Criminals Using Drones To Find Cannabis Farms and Steal Crops 258
schwit1 (797399) writes "There has been a huge surge in the number of hidden cannabis farms across Halesowen, Cradley Heath and Oldbury, towns on the outskirts of rural Shropshire some seven miles from central Birmingham. They require hydroponic lights for the marijuana plants to grow – and the huge amounts of excess heat given off make them easily spottable for a would-be criminal with a drone carrying infrared cameras. One such man says that after finding a property with a cannabis farm he and his crew either burgle or 'tax' the victim."
Just one more reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just one more reason (Score:4, Insightful)
... to legalize and regulate.
That is unlikely to happen in Britain. Politicians won't legalize it because there are too many special interest groups that want to keep the status quo of the endless "War on Drugs" and all the money that flows into it. In America, it has only been legalized in states with citizen referendums, so the politicians were bypassed.
Re:Just one more reason (Score:4, Insightful)
The only reason there were violent gangs who made money selling alcohol back in prohibition was because it was illegal. Once alcohol was legalized, it took a lot of power away from gangs. Legalizing weed would take some money/power away from cartels which is always a good thing.
Re:Just one more reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Legalizing weed would take some money/power away from cartels which is always a good thing.
Sure. But it would also take money/power from the police, police unions, prison guards unions, etc.
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Legalizing weed would take some money/power away from cartels which is always a good thing.
Sure. But it would also take money/power from the police, police unions, prison guards unions, etc.
I perceive that you are paraphrasing the parent.
Re:Cartels will be fine.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cartels will be fine.... (Score:5, Informative)
Except for that's not how it's panning out in places like Colorado and the Netherlands, where it's largely smaller growers who are making money....
The Netherlands here. Not quite. We have this utterly silly situation where the selling of mj is sort of legal, up to a certain weight and only in designated establishments (the famous coffeeshops). However the growing and distributing is quite illegal.
The mom and pop growers are entirely insignificant compared to organized criminals. The latter produce way more than local demand, so much of that is exported.
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Re:Cartels will be fine.... (Score:5, Informative)
That is correct. Like I said, an utterly silly state of affairs. So the output of these coffeeshops is legal (provided they respect the weight limits, don't sell to underage visitors, etc) while their inputs aren't.
The way it is now (but this is being debated constantly) we are basically not enjoying the major potential benefit of decriminalisation, which is taking the wind out of the sails of organized crime.
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AFAIK you can grow hemp for fiber legally in the Netherlands. I would not be surprised if that is how people got the cannabis in the first place.
Is the law on cultivation actively enforced or not? If the law is only on paper but not enforced it might as well not be there.
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AFAIK you can grow hemp for fiber legally in the Netherlands. I would not be surprised if that is how people got the cannabis in the first place.
Possibly so, at first. However, these days the strains used for industrial use (rope, clothes, paper) are almost a different species from the ones for, um, recreational use. In fact, some of the mom and pop growers specifically do so because they find the stuff from the coffeeshops too potent.
Is the law on cultivation actively enforced or not? If the law is only on paper but not enforced it might as well not be there.
Yes, it is actively enforced. Everything over 5 plants constitutes a rather serious offense, and people do get caught.
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Drugs would no longer be grown by organised criminal gangs.
They would be grown by respectable businessmen who have no problem with killing 50% of the people who buy their products while deliberately making them more addictive.
Re:Cartels will be fine.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think that's just personal squeamishness talking. It may very well be that the sociopaths who did bad stuff for the cigarette companies are just as evil as the sociopaths who run the cartels. But they do seem to control themselves a little better when they can make tons of money by staying in the law's good graces.
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To some extent, I measure how threatening they are by how dangerous they are to me as a bystander. I'd much rather see a major cigarette outlet near my house than an illegal marijuana distribution center. I can avoid most of the problems wit
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If they were able to increase their profits from other drugs at a whim, why would they wait to incur marijuana losses before doing it? Why wouldn't they just do it now?
Re:Just one more reason (Score:5, Informative)
Sure. But it would also take money/power from the police, police unions, prison guards unions, etc.
Come on, I refuse to believe that these entities are actively working to put more people in prison for no good reason.
That's bullshit, police unions represents police officers, usually union policies are made by vote.
