We really need a better 3D light saturation standard

[magiccannabus]

You raise some great points knna. Even on the usual chlorophyll absorption charts, the "green" spectrum shows some absorption. Most charts indicate this is a very inefficient range for the plant, but you are suggesting it's only 10-20% worse? This confuses me a bit, but I am willing to listen.

Also, I think it's worth noting that green wavelengths penetrate canopy better than about any other kind because the upper leaves don't absorb it all. I notice a lot of LED grows ignore this range entirely, and I've also never really seen an LED grow that impressed me or even began to be worth the money invested. Is this partly due to lacking major parts of the spectrum?

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Glad you find it, Hydro-Soil. It has several hoods, for floros (T8, T5s) and all types of HIDs, with different light distributions.

I like to intro the room data, and place virtual planes (for what you ask results to the program) save it, and later installing different types of lamps and compare average light levels, how evenly they are distributed, how is the penetration for each, etc. Its an amazing learning experience about lighting.

I'm using the PL-L 55w lamps and I can't find a fixture that will fit within a 34.5 inch x 19.5 inch space like I have.

What was that you said about 'expensive' programs allowing you to custom design lamps?

Is there any way to import a custom into Dialux?
I'm looking for info on just straight lamps without the reflectors.

I've figured out room creation and lamp placement. What has me stumped are the calculation surface placement for vertical measurement of light and where the heck the output goes so I can read it. LOL
*** Edit *** DUH! Just print it. It's on the pdf. This thing is COOOOOOL! ROTFLMAO *** Edit ***

Is there a tutorial somewhere?? Either that or a trusted site where peeps could upload their room data and have others tweak it for them.
(This is a badass proggie and I would love to see all the popular cultivation hoods added to the database.)

 

[knna]

Sorry, magiccannabus, but i had posted very indeep info about this topic here, but i deleted it all later. And i promised myself to not post any advanced info at this board. I use same nick at all Mj boards, look for my post about plants at light on them. At cannabis.com (currently off, and i dont know if it will work again) and mainly at Gardens Cure i have posted many advanced info about how plants use light. On my mother languaje (spanish), on CannabisCafe.net.

For a brief explanation, many people looks at chlorophills absortion charts and extrapolate from it how plants use light. It looks reasonable way if you dont have more concrete info, but the problem it is very misleading. Because chorophils absortion is very different to overall plants photosynthesis. Check Inada or McCree articles for details on it.

Hydrosoil, the problem with other programs is they use other formats, that you cant import/export with Dialux (not compatible). Its done on purpose, manufacturers give it for free, but only want you can use their own luminaries.

But you can overcome this limitation by choosing similar luminaries and changing the lm output. For example, there is little lamps for the PL-L 55w. And mostly they are used on recessed luminaries, on 60*60cm shape. Due the high intensity of this bulbs for conventional aplications, they are mostly used for indirect (diffuse) lighting.

But you can use a luminarie designed for a 18w floro bulb, which is going to have same size than what you use with a single PLL (or a 2*18w T8 tubes and a 2*PLL55w) and very similar light distribution. Choose it, and change the lm output from 1350lm (typical of 18w tubes) for 4800lm (typical of PLLs of 55w). Results are similar enough.

In order to select the hood with a similar light distribution pattern, if what you use is not a tipical open reflector, but has close wings in high angles of inclination (over 40º), then you need to be somewhat used to how those reflectors perform. By looking the polar curves of the hoods on the catalog you may learn how hood shape affects to light distribution pattern.

There is no data for bare bulbs, except for especial ones, due most of them emits on near 360º at near constant intensities. In conventional lighting, rarely a bare bulb is used, so again to simulate it you need to use imagination. For example, by choosing a globe and changing the lm output.

 

[magiccannabus]

Your English is definitely better than my Spanish! Some day I should really bother to learn....

I honestly can't seem to figure out how to place a luminaire in Dialux. When I go to the Luminaires menu, it just opens little mini pages with the manufacturer's logo telling me I need to go download their catalog, which I did in the case of Philips and I still can't figure it out. Isn't there some sort of place I can just download individual .uld files? Dialux seems like a great program, but I believe they could have made it a lot more user-friendly without sacrificing any functionality. Do you know of any good tutorial pages in English(I found a couple in German....)?

Another interesting question is red-shift. If green/yellow light hits the leaves and isn't fully absorbed, that light which passes through the leaf itself is going to lose a certain amount of energy. Presumably an amber wavelength might become something slightly more red(and obviously much less intense). I wonder if there's any way to calculate how much the canopy red-shifts the light? There's probably too many variables to ever really do anything useful with that info though.

 

[cork144]

this is what they do when they have sidewards light not vert.

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=92259

read it all and it will probably awnswer all your questions

 

[magiccannabus]

Thank you cork144! Very good link indeed. K+

 

[cork144]

yea he did an awsome grow, thats what got me hooked to micro growing.

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Your English is definitely better than my Spanish! Some day I should really bother to learn....

I honestly can't seem to figure out how to place a luminaire in Dialux. When I go to the Luminaires menu, it just opens little mini pages with the manufacturer's logo telling me I need to go download their catalog, which I did in the case of Philips and I still can't figure it out. Isn't there some sort of place I can just download individual .uld files? Dialux seems like a great program, but I believe they could have made it a lot more user-friendly without sacrificing any functionality. Do you know of any good tutorial pages in English(I found a couple in German....)?

