Lighting Bilbo's Brief Guide to Choosing Your LED.

[Yozhik]

This vid is a good example on how not to do testing or on how to spin a test in your favor.

How did you come to this assumption?

If it is a "how to" guide of how not to do testing, at least its been done consistently.
How do you assert the bad testing has been 'spin'?

From memory, doesn't he place a caveat on the Lux/Lumens test, stating that he is doing it because others like it?
Seems to me he's actualy not putting a 'spin' on it, but does it in an effort for balance.
In other words;
You want lux/lumens? Here's lux/lumens.
You want PAR? Here's PAR.
You want spectrum? Here's spectrum.

Maybe thats true, but also plants are hightly adaptable themselves too and constantly tweak their photosystems or the number and location of chloroplasts or other pigments..

So you agree then.
Plants are highly adaptable.

I'm not sure where your 'but' comes into it.

 

[Mike-groglo]

Haven't seen the vid, however as you say @Xagor the best way to measure is across a predefined area...

Thrilling though (for example) the MARS method is, it only tells half a story, so to take your 1 sq/m and run an average and then get a spread reading (1-100%) gives a much clearer reading...the less the spread, the more even the output is.

So in this example, to explain...the PAR reading is 286.1 with a spread of 0.2 percent across the entire 1m wand and this is the average reading of the 4 readings taken.

 

[Xagor]

How did you come to this assumption?

If it is a "how to" guide of how not to do testing, at least its been done consistently.
How do you assert the bad testing has been 'spin'?

From memory, doesn't he place a caveat on the Lux/Lumens test, stating that he is doing it because others like it?
Seems to me he's actualy not putting a 'spin' on it, but does it in an effort for balance.
In other words;
You want lux/lumens? Here's lux/lumens.
You want PAR? Here's PAR.
You want spectrum? Here's spectrum.

Well he says: lux meter measures intensity, and other companies (of led) say "dont use it" and he says -yeah because their lights do not have intensity.
Its wrong and manipulation.

"Clown factory disco panels" is totally unprofessional and again manipulation, it implies that they suck.

How do you assert the bad testing has been 'spin'

The most important data is missing:
power draw of the fixtures
and ppf over the area -ppfd(density).
Theoretically the r/b panel could still be much better, e.g. if its ppf values are still the same in the corner of the testchamber and the SK lamp shows e.g. 0 there. (wont be true but just to see my point) and if its power draw was e.g. only like 20watts (which wont be true either)
-they measure two of their own lights, they have totally different values in those readings -yet they are the same modells only different angles of their reflector/lenses -if you dont know about the angles, by their methods, the version with the smaller angle seems much better, doesnt it?

So you agree then.
Plants are highly adaptable.
I'm not sure where your 'but' comes into it.

Breeding/Genetics doesnt have to be the cause for adaption to the indoor light, they could be adapting on the fly.
I dont know.

 

[Yozhik]

Breeding/Genetics doesnt have to be the cause for adaption to the indoor light, they could be adapting on the fly.
I dont know.

No, you're right.
There might not be any causal link at all ... but there MIGHT.

For example - hypothetical and for illustration purposes only - but posited just for the possibility to be expressed ...

Let's say Dutch Passion bred plants exclusively using LED lighting, and through yields, consistency, shape, etc, etc ... through whatever selection process they go through, narrowed their strains to phenotypes that thrived in whatever artificial environment they had created.

I'm not saying it would be a conscious decision ... but reaction to specific environments could very plausibly be a phenotypical trait, which may or may not be expressed fully in differing artificial environments, or outdoors.

I'm not, in any way, stating as fact that today's strains are going to respond better to certain types of lights ... BUT ... the demand for bigger yielding, more consistent, feminized, faster strains IS a form of genetic manipulation, for which environmental factors and response to specific lighting spectrum and bias can not be completely dismissed as irrelevant.

Unconscious incompetence ... we don't know what we don't know.

 

[Xagor]

Let's say Dutch Passion bred plants exclusively using LED lighting, and through yields, consistency, shape, etc, etc ... through whatever selection process they go through, narrowed their strains to phenotypes that thrived in whatever artificial environment they had created.

Plants have a lot of photoreceptors that regulate processes E.g. blue light triggers them to grow torwards it, too much far red-lets them think they are beeing shaded. It also depends on the absolute amounts or on ratios of wavelengths to each other. Unfortunately complex.

Lets assume you only breed under red-blue. Id imagine an advantage that could come out of it is that a plant achieves the same favorable traits without e.g. certain wavelengths. But I dont think it could get "new" features caused by the lack of wls compared to e.g. sun.
What do you think?

Also Ive seen labresults showing that the same strain/clone develops higher amounts of terpentenes and thc grown under warmwhite led light compared to hps.
But can I be certain that this is caused by the light spectrum or was just because the heatrays of the hps degraded some of those terpentes or thc? Need more publicly financed cannabis research

 

[Yozhik]

I have no idea - it's not my field of expertise.

All I'm doing is throwing random shit that's inside my head into the ether to see if it resonates in any way.
Plant consciousness is a field very little is known about, certainly in any quantitative or qualitative way that the science theorists would require to fit the existing physical/observable paradigm.

Again, I'm reminded of the notion of intelligent design, and how little we know when restricted to a 5-sense-perception concept of knowledge., and the incredibly myopic and arrogant premise that if we can not observe it, it does not exist.

A whole new topic ... and I have no desire to take this thread off track - it's been incredibly interesting so far!

So short answer to your question;

What do you think?

I think that I don't know enough to give any form of worthwhile response.

However, I think that I'm also very comfortable with the answer to those questions remaining a mystery, and locked away for an indefinite period, so that some corporate funded laboratory asshole doesn't stumble across an answer, declare it a 'discovery', and patent it - depriving the people of nature's abundance for the sake of corporate, financial greed.

 

[HubbaBubba]

Here is my over simplified summary of 11 pages:
Both intensity (how many photons are hitting the leaf) and spectrum (what colors hit the leaf) are important.

Intensity: weed die if the light is too weak, not enough photons.
Spectrum: Weed will grow under almost any light between 400 to 700 nanometers. I bet someone is growing under Low Pressure Sodium, yellow street lights!

Can we say that intensity is 80% and spectrum is 20% important, just for a start?
I want to put 80% of my effort & money into making sure my leaves get enough intensity.

What is an easy way for home grower to Measure intensity at the canopy? I have a lumens meter that is useful for checking relative intensity in the canopy and decay of the light over the years, do I need a $300 PAR meter for measuring absolute intensity too?

Can the camera in our phones be a PAR meter with a prism in front of the camera and some code to quantify the image? I think the spectral response of a CCD in a typical phone camera is 200 to 1000 nanometer, that certainly covers PAR.

 

[Yozhik]

isn't the CRI also a form of measure of intensity?

 

[HubbaBubba]

isn't the CRI also a form of measure of intensity?

Probably not, for example I have some flashlights with very high CRI (Color Rendition Index) but the intensity can be dimmed almost as weak as moonlight. Very useful for noticing colors in the forest at night, but not good for growing plants.

What is the word on the street? Do hot chicks go for guys with nice PAR meters?

 

[Yozhik]

What is the word on the street? Do hot chicks go for guys with nice PAR meters?

Unless it comes with a new pair of shoes, I doubt it.