Supplemental Light

[Ray]

After decades of greenhouse growing, relying on the sun for all of my lighting, I'm now back to "out on the deck" and "windowsill" growing. One aspect of the latter that has bothered me is how much artificial light do I need to add to supplement for that coming in the windows, and I figure I'm not alone, so I put together THIS ARTICLE that shows how 1) if used alone, continuous, artificial light should be one-half the intensity of the historical recommendations, and 2) how to calculate the "volume" of light you're getting naturally, so you can determine the supplementary amount needed.

 

[naoki]

Nice!

I think most people don't care about the exact measurement, but USB Apogee Quantum meter is convenient to find out Daily Light Integrals (DLI, the total amount of light received over a day). It has a built-in logger, so it is very easy to get DLI. I recently needed a waterproof PAR meter for my reef aquarium, so I got SQ-520 (SQ-420 is significantly cheaper) and played with it. I originally thought that this kind of computer-bound meter could go obsolete once they stopped making the driving software. I contacted Apogee about this concern, and they quickly sent me a Python code to interface with them. So I don't have to worry about the driver support, and I can even use it with Linux!

Link to Apogee

 

[Ray]

I would love to invest in a PAR meter and spectrophotometer so I could truly see what sun and lights were doing, but it's a lot of money to write off on a business with only three products, none of them lights!

Besides, I own a boat now, so that sucks up cash like a greenhouse full of orchids could only dream about. BOAT - Break Out Another Thousand.

 

[masaccio]

Ray, it sounds like you've gone over to the dark side with the boat sucking up cash that would go to orchids. But you live in coastal North Carolina. I guess I forgive you and am insanely jealous. (Me, NC born and bred - how I ended up as a minor hobbyist in rural NJ instead of an orchid aficionado living in coastal North Carolina (with a boat) is proof to me that there is no God. (Not really)

 

[Ray]

We have absolutely NO room for a greenhouse, and the town limits them to 8x10 anyway.

 

[smitht64]

Nice!

I think most people don't care about the exact measurement, but USB Apogee Quantum meter is convenient to find out Daily Light Integrals (DLI, the total amount of light received over a day). It has a built-in logger, so it is very easy to get DLI. I recently needed a waterproof PAR meter for my reef aquarium, so I got SQ-520 (SQ-420 is significantly cheaper) and played with it. I originally thought that this kind of computer-bound meter could go obsolete once they stopped making the driving software. I contacted Apogee about this concern, and they quickly sent me a Python code to interface with them. So I don't have to worry about the driver support, and I can even use it with Linux!

Link to Apogee

Who did you contact to get those drivers? do you have a copy of them or a link? I want to make sure I can interface with the SQ-520 with linux/python before purchasing one.

 

[naoki]

Who did you contact to get those drivers? do you have a copy of them or a link? I want to make sure I can interface with the SQ-520 with linux/python before purchasing one.

I used the email address of Technical support (Second link in this page). They will send you the info required for interfacing and an example script in python.