Simulating sun rise/set AND SAVING ELECTRICITY

[Blunt Master Flex]

Now that I have your attention, I had a thought pop into my head the other day and I think this could be big.
If we are in fact trying to simulate outdoors as much as possible, then would simulating a sunrise/set affect be beneficial?

So,you have four lights IN A ROW obviously these lights have plants under all of them, for this example lets name these lights A,B,C and D. And for the sake of simplicity, lets say the time your flower room will be lit is between 12PM and 12AM. Light "A" would come on from 12PM and turn off at 9PM, lights "B" and "C" would come on at 2PM and turn off at 10PM and light "D" would turn on at 3PM and back off at 12AM. That is just an example, may not be the best combination of times.
This is just a thought and I am not saying in any way that this is definitely going to help your plants, but maybe? If the yield was comparable to running all those lights on for 12 hours it would be HUGE! The lighting schedule above would lower electricity consumption (with the lights) by about 30%!
I would like to test this out, but don't have a room big enough to try this right now. I am limited to 2000w and it seems that you would need at least three lights to try this. But I figured I'd throw it out there and maybe somebody else might give it a go.

 

[Blunt Master Flex]

Also,let me throw this in.I don't know if anyone has already tried this. I'm not trying to take credit for anybodies ideas.

 

[full of purple]

WAste of time and reduction of yeild, We grow indoors to controll the times if your thinking about the sun grow outside

 

[Blunt Master Flex]

WAste of time and reduction of yeild, We grow indoors to controll the times if your thinking about the sun grow outside

Thanks! So, you don't agree that simulating outdoors is beneficial? Especially lightwise? Let me guess,you just tested this theory out in the 3 minutes it took you to reply?

 

[Blunt Master Flex]

And! In that case, why doesn't everybody flower under a 13/11 schedule? We all know that plants will flower under 13 hours of light, so according to you everybody who flowers with 12/12 is wasting time and reducing their yield?

 

[Blunt Master Flex]

I grow indoors because I don't want my plants to get stolen, NOT because I want to control everything. Plants grow much better outdoors with much less effort as well.

 

[Rj41]

Try it out and post the results.

Did you know that side lighting during "lights on" time is beneficial to overall yield.

edit: well, that is if you're not using high wattage lights.

 

[Blunt Master Flex]

Try it out and post the results.

Did you know that side lighting during "lights on" time is beneficial to overall yield.

I'd love to be able to, but I am limited to two 1000w lights in my room. Yes side lighting helps
It's understandable to be skeptical, but I think it's very narrow minded to just jump in and say this won't work. Do you think if we went back in the day and told people fifty years ago about all the new breakthroughs in indoor gardening that we do now compared to how they used to do shit those people would say "bull shit, that won't work!"?.

 

[Blunt Master Flex]

I want to clarify the second part of my last post was not directed towards you RJ, just the first part.

 

[mccumcumber]

Look into a light mover.

Edit: We grow indoor to mimic perfect outdoor conditions...

 

[canefan]

Interesting concept but in all fairness to simulate the sun more closely you would need to increase the level quicker than a 2 hour gap inbetween adding lights I would think. The low light early morning sun is when the sun is waking up the plants. Here again just thinking outloud with a cup of coffee and my pipe. Wouldn't some additional lighting be more accurate simulation? Taking some maybe cfl's and having them come on a bit before and then staying on a bit after the main lights came on and went off.
I grow mainly outdoors but also move them inside under lights depending on the weather here. I live in the mountains of Costa Rica and don't have much change of seasons by the suntimes, but have some really hellish weather. I use a 12 or 11 light regime on the girls depending on the time of year staying as close to suntimes as possible. They veg outside and go inside every night to get their 18 hours of total light. Once they go to flower they get either the 12 or the 11 depending whether they are flowering before the summer solstice or afterwards.
The best advice I could give would be to try on a small scale if possible to see what works for you. The girls are tough and if they have the same light schedule each day with the same lighting schedule they should be fine with no hermie issues. That being said I wouldn't do this unless I was starting their flower cycle in this manner and kept it the same throughout the flower.
Just my two cents, good luck to your endeavors.

 

[Blunt Master Flex]

Look into a light mover.

Edit: We grow indoor to mimic perfect outdoor conditions...

Yes and a perfect day outdoors would involve a sunrise and sunset.
Light movers don't do this, they simply move back and fourth several times in one day, the sun doesn't ever do that. A light mover is not like what I'm talking about.

