how to wire 3 drivers together to 1 power cord

I know im beating that damn horse to death brother, but heres a few more swings with my weapon of choice, lucille my vampire bat (TWD fans will appreciate that, ahahahha). Take it to a proper electrician because you are trying to do something that is going to have a very large electrical load. I wouldnt be able to sleep at night if i gave you advice on how to do it when you are obviously not that familiar with electrical wiring. I have been to the aftermath of MAAAAAANY fires in my line of work, ive seen horrible things noone should ever have to and it has been my job to clean up the aftermath.

Please for the love of god dont fuck with electricity if you arent 100% confident you know what you are doing.

Edit: many cases id be fine with guiding someone on basic electrical wiring, but 3 drivers together on one cord is probably more load than most ordinary household wiring things are capable of handling. You may think youve done it perfect and not know youve made a mistake until your house is a smoking ruins with dead family members inside simply because that cord you had was too small a guage and you needed a much heavier thing, think of the type of wire you have on a simple extension cord vs the type of wire you have in say your household clothes dryer. Make suuuure that cord is good enough.

Everyone here is correct on there statements.. If you have any doubt get someone qualified to do it for u.. Any service electrician would most likely meet u somewhere and wire it for 20$.. 3 drivers together will also have quite a pull on startup.. I have 2 drivers in parallel on each of my fixtures, but i ran 12 gauge wire with a industrial 20amp plug attached .. Sorry for the crappy picture. But as you can see i went way over sized.. I have been a sparky for a long time and have a healthy respect for electricity. Dont put your family, friends or neighbors in danger..
Cheers

Jimmyclone42 said:

Everyone here is correct on there statements.. If you have any doubt get someone qualified to do it for u.. Any service electrician would most likely meet u somewhere and wire it for 20$.. 3 drivers together will also have quite a pull on startup.. I have 2 drivers in parallel on each of my fixtures, but i ran 12 gauge wire with a industrial 20amp plug attached .. View attachment 3936777Sorry for the crappy picture. But as you can see i went way over sized.. I have been a sparky for a long time and have a healthy respect for electricity. Dont put your family, friends or neighbors in danger..
Cheers

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Yes. Thats exactly what im saying when i meant a clothes dryer cord. You do not want a standard type cord if u wire 3 drivers together. It might be overkill but better than not.

Extra safe when dealing with electricity is always my standard policy.

hybridcheef said:

yea iv already watched all those videos. and continue to re watch them all the time. he never talks about wiring multiple drivers into one power cord though.. believe me i looked. all im doing is building 3 bars . with 4 cobs each. in series. its not that difficult

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watch it again,@ 4 minutes he shows you exactly how to do it.

hybridcheef said:

i dont know why im still confused. so each driver has 2 wires. i put 1 wire from each negative wire on each driver into one wago and then do the same for the positives on each driver and then take the power cord ends negative and put them in the wago with the negatives and the same for the postive on the power cord with the positives from the driver??

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Correct. Ding ding ding.

Or put a power plug on each driver and plug them into a power strip.

hybridcheef said:

im just learning. and series wire isnt that hard to pick up on. and i guessed, and still got it right. so its sounds alot like commen sense stuff. just need refreshing. i know what ground is. i just wanted him to explain how he did it. and its very easy not to get shocked, you just follow safety protocols.

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"It's very easy not to get shocked"

Says a guy with zero understanding of electricity or wiring. Just something to think about.

I don't mean to attack the OP, but I find many of the questions and comments alarming from a safety standpoint.

I'd argue that its hard to " just follow safety protocols" with no understanding or knowledge.

So I know this is a pretty old thread but this is something I have a question on .. (not the how so much as I think I have picked up on that from growmau) My situation is I am slowly converting to COB bars buying a five cob 250w kit each time I get one with a goal to have 4 or 5 bars total (each with a separate plug and pentimoeter) so would it be worth my time you think (and also granted the pull on start up as mentioned above) to try to do like the Op mentioned and try to remove all the cords and fuse them to one and one pentiometer or would I just be better off getting a light controller? I am most worried about trying to run to one timer I mean I have thought of running all to one surge protector and then to a timer but that seems... less then ideal... what say you all!?

meangreengrowinmachine said:

So I know this is a pretty old thread but this is something I have a question on .. (not the how so much as I think I have picked up on that from growmau) My situation is I am slowly converting to COB bars buying a five cob 250w kit each time I get one with a goal to have 4 or 5 bars total (each with a separate plug and pentimoeter) so would it be worth my time you think (and also granted the pull on start up as mentioned above) to try to do like the Op mentioned and try to remove all the cords and fuse them to one and one pentiometer or would I just be better off getting a light controller? I am most worried about trying to run to one timer I mean I have thought of running all to one surge protector and then to a timer but that seems... less then ideal... what say you all!?

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Each bar is running at 250w max? 120 or 240vac? Timers are usually limited to 2200 or 3500w(10 or 16Amps). You can try it with 5 drivers on one timer but be not surprised when it's get lost because of a high inrush current. I would use at least a one with 16 Amp relay. Do you know Sonoffs? It's a timer which is controlled and set up via smartphone app. Very easy to use and you could use their 4-channel controller(10Amps per channel) to switch all the drivers on and off(one channel with 2 drivers). The 4-channel controller is connected to the wall and drivers are connected to the controller, no need to add wall plugs to each driver.