I refuse to believe that most police officers want to lock up people for no good reason
I believe it. In New York City, we had the stop and frisk laws. Officers got caught on tape telling the cops under their command to fill a quota of arrests -- and to arrest black people. Most of the arrests were pot busts after illegal searches. (Possessing marijuana was a violation, not a crime. The cops forced people to commit a misdemeanor by emptying their pockets and displaying marijuana, which was a crime.) That was the subject of a lawsuit, which was also reported on Slashdot. It all came out in court, and Judge Schendlin wrote it up in her written decision.
The new police commissioner was complaining that cops arrest people towards the end of their shift so that they can get overtime pay. Think about that for a second. They're arresting people so that they can make more money.
As I recall, one of the strongest opponents of liberalizing drug laws in California was the prison guards' union. It was pretty clear that they wanted to keep the prisons full to protect their jobs.
That said, they may very well have insights into why weed is bad. They may have experience traffic accidents, etc.
Oh, yeah. Who has more insight into why weed is bad -- cops? Or doctors, psychiatrists and scientists?
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The people who are the real problem are the criminals. The only way to resolve that issue is by cutting them out of the market.
The only other problems are a public health issue. You'll have more cases of people driving under the influence, and smoking in general increases the cancer risk of the population. Now whilst those are credible issues, they're no worse than the legalisation of tobacco & alcohol. In fact, you could argue that tobacco & alcohol are worse due to their higher incidence of addict
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I'm not a fan of marijuana, but I also don't see the point of locking people up. They're stupid yes, but dangerous? Maybe if they were already unstable to start with or have a history of disregarding the law. People who simply sit in their homes smoking pot and occupying the couch don't hurt anybody and it doesn't make a lot of sense to pay for their incarceration.
Drug war rhetoric aside, most of the people sitting in their homes smoking pot do not end up incarcerated if caught. For simple possession, in most cases the offender is cited and released. They go to court, pay a fine and probably have to go to a mandated drug class. It's great for the police and courts - a bunch of revenue and seized property which they can use to arrest more people to shakedown.
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Come on, I refuse to believe that these entities are actively working to put more people in prison for no good reason.
Then you know nothing about the California "three strikes law" which was written by the prison guard union, and passed through an aggressive ad campaign that the union funded which invariably and exclusively used the stock phrase "violent criminal" to give the voter the impression that these were the only people being locked up for the rest of their lives.
But the law only required the first two "strikes" be "serious", not violent, crime and the third strike could be virtually any thing at all (given prosecu
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Come on, I refuse to believe that these entities are actively working to put more people in prison for no good reason. ... :)
I think it's more likely that private prisons advocate for more prison time, etc. That would be the American thing to do
Are you suggesting that money is not a good reason?
http://cca.com/ [cca.com]
Prison operation is now private and they want to grow the business.
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But giving power to the government is a bad thing.
Re:Just one more reason (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not a good thing, if your financial interests are aligned with the cartels.
If I'm on Al Capone's payroll and you ask for my opinion of the 21st Amendment, I'm going to say it's a bad idea.
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No, the main reason why there were violent gangs making money selling alcohol during prohibition is that nobody respected the law enough to follow it. It's a similar situation here where a ton of self centered people are more interestedin smoking pot than in respecting the law.
The blame for the narco-gangs rests solely on the people who buy illegal drugs, and it will stop as soon as people stop giving them money. Focusing on your preferred solution is just plain dishonest. Especially given that there are genuine drawbacks to having pot easily available.
Interesting. So the real problem with Prohibition was not that it was a bad law, but that Americans were bad people, self-centered law breakers who should have respected this fine piece of legislation.
Good to know.
Can have trippy cake and eat it too (Score:3)
You can easily legalize MJ and continue your money-generatin war on all the other drugs. It's like a token gesture to the people to make them think the government has given them something, while at the same time pacifying them even further. Win/Win (for the government).
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in britain you can still keep it(the war on drugs). there's plenty of other substances to keep fighting against.
besides, situation with mj in britain is that if you get caught with a joint/small bag pretty much nothing happens(compared to some other countries where they will raid your property..).
anyhow, it would be pretty easy to entrap these guys, to extract money from them. setup the lights and cameras, wait with your crew and boom, they pay or go to prison for extortion.