Seems the tutorial issue for Dialux is the same for Peachtree accounting. Only the paid training is available globally. LOL

To place a luminaire in your room (I had the same issue).

You downloaded the phillips catalog.... did you install it?

Now when you click on that link it will open the catalog itself. Within the catalog you select from drop-down menus to get your luminaires.

Once you have one selected, click on 'Add'. You can now close the catalog and return to dialux or just switch to the Dialux window and leave the catalog open.

Click the luminaire you added on the left hand side and drag it onto your room diagram. When you let go, it appears as a box that you can move around and place.

The 3D interface is a bit kludgy on this for placement (Game engine map editors do this a lot better LOL) but it's still a great program

 

[magiccannabus]

Yeah man I have been editing games for 12 years and this is way clunky compared to even the worst editors I've worked with in the last 10 years(since Quake/Duke3D).

I'll try installing that Philips catalog again. Maybe I did something wrong...

 

[knna]

I dont know of any tutorial. You are right, the graphic 3D is very old. I often use 2D to build the room and put the lamps. Sometimes i check the 3D mode, but once i know all is OK i flip again to 2D. And only use the 3D for the final (results).

Another interesting question is red-shift. If green/yellow light hits the leaves and isn't fully absorbed, that light which passes through the leaf itself is going to lose a certain amount of energy. Presumably an amber wavelength might become something slightly more red(and obviously much less intense). I wonder if there's any way to calculate how much the canopy red-shifts the light? There's probably too many variables to ever really do anything useful with that info though.

Red shift depends of leave's thickness and the pigments on it. Its impossible to generalize. But most light going through thick leaves is not useful for photosynthesis. Most of it becomes far red, and thus the higher far red to red ratio under canopy. Anyway, light transmision through cannabis leaves grown under intense light is small (below 10%, and about 3% for most wavebands). Near negligible. For sure, no useful light goes through 2 leaves.

Useful light that hits the bottom parts goes through canopy holes. And thats why grows using multiples sources of light or light movers often gets better lower buds than those using a single bulb, where shaded areas dont produce, or produce very little, still being a 1000w bulb. Light penetration is way more dependent of plants crowding and lights placement than to light intensity. But i would prefer to avoid this topic, im a bit tired of fighting so many wrong myths about grow lighting.

 

[7th1der]

I too want to separate my cab and try this. I got the idea from a closet cultivator book. But like you, I wan to turn the bulbs sideways and create a all around tanning booth for the plant. Keep us posted on your progress and good luck.

 

[magiccannabus]

If you have the space there'd be a lot of advantages to laying the shop lights sideways up the wall like that. For one thing they'd be able to be turned on one row at a time.

The problem is... if you go 4 feet horizontal, if you even go 1 foot of depth, that's already 4 square feet. That starts to get into the realm of too much space relative to the wattage of light. Your 1 foot side wall also won't have any lamps on it unless you stuff some under-counter fluoro tubes in there, but those are expensive for what they are. Maybe you can go with a mix of laying some sideways and running some vertical. Vertical definitely lets you stuff and enormous amount of these in a given floor space though. I could easily double what I have in there and I'm already at 250W per square foot....

 

[Hydro-Soil]

I saw someone else using the lamps I have for a vertical setup like a phototron. Awesome grow.

Here's a shot I took of all the components I picked up from 1000bulbs.com
http://www.icmag.com/ic/album.php?albumid=667

I'm actually going to use them for a scrog, since I can get a really flat light pattern.
They're making my mums grow super tight nodes right now and I think I'm gonna have to keep the lights further away than I originally intended.

If the nodes are that tight when it starts throwing flowers I'm gonna have a bud-rot riot on my hands. Gag!

Veeeeeery interesting these lights have been so far. I'm looking forward to the results of this first run.

Going vertical with any Fluoro lighting is definitely a producer, as long as you keep the depth of light penetration in mind.

magiccannabus, that's gonna be a nice run in there can't wait to see the results.

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Hydrosoil, the problem with other programs is they use other formats, that you cant import/export with Dialux (not compatible). Its done on purpose, manufacturers give it for free, but only want you can use their own luminaries.

But you can overcome this limitation by choosing similar luminaries and changing the lm output. For example, there is little lamps for the PL-L 55w. And mostly they are used on recessed luminaries, on 60*60cm shape. Due the high intensity of this bulbs for conventional aplications, they are mostly used for indirect (diffuse) lighting.

But you can use a luminarie designed for a 18w floro bulb, which is going to have same size than what you use with a single PLL (or a 2*18w T8 tubes and a 2*PLL55w) and very similar light distribution. Choose it, and change the lm output from 1350lm (typical of 18w tubes) for 4800lm (typical of PLLs of 55w). Results are similar enough.

In order to select the hood with a similar light distribution pattern, if what you use is not a tipical open reflector, but has close wings in high angles of inclination (over 40º), then you need to be somewhat used to how those reflectors perform. By looking the polar curves of the hoods on the catalog you may learn how hood shape affects to light distribution pattern.

There is no data for bare bulbs, except for especial ones, due most of them emits on near 360º at near constant intensities. In conventional lighting, rarely a bare bulb is used, so again to simulate it you need to use imagination. For example, by choosing a globe and changing the lm output.

Wow, thank you

You sure you don't want to set up tutorials of this? Would they sue you, if you did? Just kidding.

I'll be looking at all of that, thanks Really neat stuff.