Interesting concept but in all fairness to simulate the sun more closely you would need to increase the level quicker than a 2 hour gap inbetween adding lights I would think. The low light early morning sun is when the sun is waking up the plants. Here again just thinking outloud with a cup of coffee and my pipe. Wouldn't some additional lighting be more accurate simulation? Taking some maybe cfl's and having them come on a bit before and then staying on a bit after the main lights came on and went off.
I grow mainly outdoors but also move them inside under lights depending on the weather here. I live in the mountains of Costa Rica and don't have much change of seasons by the suntimes, but have some really hellish weather. I use a 12 or 11 light regime on the girls depending on the time of year staying as close to suntimes as possible. They veg outside and go inside every night to get their 18 hours of total light. Once they go to flower they get either the 12 or the 11 depending whether they are flowering before the summer solstice or afterwards.
The best advice I could give would be to try on a small scale if possible to see what works for you. The girls are tough and if they have the same light schedule each day with the same lighting schedule they should be fine with no hermie issues. That being said I wouldn't do this unless I was starting their flower cycle in this manner and kept it the same throughout the flower.
Just my two cents, good luck to your endeavors.

Yes, I was just putting up pretty much random On/Off times in the example. That's not necessarily the exact times the lights would come on and go off, was just trying to make it understandable. And yes your CFL idea sounds good too, but I was thinking of this idea being more of an energy saver for big grows instead of using extra electricity to do it. And to take it even farther, the first light that comes on could be a MH to simulate the more blue light that we get in the morning.
And yes they would be under this flower schedule the entire flower period. We know that these plants will flower and do fine under 10 or eleven hours of light, seems like it would do fine with 9 hours of intense light and a few more of some dimmed light. Doesn't seem that hermaphrodites would be a problem at all.

 

[20plus]

what would really be helpful is automatic dimmers on ballasts. since the sun gets "brighter" towards the middle of the day it would be nice if you could program say 1000w lights to start out at their lowest wattage and gradually increase till "high noon" and then gradually "set" as the sun does. so far as i can tell the closer an indoor grower can get to outdoor conditions the better, from there you could fine tune things like co2 or uvb, whatever your heart desires to produce the best possible environment for a given phenotype

 

[acidbug]

Or how about some led netting like they use in big commercial greenhouses growing tomato and things, like this http://www.netled.fi/optogrowia_interlight
used for sidelighting and waking up the plants in the morning.

 

[Blunt Master Flex]

what would really be helpful is automatic dimmers on ballasts. since the sun gets "brighter" towards the middle of the day it would be nice if you could program say 1000w lights to start out at their lowest wattage and gradually increase till "high noon" and then gradually "set" as the sun does. so far as i can tell the closer an indoor grower can get to outdoor conditions the better, from there you could fine tune things like co2 or uvb, whatever your heart desires to produce the best possible environment for a given phenotype

Hmmm that would be nice

 

[mccumcumber]

My edit was in response to full of purple.

A light mover could start at one point and slowly go to an end point. You can also set up a timer to make your ballast work at 1/2 efficiency while the mover is near the start and end point. That's why I said look into one. It involves a simple computer program, but it's not at all hard to implement.

 

[Blunt Master Flex]

My edit was in response to full of purple.

A light mover could start at one point and slowly go to an end point. You can also set up a timer to make your ballast work at 1/2 efficiency while the mover is near the start and end point. That's why I said look into one. It involves a simple computer program, but it's not at all hard to implement.

Could you set up a light mover so it would slowly move over the plants once in a 12 hour period and then during the dark period return to it's original spot. and then do it again and so fourth?

 

[mccumcumber]

Si senor! That's their primary purpose.

 

[Thedillestpickle]

Yea I think you could if You have some skills with computers and stuff... I would never be able to make one that does that myself.


I think you have a great idea, I was thinking of something similar myself, except not really worrying about having the direction of the light change as just the intesity. I think there is something to be said about replicating conditions of outdoors, although that doesnt garantee this will have a positive effect. I guess it depends on if plants have a wake up period, and if skipping that by having tens of thousands of lumens being shot at them when moments ago there was total darkness gives them stress or not? I dont know the science but Id think theres a chance this will be good for plants. and unless your running a huge show you should have fun with it, and try new things, I see it as a hobby, If you brewed your own beer would just want to brew the same recipe every time? no youd experiment...

Heres what I had planned(actually I may do this) :
You have a grow area of say 5x10 feet, you have three lights set up along its length. The two lights on the ends are 600watt HPS and turn on first, these give the red spectrum of light which is strongest at sunrise and sunset, after two hours the light in the middle, a metal halide turns on and puts out the blue spectrum which is strongest at midday. So this method focuses more on the type of light and change in intesity and less on what angle the light is coming from.

 

[mccumcumber]

Yea I think you could if You have some skills with computers and stuff... I would never be able to make one that does that myself.

You wouldn't need a program to make the light mover move over an area in 12 hours that is mechanical, and very easy to do. What you would need to have is some sort of timer that goes from 0-0.5x-x-0.5x-0 where x is the amount of watts your light is. And to have it do that over a specific period of time. I'm pretty sure that can be easily handled with a digital timer and digital ballast though, if not the computer program to implement it is just a simple java program, anyone who has taken cs 101 could do it.