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more like a run on gun shops (Score:2)
and in England, where this story obviously hails from, the Acme Boobytrap Catalog will start getting a lot more orders. I should think scimitar installation and bear traps will be big. yes, new technology creates business!
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I can see how this kind of story would support legalization (crimes against criminals often go unaddressed), but how would it support regulating? Is theft unusually common with unregulated crops, as opposed to regulated ones?
(Ignorance plea: Heh, it occurs to me that I don't even know what crops are regulated and what isn't. Maybe agriculture is already totally micromanaged by Washington; I sure hear enough stories of corruption (e.g. subsidies) within the t
Left-Wing Propoganda (Score:3, Interesting)
the Colorado Government is already at it with their right wing propaganda
Colorado is (narrowly) governed by the Democrats, not right wing. The Democratic governor is trying to slow down states [washingtonpost.com] from legalizing, despite it being a roaring success for everyone.
In fact what you'll find these days, is that most right-wing people lean libertarian - which is exactly why the people of Colorado (who lead independent/to the right) were perfectly fine legalizing something so many people did all the time anyway.
Look t
Re:Left-Wing Propoganda (Score:5, Insightful)
Hello America!
I think you will find that both the Democrats and the Republicans are firmly right wing.
Sincerely,
The Rest of the World
Re:Left-Wing Propoganda (Score:5, Insightful)
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So go pick a fight with Boko Haram.
Re:Left-Wing Propoganda (Score:4, Insightful)
Then I guess Iraq was OK. After all, Hussein was abusing the locals and funding terror in the rest of the world. Glad we've got that cleared up.
Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to look like a dumbshit on Slashdot. Quick quiz, how did Saddam Hussein come to power in the first place?
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Dear You,
Please butt out of our domestic politics. It's none of your goddamn business, and yet foreign politicians know more about state-level politics in America than they do their own provinces.
As one American to another - STFU. Perhaps you are right in that other people should stick their noses in our internal affairs. But that does not change the truth of what the OP said (Dems and GOPers are pretty much right wing.)
That you chose to enforce the former instead of acknowledge the later, that is intellectually disingenuous to say the least. To kill the messenger is not supposed to be the American way.
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?
Because Asia is known for its right-wing politics, what with China and Russia?
Where are you getting this?
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No, most right-wing people *claim* they lean libertarian.
And they do. Except on drugs. And media regulation. And pornography. And abortion. And federal abstinance-only funding. And gay marriage. And government religious endorsement. And assisted suicide.
'Libertarian' in the US is essentially a codeword for 'conservative, but don't want to admit it.' The only true libertarian aspect they have left is their economic policy, which stems less from any form of idealism than it does from the influence of corporat
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I claim to lean libertarian.
I wish the government would DECRIMINALIZE ALL DRUGS. But, at the same time, let the idiots who decide to overdose suffer the consequences of their actions. That is the point at which the liberals who want to LEGALIZE drugs fail the logic test. They want the government to allow them to use their favorite substances, and then rescue them when they have trouble. I want the government to stop inserting themselves into everyone's personal choices, including during the negative results
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I'm not sure who you're talking about with media regulation and drug rehab etc. I can pretty much tell you that porno restrictions aren't some universally agreed-upon principle of feminists, and not all liberals consider themselves feminists in the first place.
For abortion, nobody disputes that a new organism was formed at conception. They dispute that the new organism's right to survive supercedes the mother's right to autonomy.
I don't actually disagree about the marriage thing, but I disagree that it ha
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All the people I know personally who claim to be libertarian are pro-choice, pro-drug, pro-porn, against federal government being involved in sex education At all, against special status for churches, and pro-assisted-suicide.
I, mind you, am not a libertarian. I'm far too socialist for that. But I agree with them on many principles of freedom. Where we part company is that I want business to be heavily regulated. Businesses are legal fictions to begin with, otherwise they are simply groups of people.
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Proper Libertarians would object to the existence of corporations in their current form. Incorporation is a grant of special status from the government.
Wrong (Score:2)
And they do. Except on drugs. And media regulation. And pornography. And abortion.
The only one of those things that most people "leaning to the right" I know disagree about ever, is abortion. That's still a hot topic which society has not figured out an answer that pleases everyone, and probably never will.
