Salutations Learner,
...would like to ask fellow members hopefully with experience with serious watt usage...
Appologies. The thread's announced topic says "Suspicious" content, so what if one could be suspected of being such a person?...
I mean you know how paranoïd some people will become as soon as "marihuana" is evoked, right?... It doesn't matter that one's past projects had been aimed at the total opposite on the spectrum: i wanted a couple dwarfs on a window-sill but the spider mites will eat them! So, to make it brief i was surprized to some degree when i read the description of an indoor cannabis cultivator...
How much can we actually pull without arousing any suspicion...
Read the User's Manual!! Ha! Ha! Seriously, it's on-line. I've checked for some information on those data-logging meters we got around here in my little remote city of Québec, Canada. The meter is marked something like 15 minutes intervals and 5 minutes sub-intervals, it has the ZigBee logo, etc. And those clever devices can measure simultaneously at least 3 parameters that i could find by reading some of the available documentation: voltage, current and phase. That's right, but if i got it figured out correctly this means the sampling rate of their 3-channel electric meter would be extremely low compared to CD-Audio, for example. The minimum interval being 5 minutes i've come to hypothetise it must be a sign that 3 readings can be accumulated and then transmitted 4 times an hour - e.g. as 12 hourly packets possibly. That's a rate of 12 samples every 60 minutes, or for every 3600 seconds... Which result into a sampling frequency of 0.003 Hz, if i got it correctly, euh... CD-Audio is 44100 Hz if i'm not mistaking. So, that's not like a microphone had been installed at all and yet i find it offensive because it's not just generating billing data, one way or another!
At the basis it seems the theory was that this can help consolidate power grids, reality though requires a contrasting description i fear.
In any case i simply wish to point out that even with a sampling rate as low as 0.003 Hz (when our CD players are 44100 Hz) it doesn't mean there's no supplementary data to be extracted as "events", on the time axis. More clearly what i'm implying is that those new meters are like Bell's telephone lines based on 20 mA current loops, except in this present case the current is rated in amperes while we all know this system worked reasonably well for about a century!! And they got amperes to measure... Now with anything connected to a timer the owner is actually generating a time-coherent signal which will amplify itself easily since it has the precision of a metronome. Consider they got the sensor(s) and the channel(s), digitized right ahead on the wall. That should sound like a deterent enough, especially in the home-country of our dear Commonwealth i would argue!
Quite frankly my opinion is that the reader looking for a really low-profile solution will probably end up buying LED assemblies and i just hate the idea of such complex contraptions in cultivation environments. Not to mention the cost and lack of flux on top of that.
In addition, as if it wasn't sufficient, i'll compound it all with the 24 h/d schedule since i'd personally advise against generating "events" if one can help it. The lesser the better i would believe... On/off sequences over an 80 days period will make you detectable beyond planet Mars i guess! MouHa! Ha! Oh, and not just one 600 Watts units, no sir!! There gona be many!!
Hummm... Have you by any chance ever considered using an A.M. radio as found in old cars? If not it's time to find one and move around a cannabis culture installation with it in an attempt to determinine some
Detection Range. I'll bet you can "hear" it (litterally!...), once standing on the sidewalk.
But i suspect YMMV.
In any case if that works then a trio of A.M. radios will allow triangulation from the sidewalk, i would conclude, and if that's the case then maybe it would be a good idea to think of a solution to RFI "noise" potential issues. Personally i'd favour an hybrid scenario inspired of green-houses with a light supplement (remove as much load from the grid as possible), but under the recent context i'm now convinced 24 h/d with a modest session consuming no more than some old computer left on indefinitely may be the only option left. After all these can be refurbished to serve as customized routers, whatever, etc... It sounds plausible. But many 1 KW units turned into a beacon?... I see no way you can hide that indefinitely. The idea sounds gross to me at best, as far as i'm concerned i wouldn't want to do something like that anyway! Lucky you, i envy such luck somehow!! It's quite a satisfying hobby, isn't it?
...all advice, experience or links...
That's the problem i have: i got no such 1st-hand experience, e.g. being arrested over a cannabic cultivation space - and i'll avoid it because this has been declared a monopoly by government in Canada last year and they won this war, so far. Yet i think you should be worried that there's the human factor playing in your favour but the machines will continue to record relentlessly, nonetheless. IMO that calls for some form of rationalisation if you wish to remain low-profile... But that's only me! Which doesn't mean you can't ask about similar considerations when people who do have the required experience provide the expected advice...
...if possible feel advice from a uk grower pulling above that wattage would b ideal obviously...
My hope is that you'll have plenty of these, actually i remember now that you already have. Sorry, i didn't read through it all i must confess! My customized HA contration can feel heavy at times...
Anyway. Good day, have fun!!