To dimm 5 drivers in once you need a 20k potentiometer but I would not recommend. You need to elongate the wires and connect each 5 + and - wires comming from the driver to two tiny prongs on the poti. Uneven brightness could the result when not all driver run with the same resistance. Two or three and a 50 or 33k poti would work but you need to add additional resistors to get a 33k poti. Maybe better to use 5 100k poti's and good is.
You can get small 0-100 scales for potentiometers or poti's with scale. Makes it a lot easier to dimm them to the same level.. Just a tipp..

Such poti knobs are cheap(e3ay) and make adjustment a lot easier. A 5pack costs around 4 bucks and they are available in three different sizes..

Randomblame said:

Each bar is running at 250w max? 120 or 240vac? Timers are usually limited to 2200 or 3500w(10 or 16Amps). You can try it with 5 drivers on one timer but be not surprised when it's get lost because of a high inrush current. I would use at least a one with 16 Amp relay. Do you know Sonoffs? It's a timer which is controlled and set up via smartphone app. Very easy to use and you could use their 4-channel controller(10Amps per channel) to switch all the drivers on and off(one channel with 2 drivers). The 4-channel controller is connected to the wall and drivers are connected to the controller, no need to add wall plugs to each driver.

To dimm 5 drivers in once you need a 20k potentiometer but I would not recommend. You need to elongate the wires and connect each 5 + and - wires comming from the driver to two tiny prongs on the poti. Uneven brightness could the result when not all driver run with the same resistance. Two or three and a 50 or 33k poti would work but you need to add additional resistors to get a 33k poti. Maybe better to use 5 100k poti's and good is.
You can get small 0-100 scales for potentiometers or poti's with scale. Makes it a lot easier to dimm them to the same level.. Just a tipp..

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Not true you can use a wago, or wire to put all the drivers to the pot.

1212ham said:

Or put a power plug on each driver and plug them into a power strip.

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that would have to put a strong power strip. i ended up just leaving them all seperate. have hit it up and running for 3 grows now. im not pulling the weight it should out of all three drivers im only getting around 350 grams dried. thats not even 1 gram per watt. i hav 3 cobs on each bar. each bar is 4 ft long. with about a ft in between each cob. should i move them closer together? because the last cob on each bar is almost sticking out the front of the tent. and there extremely close to the plant. im thinking of just mounting them to ceiling. its been a couple grows and im not getting any where near what i want.

Randomblame said:

Each bar is running at 250w max? 120 or 240vac? Timers are usually limited to 2200 or 3500w(10 or 16Amps). You can try it with 5 drivers on one timer but be not surprised when it's get lost because of a high inrush current. I would use at least a one with 16 Amp relay. Do you know Sonoffs? It's a timer which is controlled and set up via smartphone app. Very easy to use and you could use their 4-channel controller(10Amps per channel) to switch all the drivers on and off(one channel with 2 drivers). The 4-channel controller is connected to the wall and drivers are connected to the controller, no need to add wall plugs to each driver.

To dimm 5 drivers in once you need a 20k potentiometer but I would not recommend. You need to elongate the wires and connect each 5 + and - wires comming from the driver to two tiny prongs on the poti. Uneven brightness could the result when not all driver run with the same resistance. Two or three and a 50 or 33k poti would work but you need to add additional resistors to get a 33k poti. Maybe better to use 5 100k poti's and good is.
You can get small 0-100 scales for potentiometers or poti's with scale. Makes it a lot easier to dimm them to the same level.. Just a tipp..

Click to expand...

So I am doing my conversion in stages because I cant afford to drop a grand on lights in one shot. So right now I have a bar with 5 cxb3590's run by a meanwell hlg 240H C2100B. It came with the power cord and pent all built. I am now going to order more of these (well more DIY from kingbrite the first was just from timber so much easier to throw together) The Sonoffs seem cool but I dont really need it to be on my phone or anything just reliable to start and stop on time with all that juice. I was also thinking of using a digital controller like grow mau shows off in his vids and yeah I am pretty sure he just wagos all his stuff together... drivers and cords and all...maybe I should just re watch some of his vids and order a sht ton of wagos. I think my start up draw is going to be my main issue...

sixstring2112 said:

watch it again,@ 4 minutes he shows you exactly how to do it.

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yep exactly the episode I was thinking of. Now I need to find the one with the digital programmable controller!

Pretty sure it was the Canopy10 with different COB's, UVB, XP-G3's and monochromatic diodes. As far as I remember it's the only light he made with a Bluefish Controller from rapidled. But he removed a few of his older vids because of google restrictions. Don't know if it's still available..

meangreengrowinmachine said:

yep exactly the episode I was thinking of. Now I need to find the one with the digital programmable controller!

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Randomblame said:

Pretty sure it was the Canopy10 with different COB's, UVB, XP-G3's and monochromatic diodes. As far as I remember it's the only light he made with a Bluefish Controller from rapidled. But he removed a few of his older vids because of google restrictions. Don't know if it's still available..

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yeah it was something very nice that he made that used that but I think the wiring principles would be the same and I think he spelled in out in that one. I hope it is still around. The fact that they removed so many of his and others how to vids suuuuucks

ah yes the canopy10 build is still there! Man that thing is so beautiful!

meangreengrowinmachine said:

ah yes the canopy10 build is still there! Man that thing is so beautiful!

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Yeah, he has outstanding skills and has spend a lot to setup his workshop. 3D printer, CNC maschines, water and laser cutting times and what ever else was used and shown in his vids are not exactly cheap.
Too bad that his prototypes never went into production...
But introducing his skills to chilLED was a logical step.
I hope there's more to it than just the new LM301b puks with added 660's. White/deep red stripes(5-7:1) would be great and are long overdue IMO. I would have brought them out last year if I had a business!

mate!
#thefutureisbright