But all of the other things? Please. Modern libertarians are not not for heavy regulation on anything, much less drugs... I personally think legalizing all drugs is the only sensible thing to do.
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There are a couple problems with your argument.
First, in the abstract I can agree with definition one and definition two, but only by using a slightly different definition of "human being" each time. If you insist on having a consistent definition, then you have to display it and I'm sure I'll disagree with one or the other of those statements. Your #2 definition involves genetics. Your #1 definition involves moral culpability and is unrelated to genetics.
The second problem is that just because the unbor
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It's called a life cycle or specifically a diplontic life cycle. A new human is created the moment a zygote is formed. Just because a creature is in a different stage of its life cycle and doesn't look anything like the members of your species that you deal with on a daily basis does not mean it is not a member of your species. Abortion is nothing more than setting arbitrary points at which to declare a human as "sub-human" and not warranting the rights afforded to humans.
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A grouping of cells with no brain isn't more alive than the cells normal people sneezes out, defecates out (yes, in addition to the excrement living cells from the intestines are discharged) or are output in other ways.
Most civilized countries have abortion laws that limits abortions to a collection of cells unless special circumstances like the life of the mother is at stake.
But I guess you are one of those that thinks that men ejaculating when masturbating (or those ejaculations that aren't conscious - th
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So you support human rights for skeletal remains?
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So you assign the "privilege" of living to be the same level of importance as driving?
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You're getting distracted in trying to answer the question posed, when the question itsself is missing the point.
Life isn't the issue here. Life is misdirection. No-one outside of a few of the strictest Buddhist groups actually cares about life itsself - as is demonstrated with every animal slaughtered for meat, every pest rodent killed with traps or poison, and every insect swatted because they look ugly and dirty. The real question shouldn't be over when human life begins* - the question is when, for purp
Not in agreement (Score:2)
I think abortion should be allowed twosome degree. But this argument has a problem:
it should be possible for everyone to at least agree that it can't happen before there is brain with some level of function. No brain, no problem!
When you buy a lamp without a bulb, do you throw it away before you plug it in because it's not emitting light?
Or instead is some value placed on the container before it's switched on, because of inherent capability...
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I was really making the point that political labels are so adaptable as to be to some extent meaningless.
Duh... (Score:5, Interesting)
In the old days, criminals would just follow others out or use dogs trained to sniff out other peoples grow ops in some farmers field, woods/back wood lot/etc. They're just going hi-tech, nothing to see in that sense.
So much nonsense in terms (Score:4, Informative)
"They require hydroponic lights for the marijuana plants to grow"
What the fuck is a hydroponic light? Are we talking sonoluminescence or what? That's gotta be inefficient.
You mean an HID light, which produces tons of heat and is easy traceable from both ballast noise and heat.
Shoulda gone LED, suckers.
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LEDs aren't there yet. You can't get cannabis to flower properly under LED lighting, nor can you get the sort of growth rates you'll get under HID lights. It might be useful for cloning...but flourescents work fine for that.
Also, the newer digital HID ballasts are silent. Even older magnetic ballasts don't make much noise, especially if they're installed properly. Your biggest noise issue is going to come from exhaust fans, but that can be minimized as well if you know what you're doing. Or so I've hea
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Re:So much nonsense in terms (Score:5, Interesting)
My sister-in-law works developing LED lamps. She's a biologist, was headhunted from the university after her PhD (that was about how different types of UV light affect plant growth) by some engineers. Basically what she does is she tests various configurations of LED lights and fixtures, checks how they affect plant growth, tells the engineers to build "that one". Rinse and repeat.
What she's told me, and I have no reason to doubt this as she's not trying to sell me anything (and the fact that she's very proud of her work ethics), they're getting very much better results than with HIDs. With much less power consumption, obviously. Now, they specifically haven't tested cannabis, but I have a hard time believing the light requirements would be so drastically different than from other very light-needy plants.
The thing is though, they're not yet selling to consumers, just to large commercial greenhouses. The company is still early stages. And she's been unwilling to loan me a unit for test purposes, dammit ;) But I'm willing to bet in a few years HIDs will no longer be the choice, at least when it comes to power consumption and heat; I expect the lights will be quite pricey, at least initially.
