id aim to swap at what should be the dark time to minimise disruption.
    -If youve got any serious amount of light in there, running for most the day, and probably 30% loss to inefficiency in inverters unless you can get everything in models that will accept low voltage DC from the battery you'll be needing two pretty dam big batteries, charging and swaping wont be stealthy.
    - heat from the inverter may be a concern depending on scale and box design.
    -if your thinking no inverter and low voltage that should rule out using LED- Iv never tried it with grow lights, but led gig lighting (and were talking units people spend thousands on) hates the type of voltage fluctations you'd get at the end of a discharge cycle. This means either sticking with the higher consumption lighting options or double the battery size so the lamps never see the bottom half of its power output. either way dam big battery.
    - this system will literally mean you can not leave for a single day, you need to be there for that battery change at the right time every day, no doing anything else with your life.
    - Iv not seen a lighting timer that carries on timeing with its incoming power off- your day would move back by the time it takes to change batteries each day unless you reset it.
    - there are saftey issue with handling large batteries not present in mains systems. and from your question Im guessing you dont have experience
    - the running costs will always be more than an mains system due to inefficeny in battery chargers and inverters.

    The degree to which any of that is a problem depends upon how much power you need in there.

    Oh and if your thinking not mains charged batteries but say a solar panel on the top and keep it all self contained- due to the principle of conservation of energy the best most efficient system money can buy can at best be not quite as good as putting a window in the top instead.
     
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  4. Essentially its a system of mains input > battery charger > battery > output to inverter (DC to AC) and/or transformer (low voltage to mains voltage) if required.
    You can either assemble that kind of system from components or get a system in a box (think UPS for servers/computers) if all you want is battery back up to the mains, if you want continuous power in a place away from mains you need to flip flop multiple sets of batteries at the load and keep the ones not in use charging.
    [​IMG]
     
    • Like Like x 1
  5. Aren't car lights powered by an accumulator?
     
  6. They're run off the battery?
    Are you thinking alternator? (powers cars electrics and battery off the engine)
    Either way - try asking a car owner if they're happy for you to leave their lights on for 18hrs a day long term, how insistently they tell you to fuck off will be an indication of how large the battery needed would be to do this well.
     
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  7. We use lamps run of car battery's , gotta buy special 12v bulbs for them .

    I know only what wilflet has told about your accumulator but common sense leads me to believe you're gonna need 3 or 4 of the largest car /truck battery's you can get to not have a significant drop in power . Grow lights even cfl's covering a full canopy draw a good chunk of energy over a 18hour period .


    If life gives you lemons
    You make lemonade
     
  8. If @Sign knows what he wants light /fan / air pump wise I'm sure we could do a rough how big a pile of batteries calculation
     
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