Sun, 2012/01/22 - 9:01am
My personal favorite is HID lighting, Metal Halide to be exact.. 100W will fit in nicely in an aerogarden, This should give you around 8500+ lumens, with a high PAR rating..
So far the hood tolerates the higher temp.. one drawback is the light hotspot, not as evenly lit now that only one bulb does the garden.
The aerogarden on the left is a 3 bulb version, the one on the right is the HID. You can see how much brighter the HID one is. I dont have anything going yet, just a couple of seed kits going, I usually run cuttings but I have alot of seedstock and I would like to use it up.
Sun, 2012/01/22 - 3:06pm
#2
old wiring with sockets were removed, new wire was run through that hole.
ballast was set up remotely..
I'm in the testing process now.. I would have use the aerogardens timer, however my timing is a little different than stock, so I'm running an external timer, I"m going to run it awhile with a slightly shorter on cycle. I'll use the stock 16 hour timing and rewire my ballast to use the 120V input from the aerogarden in the future.
Sun, 2012/01/22 - 3:16pm
#3
Very cool! And then a clamp to hold the MH bulb socket in place? How'd you get that clamp anchored?
This is more than just passing interest. I want to run a (le gasp!) mid-size tomato experiment in my broken Deluxe, and my Pro100's light sockets are failing. The new flat bulbs in the old not-flat-bulb sockets, don't hold up, and it's gotten blinky - one light's only on part of the time after I jiggle at it, and goes off again every time I touch my kitchen counters. 
Well, to be fair, the machine's also 4 years old now. 
It's the only one of my 4 AG's with original hardware configuration (pump and bulbs replaced, but with Aerogrow replacements). Time for renewal...
Sun, 2012/01/22 - 3:21pm
#4
P.S. Do you grow with metal halide a lot? I use 6500K full spectrum CFL's - seem all-purpose, no real need to switch to lower Kelvin. Just wondering what plants you've used MH (4000K) for on full life cycle?
Sun, 2012/01/22 - 6:43pm
#5
Yeah, I like them for smaller herbs like chives, and oregano, cilantro, things with leaves ya know.... Keeps em small.. with very tight density, less stem with lots of leaf, tight node spacing. You can adjust kelvin with different types of MH bulbs.. I know this sounds odd, but it seems like the compounds like the oils and the aeromatics seems to develop quicker.. theres a tiny oregano plant and I can see the stem color alot sooner and it already smells like oregano.
MH is a bit more specialized.. however.. for small herbs this is my choice.
Sun, 2012/01/22 - 7:10pm
#6
Interesting! Thank you for sharing that, Squerl - never would have thought to use redder light to bring out the aromatics in herbs!
Cool, Squerl! How did you wire the metal halide light into the hood?