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My sister-in-law works developing LED lamps. She's a biologist, was headhunted from the university after her PhD (that was about how different types of UV light affect plant growth) by some engineers. Basically what she does is she tests various configurations of LED lights and fixtures, checks how they affect plant growth, tells the engineers to build "that one". Rinse and repeat.
What she's told me, and I have no reason to doubt this as she's not trying to sell me anything (and the fact that she's very proud of her work ethics), they're getting very much better results than with HIDs. With much less power consumption, obviously.
Why would they need less power consumption. The lumens per watt of most HID lamps is the same or better than LEDs. This Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] has several examples of the efficiency of different kinds of lights. Most of the LED examples they give show around 50-100 lumens per watt. For metal halide, they show 65-115 l/w, for high pressure sodium it's 85-150 l/w and for low pressure sodium it's 100-200 l/w. It sounds to me like the HID lamps are MORE efficient than the LEDs, so why is it obvious that the LEDs w
Re:So much nonsense in terms (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would they need less power consumption. The lumens per watt of most HID lamps is the same or better than LEDs. This Wikipedia page has several examples of the efficiency of different kinds of lights. Most of the LED examples they give show around 50-100 lumens per watt. For metal halide, they show 65-115 l/w, for high pressure sodium it's 85-150 l/w and for low pressure sodium it's 100-200 l/w. It sounds to me like the HID lamps are MORE efficient than the LEDs, so why is it obvious that the LEDs would use "much less power consumption"?
I'm not pretending to be an expert on the issue, as stated this is second hand information - however, that Wikipedia page seems to describe the kind of lights one would use in general lighting. The lights she's shown me are nothing of the kind, mostly a mixture of red(ish) and blue(ish) LEDs. Apparently that's what plants crave (I suppose the light has electrolytes).
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hell I've got technology to grow some plants without any light at all (very useful for the cattle/sheep ranchers) with a 99% reduction in water requirements.
Do you call this technology Farmville?
How do you reduce water requirements by 99% and still grow a plant? Since plants are made mostly of water, wouldn't there be an upper bound on water requirement reduction that's nowhere near 99%? Otherwise, what is the plant made of? Do plants really lose >99% of uptaken water to respiration, etc.?
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Let's take one of the crops I've done. Wheat fodder grass for animals. Using current traditional soil methods, one acre of fodder grass will require 100,000 gallons of water. Most of this water is lost via transpiration of the plant and evaporation from the soil.
I can build you a 1/8 acre building, load it up with recirculating vertical-stacked NFT channels, and you could produce that same acre of grass using 1,000 gallons of water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com] - have one of the UK projects I worked on.
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You've listened to wayyyyy too much marketing and read too much ill-educated nonsense on cannabis forums.
The light cycle itself triggers flowering. Red light just happens to be a bit more efficient than blue for photosynthesis. I've done flowering under pure blue light and still obtained the typical stated yield from the seed supplier's website.
HPS gets used for flowering because the intense green output, which can go through the canopy, down to lower sections of the plant, where the green has overall super
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Marijuana plants like direct, intense sunlight. Unfortunately LEDs aren't very scalable. As you increase the current they start to run into physical limitations and the efficiency goes to hell. A 100W led may only put out 50lm/W, where a 1W led could put out 100lm/W.
HIDs are actually extremely efficient (Around 100lm/W) and scalable (bulbs go up to 1kw+). To get and equivalent amount of light out of LEDs with some sense of efficien
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"Marijuana plants like direct, intense sunlight. Unfortunately LEDs aren't very scalable. As you increase the current they start to run into physical limitations and the efficiency goes to hell. A 100W led may only put out 50lm/W, where a 1W led could put out 100lm/W."
I'm sorry, we've got plenty of LED systems out there pushing 2,000+ umol from several feet away, like any HID. And typical 100w LEDs are about 130 lumens per watt. Cree has LEDs available for the consumer that at 1w drive get 200+ lumens per w
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Correction, XPG2 is a 5W LED, not 5A. 1.5A drive.
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Ah sorry, I simply misread then. I assumed that it was a simple typo for "hydroponics light" - as in, a light used for growing things using hydroponics. It didn't even occur to me that it could be misinterpreted.
