How to connect a Dimmable electronic Ballast? In this video Alchimia give us a step-by-step guide to connecting to two kinds of reflectors. The dimmer allows us to regulate the intensity and energy consumption according to the changing state of our plants in indoor home-growing spaces.
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Alchimia Growing Happiness
Today I’m going to show you how to connect a Dimmable Electronic Ballast to two different kinds of reflectors…
Let’s open the electronic ballast’s box, we find the instructions, the protective cardboard, the ballast (lovely), and the cables to connect it.
We’ll start by connecting a Stuco type reflector that already has it’s cable fitted, the Plug & Play. We simply connect the output of the ballast to the input of the reflector. It’s that simple, and we’ll also connect the supply cable, under there, it’s 220v and it’s ready to connect now.
Step 2. Very simple, take the bulb, in this case we’ve got a 250w ballast, so we’ve got a 250w HPS for it. Carefully, trying not to touch the glass part with our fingers, which will help to prolong the life of the HPS bulb, and screwing it in firmly so it stays in place, but not forcing it, we don’t want to break it… perfect.
Now all that’s left is to connect the ballast to the mains supply, let’s turn it around to see the dimmer switch, which has various settings: 50%, 75%, 250w or Supercharge.
As we can see, it takes about 10 seconds for the bulb to start working. Now it’s on, we can adjust the intensity to 75%, to 100% which is 250w. We sell the same ballast in 400w & 600w, or the Turbo, the Super-charge which gets us a little bit more light from the unit.
We’ve disconnected the Stuco Plug & Play Reflector, and now we’re going to connect the smooth reflector which, as you can see, comes without any kind of cable. Simply a terminal strip, which is where we’re going to connect a cable like this one, which has a male Plug & Play at one end and stripped cables at the other end.
Simply take a small flat screwdriver and we have to fit each cable to it’s colour. Starting with blue, put it into the terminal strip, carefully, so that the whole cable is in there and tighten firmly.
The yellow/green is the 2nd in this case, which acts as Earth. This cable is important because if there’s a short-circuit or any electrical problem, it’s going to mean the domestic circuit breaker will work and avoid any problems or any fires, or any scares.
Perfect, tighten it up, turn the reflector around, take the bulb… as we mentioned earlier, we can hold the metal part with our hands, but not the glass, fit it in carefully, the same as with the other reflector, firmly but without forcing it. Until we can see that it’s well tightened, perfect.
One more simple step, we’ve got the Plug & Play cable, we’re going to connect (we need a bit more cable in this case, it doesn’t quite reach), we connect it directly male to female and, the same as before, we connect the mains supply cable.
This setup works the same, the dimmer switch works exactly like before.
There you have it, Dimmable Electronic Ballast… at www.alchimiaweb.com