Re:So much nonsense in terms (Score:4, Informative)
LED lamps do not put out nearly as much heat as High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lamps. I have a (disconnected) 400W HPS that I could easily have cooked on the top of the reflector, and probably broiled meat directly beneath it. I replaced it with a 144W LED floodlamp, and now I can hold the operating heat sink in my hand; the glass lens pane on the bottom is at room temperature. I am no longer concerned about fire safety in my house.
One major difference, though, is I'm growing orchids, which require far less light than cannabis. I need only two 144W LED floodlamps to illuminate a 72 square foot area. The pot growers will cram as many 400 W lamps in a grow operation as they can, sometimes a dozen or more in a single small room, whatever they can draw from the circuit breaker panel. They'll keep a large external vent fan running year round, including the dead of winter, to keep the room from igniting.
If I were to grow pot, I'm sure I'd need a lot more light fixtures, but even a dozen LED lamps in the same room probably wouldn't risk burning my house down.
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LED lamps do not put out nearly as much heat as High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lamps. I have a (disconnected) 400W HPS that I could easily have cooked on the top of the reflector, and probably broiled meat directly beneath it. I replaced it with a 144W LED floodlamp
I'm guessing that the LEDs are putting out much less light, since the efficiency of HPS lamps is sustantially above most commercial LEDs. However that may be OK since the sodium vapour lamps are skewed towards orange, probably making them less good p
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But a 400W LED fixture would produce nearly the same heat overall [as 400W HPS lights].
Well yes. Duh. All those watts have got to go somewhere, and that's virtually all going to be heat eventually. What matters is how much light you get for that power. And LEDs and HPS are fairly similar (enough that the details of exactly what you're doing and how they were manufactured matter; the luminosities per unit power are similar, according to Wikipedia).
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The parent post already stated HPS and LED lights have near the same efficiency...
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"HPS is in the >100 lumen/watt ballpark"
Only in their more inefficient ranges like 250 and 400w. 600w can get up to 160l/w.
"LEDs, while capable of much more efficiency when operated at currents below their maximum ratings, usually operate near the same 100lm/W efficiencies when operated at maximum current"
Current LED tech is 130+ l/w and Cree's already popped 200+ at room temp 5600K 80mA drive with their MK-R, and in the lab, they've already hit 303+ at room temp 5150K color temp and 350mA drive.
" But a
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If you consider a strip of metal barely rigid enough to support the strip a heat sink, sure.
I don't use heat sinks unless I'm dealing with insane power. Like 1,000w in a 70mm x 70mm package.
There is another answer (Score:2)
The development of anti-drone weapons is the next step. Small radar-guided missiles the size of a bottle rocket used to destroy "enemy" drones. Or "fighter" drones armed with heat-seeking missiles. It could add a new dimension to the phrase "too close for missiles, switching to guns".
Of course, as someone has already pointed out, legalizing pot is the best solution. Then the pot growers and the thieves can kill each other off.
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Thanks at least in part to the robust market for green diode-pumped solid state lasers, moderately alarming and dangerous IR lasers are ubiquitous and cheap. Depending on the quality of your optics and the robustness of theirs, outcomes ranging from temporary washout of the image to swift and permanent death of the imager are highly likely.
Catch the drone with a Net Gun ! (Score:4, Interesting)
The best answer would be a Net Gun.
From market [ebay.com] or DIY [instructables.com]. That's $400 or $60-$80.
I think many of the catched drone parts can be salvaged, after the fall.
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So I would suggest just constantly invading the privacy of the rich. Hovering over their pools and outdoor parties, peering in their windows. Either they will get lopsided laws written that only prevent poor, citizens from using drones (which is entirely a possibility,) or a market will appear spurring the development of measures to thwart drones. Of course this could spiral out of control in many, many ways, from just private, semi-sanctioned police/security forces "protecting" their clients, to a robot vs human war (where maybe EMPs would be helpful.)
They already have lopsided laws on the books (like the law in Texas [texasmonthly.com]), but it is not rich people getting these laws, it is rich corporations. The Texas law was a direct response to a drone pilot embarassing a corporation by recording them dumping a river of blood [gizmodo.com] into the environment. Why would corporations (or rich people) bother with expensive drone countermeasures when they can just buy some nice, cheap legislation? Our legislators have shown time and time again that they are for sale, and the price i
Economic Threat (Score:5, Insightful)
This will lead to thousands of drug enforcement pilot jobs getting offshored to afghanistan where militants can remotely fly drug search drones around England for 100th of the price of a guy in a Cessna.
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Where? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Where? (Score:5, Interesting)
Halesowen? Cradley Heath? Oldbury? Shropshire? Where are these towns, Middle Earth?
Where do you think Tolkien stole the names from? Though he should've avoided getting creative with "Mordor" and stuck with Wolverhampton.
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"Mordor" sounds French to me. And "Sackville-Baggins" sounds like a frenchified English name, which I'm sure was no accident.
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Halesowen? Cradley Heath? Oldbury? Shropshire? Where are these towns, Middle Earth?
Specifically, the Shire.
Which is why the smart grow underground (Score:5, Interesting)
Many growers have been doing this for years. Its not a big deal. You dig out a big hole in the ground, line it with concrete, throw a roof on it, and then pile dirt on top of the roof. No infrared signature.
You can even put it under your house or another greenhouse that has vegetables and flowers. If anyone quizzes you about all the materials you say its for that.
There is an issue with the smell. Nothing you can really do about dogs besides creating a hermetically sealed compartment that has very serious airfilters. Which is sort of the Walter White solution.
Anyway, build underground... its easy and works.
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A guy I used to know in college was from a rural area. There was a small river that was navigable by canoe, and his brother used to go canoeing in the spring and plant seeds along the river.
He'd make a few trips during the summer to check up on them, in the fall he'd come by, cut them down to dry and then make one last trip to pick up the most promising plants.
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Hmm, the electric company will still spot and report your usage, unless you supply your own power.
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if you're going to the trouble to build an underground green house then you can go to the trouble to put a few solar panels/wind mill out with a battery bank.
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Obviously impractical... where as underground green houses have been a real thing for over 40 years.
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Sometimes I think the war-on-people has an upside. This is how we're going to develop the tech to colonize other worlds. I think you just described a Martian farm from the year 2200.
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Its a favorite of the cartels but it has obvious problems.
If you're going out there it means you can be monitored, seen, etc... it lacks privacy.
Also... hikers will steal your product unless you camp out there to protect it which just increases the inconvenience and risk.
The cartels get away with it because they have some poor guy sit out there to guard it... frequently an illegal immigrant that doesn't know anything. They just hand him a wad of cash, give him some camping supplies, and tell him to guard th
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Most forest creatures are pretty much constantly stoned on one thing or another... often stomach parasites. All sorts of stuff.
Cows... drunk... constantly... they literally have a brewery in their stomachs.
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You think a few grow lights are going to significantly warm the earth?
By your logic geo thermal cooling and heating wouldn't work.
Yet they do... People run air through the ground to cool it... and it stays cool all year round even if you run the system 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
In a battle between your petty heating system and the planet... the planet wins.
Dealers also use webcams (Score:2, Interesting)
According to a newspaper article in sweden (translated) [www.svd.se]
Drug dealers have set up webcams to be able to monitor police activity in the area.
EGADS! Only one fiend who could be behind this! (Score:2)
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LED Grow lights (Score:2)
I've seen a number of indoor hydroponic installations. They all seem to have gone to LEDs. And these are for food production (exotic herbs, vegetables, etc.). What with the big money in pots grows, the extra investment should be a no-brainer. So much for the heat signature giving the location away to thieves or the local constables.
Yeah, I've heard the arguments that LED lighting isn't 'natural'. But some of the food farmers using these are on the cutting edge of holistic organic naturaopathic bullshit. An
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These are noteable for being a few of the places in the UK where the pronounciation actually reflects the spelling.
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Actually, if you read the original story this is just one man talking, and there's a pretty good chance he could just be spinning a yarn for a journalist. Drone aircraft are rare here in Britain, and thermal cameras are similarly rare and expensive to buy (the thermal imagers fitted to high-end BMW cars are about the cheapest such units).
All UK police forces which operate helicopters (which is pretty much all of them) have a stated policy of keeping the thermal image camera turned on whenever the helicopter
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Something like this? [adafruit.com]
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The cops go looking just before dawn. When the lights have been on all night and the air is coldest. Only a moron would go looking in the middle of the afternoon.